My government name is Rachel Malika Michaels. I just tell everyone to call me Doc. Yesterday, I attended the trial of a mister Paul Simmons who is now a patient mine. Mr. Simmons supposedly killed Gunther Dickson, and old man with a glass eye, which is supposedly the reason for his murder. I believed that Paul's "issue" is that he was and is mad, although, who is not mad in this world? I call his story that of the Tell Tale Heart.

I pulled up to the mental asylum on a dismal grey Saturday. My client, Paul, was spending his time there. He had committed a murder. As I walked through the security doors I saw a corridor filled with grey concrete doors with barred windows. As I looked in through one of the windows, a screaming patient ran up to the door and looked at me, then he laughed.

There's nothing funny about me or about the people in this building. Everyone in here has been through something. Ten years of having patients re-live their stories through my ears- all I can do is try and figure out how to help them. I told Paul to tell me his tale from his heart.

As Paul relays his bone-chilling tale to me, I am writing what I fancy his problem to be.

" As I crept quietly, quietly, now would a madman, as I'm sure you fancy me to be, wouldn't have done this with such cunning and cleverness, would they? Do you fancy me mad?" I decline to comment on this so I continue to write and calmly asked Paul to continue his tale.

"Very well, as I crept to the Old Man's house, quietly, quietly with such cunning, I did not wish to wake him, nor did I wish for his treasures. It was only his eye, that single vulture eye that I wished myself to be rid of. So craftily, cunningly, I slipped my head and a black lantern into his door. Then oh so quietly, I crept to his bed and killed him by strangulation."

As I listen to this man ramble, I concluded this much: Paul fancies himself perfectly sane, yet he shows so much confirmation of complete insanity. I listened completely, riveted to this bone-chilling tale, and yet, could not think of anything to say. The Perfect Crime. Paul believed he committed it, so why is he here? Quite obviously, because he did not commit the Perfect Crime. Many people I have spoken to believe that they had committed the Perfect Crime, though none yet have pulled it off.

Paul had no desire for Gunther's gold. If he had wanted it, it would have been gone when the policemen showed up. Simmons did not believe that was the reason for killing Dixon. He believed in a reason that you or I- sane persons- would find incredulous. He was obsessed with the idea that Dixon's eye was ever watching him. The only possible way to stop this madness of his was to exorcize it. But the "heartbeats" of the Tell Tale Heart- what about them? It seemed that Paul was not only maddened by the eye's presence, but he was also experiencing auditory hallucinations in which he heard Gunther Dixon's heart beating, post mortality.

I told him just that. "Paul, the eye did not wrong you in any way- you fancied that it had wronged you and this fancy, nothing more, brought you into an extreme case of a reaction. I do not believe that even with severe counseling rehabilitation, will you be able to go on living normally." This is exactly what I said.

"Oh, this is what you think, Doctor? Why?"

" Because you are in denial, severe denial of your own insanity. You do not wish to admit that you in fact are mad." This is what I told him, and it is so. Those who have the greatest problems often are the ones in the most denial.

"Doctor, I do not have any sort of psychological or neurological problem. I have acute senses and perfect sanity. I am clever. Madmen are not clever. If you saw with what cunning, with what accuracy I caught my prey, with what calmness I told how I did such and with what truth, you cannot fancy me mad."

I looked at this madman, as he indeed was.

" So, Paul, your story is all fact and no fiction?"

To this he nodded vigorously, glad to see that I had "seen the light" or truth in his words. I did not want to have his hopes come crashing down, but told him this anyway.

"What worries me the most, Paul, is not the question of your sanity. It is the simple fact that your story, your eerie, bone-chilling store, will be told evermore as an urban legend and as a campfire story." I said.

"I've gone over what I did in my head, and there was one thing that was quite strange" Paul started.

"And what was that?" I asked in interest, truly wishing to know.

" The old man didn't give any fight. Just like you won't, Doctor."

Paul said calmly as he ripped off his straight jacket.