For the most wild yet most homely narrative > which > i am about to pen. I neither expect nor solicit > belief. Mad indeed would i be to expect it, in a > case > where my very senses reject their own evidence. > Yet, > mad am I not--and very surely do i not dream. But > tomorrow I die, and today i would unburden my soul. > My Immediate purpose is to place before the world, > plainly, succinctly, and without a comment, a series > of mere household events. In their consequence, > these > events have terrified--have tortured--have destroyed > me. Yet i will not attempt to expound them. To me, > they have presented little but horror--to many they > will seem less terrible than baroque. Hereafter, > perhaps, some intellect may be found which will > reduce > my phantasm to the commonplace--some intellect more > calm, more logical, and far less excitable than my > own, which will perceive, in the circumstances I > detail with awe, nothing more than an ordinary > succession of very natural causes and effects.

-- Anonymous, November 20, 2002

Answers

The Black Cat. A man under the influence of drink abuses his cat and kills his wife. Such are the prosaic facts and he admits the power of the alcohol. Yet he would impart the most powerful emotional horror that he himself feels in experiencing the nearly superantural events surrounding the cat. He knows his rationalizations and delusions have other explanations, yet this is not an ordinary confession but an attempt to relive his state of mind. To prove that he never shows much contrition or rationalanalysis of the events himself. The mad descent and the apparition of the black cat is everything to him even when sober.

-- Anonymous, November 21, 2002