The Tell-Tale House of Usher by Wakefield Stowell
to beckon me home from the town of Sekdhen, where I had business. She was soft cotton turned to stone that day and I depended on her strength to see me through.
And the tragic event itself; how did it happen, then? That such sorrow still feels so fresh after three thousand years; that misery, too has an after-life, indicates to me that perhaps in so elaborately preparing for life after death, we unwittingly prolong suffering; perhaps even the righteous should live but one life and cede eternity to death so to be spared such torment.
My first wife's son had been caught sodomizing my beloved Pannar, a ten year old boy born by Akana and I whipped him for it. I had him and my first wife both removed from the compound and some necessary security measures taken to prevent them from gaining access to any of the family but I had neglected to also rid my dependents of those sympathetic to my first wife and her son, for she had taken care to patronize some of the servants and had cultivated their indebtedness to her and nurtured their every grievance against Akana over many years.
Only one of the servants participated in the actual slaughter, the others blocking all exit from the banqueting hall where my family was dining. My first wife herself wielded the knife that took down Akana and she left the children to her son and the servant. Such was her hatred that she could not leave a difficult, bloody task to another but perhaps a trace of motherly instinct kept her hand from striking the children.
I was summoned home by three men who were ignorant of the tragedy; Miu wanted to spare me until I was home and could no longer be spared. I collapsed at the sight of my loved one's bloody corpses – the head of my youngest girl completely severed save one rope of flesh, my son Pannar nearly cut in two right down the middle of his rib cage – and I was rendered mute for five days. I regained my voice but I never again spoke another word to my first wife or her son, though I would stare at them for hours trying to determine what should be their fate.
From the day I saw the bodies I was unable to sleep for more than a short time; I roamed from room to room, house to house, so as not to be left alone with my own pitiful self and the dreaded absence of my loved ones. The absence had a sound that maddened me, it had a taste and a smell that was repugnant to me. The absence took up space and crowded in on me until I was made to flee every place I tried to rest my head.
I felt at first that I must surely be able to save them; that Osiris might send them back to me. During my fitful sleep I would dream, pleasurable dreams that reunited me with my lost ones; how cruel was Osiris to reunite me with them only to snatch them away again. I would awaken in the morning from my travels with such a warm peace and then on waking the terror of reality shocked me. My body seemed without substance. Where were the gods to protect them? Where was I?
As the loss of my family drew away from me in time and became distant, it continued to draw from me the will to live, until I no longer had any capacity for love or joy. It pulled all of my internal organs out to rest on my skin, where they flopped pitifully about like fish out of water. The absence took everything; I was left only hate and I mothered it inside me as the last connection I had with the rest of mankind.
Though I could not keep them whole in life, I made them whole in death and buried them with full honors and a tomb full of treasures for a comfortable after-life. And why have I not been re-joined with them? Why am I here in this strange place with strange people? [At this, Hatotep began to cry real tears that Seullinard wiped with his handkerchief; he waited patiently for Hatotep to continue.]
All the villains were hunted down. I isolated each in a cell and had them gagged but not blindfolded because I wanted to see their eyes, to dig into their eyes with my own, letting my hatred and contempt grow. I had gone quite mad with grief and hate. I was both in control and unbalanced and this terrified them; I could see it in their eyes and it pleased me as no healthy emotion could, as nothing else in life could. And it was by this contemplation that their eyes, betraying them, told me their proper punishment.
We would take them out to the desert where they would be shackled in full view of the Gods and every beast of the land. To this end a great caravan was assembled under cover of night so that my plans would be known only to my most trusted servants and kin. We slipped quietly away from civilization; the muffled cries of the murderers were ineffective. At the end of our journey, we made camp near the springs whose waters I would deny them. I had them each tied to stakes driven deep in the sand around a large dais covered over and screened with muslin, so that I could watch them in comfort.
I had fires stoked during the heat of the day, at some distance from my tent, in order to boil water for a tisane of herbs I could imbibe, thereby inducing a cooling sweat as I sat in the shade of my tents, made of cotton picked on my own plantation with at least some assistance from the very hands that were now bound and bleeding.
The prisoners, impetus of all this activity, were persons of some importance for the last time in their lives. The desert winds dried up their tears but not their misery; the hot gamy breath of Sekhmet filled the air with foreboding. There were gentle breezes, too and as they turned, I could smell the smoke and occasionally taste a flake of wood char blown along with it – from our fires in which metal rods were cooked alongside the elaborate meals prepared for my enjoyment. I used these red-hot pokers to prod the murderers, leaving terrible wounds on their skin, while their noses were filled with the savory odor of the food they could not eat. The smoke drew birds, vultures after carrion mostly. They espied the six unfortunates as they circled in attenuated swoops that came ever closer to their flesh. Shot from our slings was enough to keep them at bay – for the time being.
Watching the decay of their flesh from exposure to the sun and the gritty whips of wind from off the sand dunes, I got a sense of the recurrence of time on the land, of that which decays and dies and that which never changes. This is how the gods look upon the face of the earth, I thought, and how man looks back in terror with the face of evil.
