The Tale Tale Heart by Edgar Allan Poe.

True.

Nervous.

Very, very dreadfully nervous.

I had been and am.

But would you say I am mad?

The disease had sharpened my senses, not destroyed, not dulled them. Above all was a sense of hearing

acute. I heard all things in the heaven and in the earth. I heard many things in hell.

How then am I mad? Harken and observe how healthily, how calmly I can tell you the whole story.

It is impossible to say how first the idea entered my brain,

but once conceived it haunted me day and night.

Object, there was none.

Passion, there was none.

I loved the old man.

He had never wronged me.

He had never given me insult.

For his gold, I had no desire.

I think it was his eye. Yes, it was this. One of his eyes resembled that of a vulture,

a pale, blue eye, with a film over it. Whenever it fell upon me, my blood ran cold, and so by degrees, very gradually, I made up my mind to take the life of the old man, and thus rid myself of the eye forever. Now this is the point. You fancy me mad. Mad men know nothing, but you should have seen me. You should have seen how

wisely I proceeded. With what caution, with what foresight, with what dissimulation I went to work.

I was never kinder to the old man than during the whole week before I killed him. And every night, about midnight,

I turned the latch of his door and opened it. Oh, so gently. And then, when I had made an opening

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