"An Eye for Detail" (StoryADay Challenge/Day 6)
(StoryADay Challenge - Day 6)
THE PROMPT: (by Dean Knight, the Education Coordinator of the Edgar Allan Poe Museum in Richmond, Virginia. )
Tell the story of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart” from the old man’s point of view–after his murder.
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“An Eye for Detail”
Ever since childhood, I've had trouble making friends. They would get one look at my "demonic eye", as they called it, and proceed to mock me mercilessly. They teased me, bullied me and verbally assaulted me. My social life suffered because of my appearance, or so I began to internalize.
So it doesn't surprise me that my caretaker murdered me. Although I was an old man, I considered myself quite perceptive. He would try his best not to feel vast discomfort around me. But genuine discomfort or, rather pure disdain is not easily disguised.
I've lived in this old house for over sixty years and I have practically rebuilt it several times over with my bare hands. Just before my wife Lilian lost her battle with ovarian cancer, she begged me to get a caretaker. Initially, I refused. Feeling very capable of taking care of myself, even at age ninety-two. My needs are simple. Although I move much slower now, I don't require the use of a cane, walker, or wheelchair. Lilian and I were lifelong athletes. Even in death, I miss her.
Finally, I relented and I took on a caretaker. It was all arranged by Lilian's niece, Abbie. When Abbie brought Jose to meet me, he seemed distant. Never fully trust a person unable hold direct eye contact. Jose's eyes kept wandering everywhere but my own. Perhaps he didn't want stare or offend me.
"You've always had an eye for detail, " Lilian, loved to joke. I fell in love with her sense of humor.
After Lilian was gone, I felt my days were numbered. I thought Jose would finish me by food poisoning, not suffocation, as he did. The night it happened, I could feel his aura nearby, even in the darkness of my quarters. Call it a premonition, if you must. When he charged towards me, I let out a single scream. After Jose was certain I was deceased, he dismembered my head and limbs and hid the pieces of me under the hardwood floors of the house.
After the deed was done, Jose had deep self-satisfaction. The kind of hubris that can quickly become detrimental. In his arrogance, he allowed the three police officers, who were called by a neighbor that heard my faint scream before my life was taken, into my home. He wanted to assure the officers that nothing out of the ordinary was happening in my residence. He assured them I was away on travel.
Jose thought he could murder in cold-blood and the walls of my home wouldn't cry out for me? He thought Lilian's soul wouldn't cry out for me? The loud cries began to eat him alive from within. There would be no escape from the internal torment.
Jose severed the hand that fed him. A cardinal sin. He broke down and confessed all his evils to the officers in my home.
There were times when I found myself enraged for trivial slights by other people. Lilian, always in perfect poise, would lean into me and whisper, "There is no rest for the wicked."
Now I understand Lil. And together we'll be for eternity. Thank you for setting my soul free Jose. Now I can dance again with my angel, while you rot in prison. An eye-for-an-eye.
The End
* **This is a work of fiction. Names. characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.