And what a craggy rock my first wife had turned into, the wrinkles and scales of her desiccated skin destroyed any pretense of beauty. I showed her the horror that she had become by letting her gaze into a very pretty silver mirror painstakingly polished so that not one blemish marred its surface. She wept at the sight of herself, a dry, hacking cry and I irritated her further by shining the sun’s reflection into her eyes until they burned.
I played with her as cat does with mouse. I had her tresses pulled and wound like rope and tied to stakes. I had boiled water poured on her head and genitals. I teased her in the way of a seduction, as she had done to lure me to her bed. I had known pleasure there once but as she gradually turned my supple joys into something harsh and cruel, so now I turned her pain into something approaching, not pleasure, but a purposeful sense of accomplishment, a satisfaction at the undertaking, long due, of the riddance of a small evil from the world.
Her son tried to maneuver his face into the sands he sat on to smother him-self and end his torment but we righted him as he got his nose close to the ground and bound him such that this avenue of escape was now closed to him. I then commenced tossing little pebbles at him in a steady, constant barrage as a bored child might on those lazy days of summer’s heat when all must remain still except for the fanning arms of the slaves.
How cooperative they all were, for they moaned and begged just as I would have wanted them to do if I’d been schooling them in it for years – a predictable performance of pain and how it tears at all the senses and the features of one’s face.
They must have known all hope of mercy from me was futile, yet they begged anyway, unable to help themselves and when they grew tired of their entreats for my compassion, they insulted me and defiled the memory of my loved-ones they had so brutally slaughtered. But not one wisp of reaction could be seen to play upon me; nothing disturbed the tranquility of my observation. I merely reached for another date or a fig, one of my own, the finest to be had.
My prisoners had no such refin
ements, their naked skin terribly burned by the tortures of the sun and my own hand. I took some finely woven cloths and drew them delicately over both my first wife and her son, all the while inviting them to marvel at the quality, as though I were a trader with my wares. The cloths were drawn over them very lightly so they just barely made contact with the skin and when they did, oh, the screams they would let loose – who would ever suspect that these fine cloths could produce an equally exquisite pain?
I had instructed my most trusted attendant, Tefit, to further their misery under the guise of kindness. At night he would aid them with water and food; he would commiserate and balm their wounds. "I will help you," he would whisper into their ears. He would build up hope each night; I would tear it down the next day.
I had every incentive to keep them just barely alive and conscious. The sun rose and set six times before they were dead in spirit though their hearts kept beating. But my work was not finished, for it was necessary to ensure that they would remain dead to the next world too by eviscerating their bodies, ensuring that anything left of their spirits would have no form in the after-life.
On the
And the tragic event itself; how did it happen, then? That such sorrow still feels so fresh after three thousand years; that misery, too has an after-life, indicates to me that perhaps in so elaborately preparing for life after death, we unwittingly prolong suffering; perhaps even the righteous should live but one life and cede eternity to death so to be spared such torment.
My first wife's son had been caught sodomizing my beloved Pannar, a ten year old boy born by Akana and I whipped him for it. I had him and my first wife both removed from the compound and some necessary security measures taken to prevent them from gaining access to any of the family but I had neglected to also rid my dependents of those sympathetic to my first wife and her son, for she had taken care to patronize some of the servants and had cultivated their indebtedness to her and nurtured their every grievance against Akana over many years.
Only one of the servants participated in the actual slaughter, the others blocking all exit from the banqueting hall where my family was dining. My first wife herself wielded the knife that took down Akana and she left the children to her son and the servant. Such was her hatred that she could not leave a difficult, bloody task to another but perhaps a trace of motherly instinct kept her hand from striking the children.
I was summoned home by three men who were ignorant of the tragedy; Miu wanted to spare me until I was home and could no longer be spared. I collapsed at the sight of my loved one's bloody corpses – the head of my youngest girl completely severed save one rope of flesh, my son Pannar nearly cut in two right down the middle of his rib cage – and I was rendered mute for five days. I regained my voice but I never again spoke another word to my first wife or her son, though I would stare at them for hours trying to determine what should be their fate.
From the day I saw the bodies I was unable to sleep for more than a short time; I roamed from room to room, house to house, so as not to be left alone with my own pitiful self and the dreaded absence of my loved ones. The absence had a sound that maddened me, it had a taste and a smell that was repugnant to me. The absence took up space and crowded in on me until I was made to flee every place I tried to rest my head.
I felt at first that I must surely be able to save them; that Osiris might send them back to me. During my fitful sleep I would dream, pleasurable dreams that reunited me with my lost ones; how cruel was Osiris to reunite me with them only to snatch them away again. I would awaken in the morning from my travels with such a warm peace and then on waking the terror of reality shocked me. My body seemed without substance. Where were the gods to protect them? Where was I?
