Okay, so hi! This is my VERY 1st story after, like, a year on this website, so please be kind. No flames, but constructive criticism is allowed. Hope you enjoy my ending to the classic Edgar Allen Poe story, "The Tell-Tale Heart". The story starts right after the line.

"Villains!" I shrieked, "dissemble no more! I admit the deed! -- tear up the planks! -- here, here! -- it is the beating of his hideous heart!"

I tore up the planks to reveal the man I had for so long hated and loathed. At the sight of this, the officers finally terminated their laughter and jolly voices.

"Take me away, do what you will, just make the horrible noise cease!"

After this event the men took hold of me and I was sentenced to a prison. To me, it was a fate almost as worse than death itself! Let me tell you, the place was a living hell. They basically left us in a cell to rot for what felt like all eternity. Though all this is true, I will never rue the day I mutilated the old man who so mocked and haunted me with his evil blue eye, for all men was most deserving of the fate that befell him!

Day after day I sat in that bloody cell, not even plotting revenge or an escape for I knew neither would end successfully.

I started to experience hallucinations, visions, of the old man sitting there, scrutinizing and observing me solemnly in the dead of night. This disturbed me greatly! Had he come back to torture me in my new place of residence? This could not be so! Could it!

For the first week or so I ignored this disturbance. But then I started to exemplify strange, frightening and new symptoms and actions. For example, I completely lost track of time. How long had taken place since the dreadful day I was condemned to purposeless life? I hadn't the slightest idea.

I also would start to wake up in an area completely different than where I had fallen asleep the previous night. This too both startled and concerned me.

My fellow prison mates described times where I would absent-mindedly wander around and mumble while still in deep slumber. I tried my very hardest to disregard all this, but deep inside I knew something was terribly wrong was beginning to manifest.

My time spent in prison was quite uneventful, I must confess. There was nothing present to occupy the time other than, of course, sleeping and thinking…just thinking and reflecting… I did a lot of those two things.

At times I thought I could still hear the rhythmic beating of the old man's heart. But such brief instances they were that I sometimes inquired weather I heard anything at all.

I started to perform self-mutilation. I did the act because I felt it represented the pain, the pain, fatigue, and emotional distress I was experiencing inside. The symptoms were getting progressively worse, I couldn't deny and the old man never ceased to haunt me in reality and in dreams!

Finally one day I decided anything was better than slowly and pitifully going mad. Anything, anything. The knife I had encountered started to look very appealing…very inviting…like an old friend you can't wait to greet…

So there it is! I worked very hard on it, so PLEASE R&R!!!!!!