Story A Day In May - Story 6

 Shorter one today. Didn't map out a framework. Just wrote quickly while eating lunch.

The Old Man

by J. Smith Kirkland

I woke to a sound that I could not identify. Perhaps just a dream I thought, but the door was ever so slightly ajar. I waited still for a long time expecting the door to move, but it did not. Just as I was about to go back to sleep, the door burst open. Someone lunged into the room. I screamed. Before I could react to defend myself, I was on the floor with the bed on top of me. I would have suffocated, but my heart gave out first.

I was disoriented at first, but then I began to focus. I was in my room, watching as my neighbor lifted the bed off of me. I thought he must have heard my scream and found me. He has been so kind to me, especially of late. It took me another few moments to realize I was looking at my own corpse. How unfortunate that my neighbor did not arrive in time to save me from the mad man. But then as he moved my body to the tub and began to dismember it, I realized, he was the mad man.

He hid pieces of me around the apartment. I was intrigued that I neither felt anger or sadness that he had murdered me, or that I was indeed dead. There was an odd peace about being dead. The goings on of the living were fascinating to watch, but I felt disconnected from any emotion associated with them, even from the madman sealing my own dead body parts in the floor boards.

He seemed quite pleased with his efforts. When the police came to the door, he seemed calm an composed. He chatted with them like they were guest come to visit for tea. I watched however as he slowly unravelled. With no pressure form the officers, who had themselves started to feel like they were at a friends home, he seemed to become unravelled. He started chatting more and more rapidly. Looking around the room and frequently at the ceiling. Perhaps the dead can sense things the living can't, but I could hear his heart beat, louder, and faster, like a ringing in the room. Eventually he screeched out a confession of my murder, and pointed them to the pieces of my corpse. Quite interesting to watch a man become so unglued so quickly.

I saw him just the other day. We watched together as they took his dead body down from the gallows. He commented on how he could hear my heart beat up until his neck snapped. I did not bother to correct him. As I said, the dead become detached from the emotions of the living very quickly.

The Prompt

Tell the story of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart” from the old man’s point of view–after his murder. 

Story A Day Framework

no framework today, just wrote quickly over lunch.