As the loss of my family drew away from me in time and became distant, it continued to draw from me the will to live, until I no longer had any capacity for love or joy. It pulled all of my internal organs out to rest on my skin, where they flopped pitifully about like fish out of water. The absence took everything; I was left only hate and I mothered it inside me as the last connection I had with the rest of mankind.
Though I could not keep them whole in life, I made them whole in death and buried them with full honors and a tomb full of treasures for a comfortable after-life. And why have I not been re-joined with them? Why am I here in this strange place with strange people? [At this, Hatotep began to cry real tears that Seullinard wiped with his handkerchief; he waited patiently for Hatotep to continue.]
All the villains were hunted down. I isolated each in a cell and had them gagged but not blindfolded because I wanted to see their eyes, to dig into their eyes with my own, letting my hatred and contempt grow. I had gone quite mad with grief and hate. I was both in control and unbalanced and this terrified them; I could see it in their eyes and it pleased me as no healthy emotion could, as nothing else in life could. And it was by this contemplation that their eyes, betraying them, told me their proper punishment.
We would take them out to the desert where they would be shackled in full view of the Gods and every beast of the land. To this end a great caravan was assembled under cover of night so that my plans would be known only to my most trusted servants and kin. We slipped quietly away from civilization; the muffled cries of the murderers were ineffective. At the end of our journey, we made camp near the springs whose waters I would deny them. I had them each tied to stakes driven deep in the sand around a large dais covered over and screened with muslin, so that I could watch them in comfort.
I had fires stoked during the heat of the day, at some distance from my tent, in order to boil water for a tisane of herbs I could imbibe, thereby inducing a cooling sweat as I sat in the shade of my tents, made of cotton picked on my own plantation with at least some assistance from the very hands that were now bound and bleeding.
The prisoners, impetus of all this activity, were persons of some importance for the last time in their lives. The desert winds dried up their tears but not their misery; the hot gamy breath of Sekhmet filled the air with foreboding. There were gentle breezes, too and as they turned, I could smell the smoke and occasionally taste a flake of wood char blown along with it – from our fires in which metal rods were cooked alongside the elaborate meals prepared for my enjoyment. I used these red-hot pokers to prod the murderers, leaving terrible wounds on their skin, while their noses were filled with the savory odor of the food they could not eat. The smoke drew birds, vultures after carrion mostly. They espied the six unfortunates as they circled in attenuated swoops that came ever closer to their flesh. Shot from our slings was enough to keep them at bay – for the time being.
Watching the decay of their flesh from exposure to the sun and the gritty whips of wind from off the sand dunes, I got a sense of the recurrence of time on the land, of that which decays and dies and that which never changes. This is how the gods look upon the face of the earth, I thought, and how man looks back in terror with the face of evil.
And what a craggy rock my first wife had turned into, the wrinkles and scales of her desiccated skin destroyed any pretense of beauty. I showed her the horror that she had become by letting her gaze into a very pretty silver mirror painstakingly polished so that not one blemish marred its surface. She wept at the sight of herself, a dry, hacking cry and I irritated her further by shining the sun’s reflection into her eyes until they burned.
I played with her as cat does with mouse. I had her tresses pulled and wound like rope and tied to stakes. I had boiled water poured on her head and genitals. I teased her in the way of a seduction, as she had done to lure me to her bed. I had known pleasure there once but as she gradually turned my supple joys into something harsh and cruel, so now I turned her pain into something approaching, not pleasure, but a purposeful sense of accomplishment, a satisfaction at the undertaking, long due, of the riddance of a small evil from the world.
Her son tried to maneuver his face into the sands he sat on to smother him-self and end his torment but we righted him as he got his nose close to the ground and bound him such that this avenue of escape was now closed to him. I then commenced tossing little pebbles at him in a steady, constant barrage as a bored child might on those lazy days of summer’s heat when all must remain still except for the fanning arms of the slaves.
How cooperative they all were, for they moaned and begged just as I would have wanted them to do if I’d been schooling them in it for years – a predictable performance of pain and how it tears at all the senses and the features of one’s face.
They must have known all hope of mercy from me was futile, yet they begged anyway, unable to help themselves and when they grew tired of their entreats for my compassion, they insulted me and defiled the memory of my loved-ones they had so brutally slaughtered. But not one wisp of reaction could be seen to play upon me; nothing disturbed the tranquility of my observation. I merely reached for another date or a fig, one of my own, the finest to be had.
My prisoners had no such refin
I had instructed my most trusted attendant, Tefit, to further their misery under the guise of kindness. At night he would aid them with water and food; he would commiserate and balm their wounds. "I will help you," he would whisper into their ears. He would build up hope each night; I would tear it down the next day.
I had every incentive to keep them just barely alive and conscious. The sun rose and set six times before they were dead in spirit though their hearts kept beating. But my work was not finished, for it was necessary to ensure that they would remain dead to the next world too by eviscerating their bodies, ensuring that anything left of their spirits would have no form in the after-life.
On the