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Thread: A Cask Of Amontillado Redux

  1. #1

    Default A Cask Of Amontillado Redux

    Okay, here I'm trying something new. Please don't claim it as your own, I will rape you in the eye socket with a piece of metal if you do.

    Am I onto something with this short story I'm gonna try and get published?

    Dear Whom It May Concern,

    To Whom It May Concern:

    I’ve tried to know you as best I could. I’ve tried to figure you out. But I also tried to be that friend that could always be there for you, to talk to. Someone you know you can count on. But I know now this simply cannot be reciprocated, or even appreciated. You have shown me as much—have told me as much—and I cannot continue like this anymore. You have severely abused me, I feel. Have taken me for granted. Close to last year now, almost precisely your birthday, you decided things needed to change. You were upset with the status quo. You were upset with yourself. You yearned for a change. You had to have it. Things could not continue any longer, you willed the change you wanted to see. This was not the path you would have chosen had you known what you would have been feeling right then. How could you live knowing that this may be all that is in store for you? Knowing this life will have only its small, fleeting pleasures, knowing you would be miserable, in short? With only a gaggle of individuals pining for your favor, fearing your open contempt, too unwilling to say what they really think. Too afraid to voice their doubt. That was not a life worth living, you decided. The merits of friendship are not relegated to just good memories, compliments and a sense of self-fulfillment. It is a frequency of its own, relaying between shrill laughter and inaudible, desperate gloom.

    You decided right in wanting change. Change in you means change in the world around you. You chose right. But you also chose to keep this knowledge from those who would misunderstand the gesture most. You needed time on your own. To think. To do. To be. But did you ever stop and think of trying honesty?

    You betrayed me. And treason, as on the national level, is just as fundamental to an individual as well. Treason, in other words, requires a staunch stomping. Treason, in so many words, is the ultimate betrayal of trust. And I trusted you. And you are guilty of treason. The sad thing, the pathetic thing, is that you know you are guilty. You make no secret of your wickedness. In fact, you display it as a warning to those who you have deemed “unworthy” or too weak to be in your presence, to befriend you. Whose fault then is it when one can recognize, can overlook this wickedness in you? If people are the sum of their actions, what of you then? What of me then? If I can overlook your oddities, your quirks, your flaws, and concentrate then on the good times, what of me then? Do I forsake my own law of what is friendship? What if I can remember all the times you were good, or at least my own notion of what “good” is? Caring, vigilant, and wise. Foresight was a talent of yours, being able to accurately predict outcomes, knowing what had to be said.

    In this we completely matched. It was in this we found our harmony. God knows we disagreed when we disagreed. But believe me when I say I didn’t disagree when I did. I absolutely saw your point. It was not wrong. But it was not right either. At the end of the day, it is all yourself that matters, what you know, what you think, by your level of contentedness or security. But when there is room to do good, real good, like guiding one through a lesson, the self takes a backseat. It is out of moral duty this must be done. It is out of compassion, and knowing a human life saved is worth ten unsaved and rather unsavory lives, you would have acted too. Benjamin Franklin said that to teach your children to hold their own passions and prejudices to a reasoning will is to have done much to end misery and ills from our society. If we cannot do great things, we must then do small good things when we can.

    I do not believe myself foolish in subscribing to notions of humanism. Simply because I know our humanity is the one thing that binds us all together, that links us all on the tiny boat we call Earth. There is enough food to hand out 2.2 pounds, or 1 kg, of food to every individual on this planet. And can we not feasibly use the same technologies of war for peace? Shoot a 12-cent banana at some poor sod in Nigeria rather than a $12 million missile to a crowded apartment bloc where suspected terrorists are residing.

    But I kid myself. Missiles cost much, much more than $12 million if you desired a block leveled. I did what I did out of mercy. Despite the rightness of which I know I vindicated against you, I still feel…. Something. I am in the middle of ascertaining what as of yet.

