Faust goes on-line.

A student at the University of Washington recently struck his own Faustian bargain through the on-line auction service e-Bay. For a reported sum of $400, the 20-year-old Woodinville, Washington resident sold his soul, which he described on the site as “hardly used”, to a Des Moines, Iowa woman. Regarding the sum, the seller indicated that he was happy that the bidding went “past $7.50”.

Before you hurry to the site to get your monetary reward in this life, or to start your own collection, e-Bay reported that following the transaction, the student’s access to the site had been suspended. Said an e-Bay spokesman; "You have to have a piece of merchandise that a seller can deliver to a buyer."

All is not lost. For those in the market, a simple web search returns numerous results. One site, EvilPeople,INC.(tm), advertises that they are “always willing to add to the Unholy Might(tm) of the nether regions, and one of the ways that we can do this is to, well, buy your soul. Since most of you puny mortals have rather materialistic desires, EvilPeople,INC.(tm) is more than willing to provide you with them. And we just want one teensy-weensy little thing in return: YOUR IMMORTAL SOUL.”

The going price is not advertised. The process begins with:

“First, fill out this form.

We will mail you a confirmation notice with a "SoulCode".

You will then fill out the confirmation form and put your SoulCode where indicated and finish filling out what it is that you want in return for your soul.

We will submit this to our patented Soul Evaluation Software and return our decision on whether we want it or not.”

Happy hunting.