"The Tattle-Tale Organ of Circulatory Origin"
Yes! I am and have been, I'll admit, very, utterly, completely, phantasmagorically nervous, anxious, aggravated, and other such dramatic adjectives. But crazy? No!—most definitely not. My mysterious, unexplainable disease meant to send shivers down your spine at the complete mystery of it all had merely rendered my senses much more acute, especially that of hearing, and I was allegedly able to ascertain all manner of things both figuratively above and below—not to mention on—the earth's crust. But enough of this—time is pressing, and I know how much you want to finish this story.
I lived with an old man, a man with the most interesting eye I'd ever seen. It was one resembling that of an anteater or platypus—a small, black, watery, and largely unoffending eye. But whenever he happened to throw his gaze upon me—which happened to be a daily occurrence, since, for reasons of expediency, efficiency, and that of an interesting plot point, I was condemned to living with him—I grew inexplicably scared, and wished ever-so-much to see my mother.
It was then that I knew that I had to kill him, for what grown man in his right mind ever wishes to see his mother?
Slowly, cautiously, sluggishly, gradually, carefully, quietly, I opened the door to his room in the dead of night—which I figured to be largely appropriate, considering my thoughts and intended actions towards him—and stared at him, merely stared. Night after night this occurred, and, much to my great distress and puzzlement—though that really makes no sense—his eye was closed in slumber.
One night, though, I heard—for I must remind you that my senses are quite keen—a strange, singular sound, that of a certain beating, a pulse; nothing but the beating of the old man's plot-point heart, but it drove me insane—which, I must needs remind you, I most definitely am not. Unable to stand it much longer, fearful that the neighbors would hear its dreadful racket—even though I alone am sensitive to such sounds—I leapt with a singular ululation into the room, bedecked in war paint and a loincloth, and charged at the old man with a short spear I had happened upon in the basement earlier that evening. There wasn't a struggle—he was asleep, after all—and both the horrible, unoffending eye and the heart that this story seems to be now focused on were both extinguished.
I buried the body beneath the floorboards of the building—because of course, no one would ever be able to smell it decaying and become suspicious—and, for purposes of suspense and climax, three police officers showed up on my front step just as I finished.
I let them in, and we chatted, but I began to hear something, a sound that rang loud in my ears and refused to leave me in peace.
Thump-thump. Did they not hear it?
Thump-thump. They must have heard it.
Thump-thump. Oh, they heard it all right.
Thump-thump. Thump-thump. Thumpety-thumpety-thump-thump.
THUMP-THUMP.
Unable to endure much more, I screamed, "Shut it up! Shut it up! Shut up the illogically-loud beating of the heart of the man I have just illogically murdered!"
I still can't figure out why the officers wouldn't stop staring at me…almost as if they fancied me mad.