THE TELL-TALE HEART: Poe’s Other Scenario by Salvatore Buttaci

When I had finalized a thorough lavation, I withdrew a murderer’s hands from the rose-tinted water. The hideous deed was done, and now the chimes struck 4:00 A.M.  In haste I swaddled trembling fingers with the old man’s blue monogrammed bath towel. “V.E.,” it read, “Vincent Exeter,” who now in death could only signal to my wracked brain the appellation, “Vulture Eye,” and the blue towel, the milky blue of that hideous eye.

Hark! A pounding on V.E.’s front door. A phantasm of the mind, perchance?

“Gentlemen,” I proclaimed, then perceiving silver badges of law affixed to their overcoat lapels, I added, “Is there something amiss?”

“Apologies, Gov’nor. Been reports of foul play in these parts.”

Innocently I retorted, “Fowl play?  I no longer maintain a chicken house in the yard, Sir.  The clucking proved exceedingly much too raucous, and I likewise sold the impassioned rooster to local farmers.”

“May we come in?”

“Most certainly.”

In a boldness hatched from the egg of self-pride, I led the two past V.E.’s sitting room and into the library where I had less than an hour before buried the old man beneath the nailed-down floorboards and upon which I had draped a brown woven cane mat and upon that I now dragged three oak chairs for me and my unwanted guests. Between the cracks of one of the planks, a hint of white bone, but no matter.

“May I offer you libations, Gentlemen? The night is drearily cold.”

One of them furrowed thick dark eyebrows, then swiped a tongue across his parched lips, and said, “It is a trifle nippy out there. Have you the wherewithal to mix up a Hot Toddy or two?”

My heart raced. Exit myself from the room? Leave these two in the dull company of a taciturn dismembered corpse? How bloody daring of me! 

I nodded, even bowed, and headed towards the old man’s kitchen where I uncovered a half-full (or half-empty) bottle of brandy, a tad of sugar, and some spices.  

As I boiled the water into which I would add the ingredients, I heard the sound of a heart beating so deafeningly loud, I burned my hand in an attempt to clap my ears shut. I glanced at my timepiece, suspecting it the culprit with its tick-tocking monotone, but a week-old earache caused by infection blunted my otherwise extraordinary hearing. It was not my timepiece. And still the beating persisted. The ringing in my troubled ear.  Ringing. Ringing. Ringing.

Nervous. Very nervous.  

I poured myself a tall glass of by now lukewarm Toddy, quaffed most of it down my gullet like a man with unquenchable thirst. With what remained I accommodated two shot glasses with one finger high of Toddy and carried it to the library.

I was now perspiring profusely. A touch of too much Toddy? A fever? The sudden voice of V.E. impersonating a heartbeat, a strident beep-beep-beep?  I feared the two officers were hearing it as well. 

At the threshold of the library, I stood under the bust of Pallas where the old man had glued a paper-maché raven that appeared so real one would suspect it might speak, if only one word.

Horrified, I watched the two men on their knees, wrenching upward the floorboards I had so meticulously nailed down. Now they were extracting from the makeshift grave the bones of Vulture Eye, setting each one down on their spread overcoats which they had removed and laid on the floor beside them.

“Your Hot Toddies,” I announced. My voice, hardly audible, echoed in my infected ear, along with the roar of the sea that mimicked the beating of my heart. So this is what I had heard! The old man was dead. Dead men do not tell tales. I had murdered him myself.  Dismembered him, in fact. Peeled away his pajamas and skin in a steaming hot bath until only his bones remained. I had interred those bones in the foundation dirt. Hidden them beneath the hardwood.

One of the officers, the taller, heftier one, struggled red-faced to his feet, and took one of the shot glasses from me and drained it. The other followed suit. Both nodded graciously.

“What have we here, Gov’nor?” inquired the first.

Before I could respond, offer a modicum of voiced surprise––No, shock!––the officer spoke once more.

“You aware of the law, Gov’nor?”

How could I vindicate myself? What protestations? What denials could I express?  Murder was murder and I had committed it in the most vile degree. With these two hands I had murdered a man completely innocent, save for his milky-blue, oddball eyeball, that vulture’s eye I plucked as he lay counting sheep.

“The law?” I asked. “Yes, of course, I am quite aware.”

“Burying these blanched bones on the premises is in violation of London’s burial codes.  A stiff penalty, that. A hefty fine. Some months’ probation.”

Then the other spoke. “Wonder who the poor bloke was. Rather late now, but in the morning we’ll send our man to properly attend to the remains of Mr. Bones.”

He covered the array of bones with the large green blotter he had removed from the old man’s desk.

“Unless you can assist us, suggest the identity––”

“Hard to tell precisely who,” completed the other officer. “Poor chap’s been under the boards likely a rather long time. Perhaps as long as this old house has been standing. The old ways, you know. Hard to part with loved ones. The cemetery’s too great a distance to go lay flowers. So let’s keep the dearly beloved under our feet. It wouldn’t surprise me if there were buried bodies under the floorboards of every room!”

Then the other officer was asking me, “Your name, Sir?”

“Vincent Exeter,” I replied, proud I could assume his identity without flashing that hideous eye. “I reside here alone, Gentlemen. The last of the Exeters.”

I waited for one of them, the taller and heftier, to pour the last of the Toddy into his glass and drain it like some desert-stranded man, then I escorted them to the door.

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Salvatore Buttaci’s Flashing My Shorts and 200 Shorts, published by All Things That Matter Press, are available at http://www.kindlegraph.com/authors/sambpoet  

His new book If Roosters Don’t Crow, It Is Still Morning: Haiku and Other Poems:

http://tinyurl.com/76akl73  

Buttaci lives in West Virginia with Sharon, the love of his life.