Student sells soul to Hel, Goddess of Death, for a better place in the Tim’s line
By Evan Lewis, January 15 2018 —
A few days before the end of exam season, University of Calgary student James Svenssen traded his mortal soul to the Norse goddess of death, Hel, in exchange for moving up in the Tim Hortons line.
Reports from those present say that an ancient, dark ritual was conducted with the bones of some kind of animal — nothing really out of the ordinary, as most students have performed the occasional occult rite. However, most never manage to summon a being of such immense power.
Hel materialized in a cloud that smelled mostly of burnt toast with a hint of lavender. She stood in the middle of MacHall as students cowered before her almighty power.
Looking down at Svenssen, the Goddess of Death muttered something in Norse and proceeded to reach into Svenssen’s chest and rip his soul asunder from his being. Witnesses described it as a bit like when you suck the yolk from a particularly runny egg, only spookier.
When asked about it afterward, Svenssen seemed satisfied with his decision.
“What am I going to do with a soul, anyway?” Svenssen said. “Most people just keep theirs or sell them to Haskayne. That doesn’t get you anything.”
His gaze then wandered off, fixating on something non-existent and very far away, before looking back to us. We watched as he tried to smile, but couldn’t.
“I don’t need a soul,” he repeated quietly. “I need a french vanilla.”
As most U of C students are aware, the Tim Hortons line is a winding chain of human bodies that existed long before the founding of the university and will exist long after it is gone. It has been widely accepted that MacHall was built to house Tim Hortons and its immense lines. Some even speculate that the first ‘students’ at the school were pilgrims who figured it wasn’t worth waiting several millennia for a medium double-double and decided to do something more interesting — they put aside their chickens and pitchforks and settled on advanced agricultural theory instead.
Today, experts estimate the Tims queue to be anywhere from three decades to several eons long. These same experts say that Svenssen’s decision to gift his soul to a being of utter destruction was a reasonable one, as he managed to shorten his wait by 10 years — equivalent to about three spaces in the line.