    Sympathy? No, you lost that upon your act of treason. Compassion? Then I must ask myself what form did compassion take in my compulsion to shove you. None. I am a monster, as they say. But a hidden one. I acted on behalf of the Greater Good. Where the ends justify the means.

    You could not hold onto and follow through with what had to be done. With what had to be said. You subscribed to selfishness, one that hid no hypocrisy, but rather paraded it.

    I had to act. There was no other way. Could you name one? I smiled. Genuinely, authentically, really smiled when I met you that day, at the base of the mountain. It would be our first hike together. According to you, it would also be our last. Very last for you.

    Hiking does much to clear the mind. It presents obstacles easily noticeable, easily made vulnerable to our kind’s adaptable intellect and capabilities. How we scaled those so obscure trails! How we finished off that rock wall! It was almost worthy of one worthy.

    Panting, gasping for our breaths, we turned and marveled at the accomplishment we had made there that day. Today. As far as the eye can see, we watched ants go about their lives in suburban homes and businesses. We observed eagles dancing in the air, almost in unison, almost at our behest. We stared in wonder at the expanse of ocean laying just atop the tree lines that seemed helpless to our hands reaching out just in front of us.

    I knew it was then I had to act. I said nothing.

    I write this letter now, not intending to mail it. Who would I mail it to? I write it to help myself clear my mind. It is akin to hiking in this way, but hiking right now would only cloud my mind, and do nothing.

    I aim to make sense of this. I preach of treason done, injustice and whatnot. But was ridding myself of you such justice as to undo whatever injustice done? I voice my doubt. Perhaps this memory will serve me in the future, for that is all you are, a memory. Soon, you will be a memory of a memory. And then nothing more. Or perhaps your smile, your frown, your cries, your laughter will drive me to insanity? I am not above it.
    But mark me well; Religion is my name;
    An angel once: but now a fury grown,
    Too often talked of, but too little known.

    -Jonathan Swift

    "There's only a few things I'd actually kill for: revenge, jewelry, Father O'Malley's weedwacker..."
    -Bender (Futurama) awesome

    Universal truth is not measured in mass appeal.
    -Immortal Technique

  2. #2
    LoZz's Avatar who are you?
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    Default Re: A Cask Of Amontillado Redux

    are you after a rateing on the story?

  3. #3

    Default Re: A Cask Of Amontillado Redux

    I guess so. I wrote it in like twenty minutes and was so proud of myself I had to share it.

    So what do you think? Creepy? Stupid? Gregarious? Pretentious? Subtle?
    But mark me well; Religion is my name;
    An angel once: but now a fury grown,
    Too often talked of, but too little known.

    -Jonathan Swift

    "There's only a few things I'd actually kill for: revenge, jewelry, Father O'Malley's weedwacker..."
    -Bender (Futurama) awesome

    Universal truth is not measured in mass appeal.
    -Immortal Technique

  4. #4
    Eat Meat Whale Meat
    Technical Staff Citizen Moderator Emeritus Administrator Emeritus

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    Default Re: A Cask Of Amontillado Redux

    Shouldn't this be in Arts, where all the other pieces looking for critiques are?

  5. #5

    Default Re: A Cask Of Amontillado Redux

    Yeah sure...


    But with two replies now I still haven't gotten what I have now explicitly made clear... In other words, instead of talking about where this belongs, it could have been spent on critique...
    But mark me well; Religion is my name;
    An angel once: but now a fury grown,
    Too often talked of, but too little known.

    -Jonathan Swift

    "There's only a few things I'd actually kill for: revenge, jewelry, Father O'Malley's weedwacker..."
    -Bender (Futurama) awesome

    Universal truth is not measured in mass appeal.
    -Immortal Technique

  6. #6
    Eat Meat Whale Meat
    Technical Staff Citizen Moderator Emeritus Administrator Emeritus

    Join Date
    Jun 2006
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    15,812

    Default Re: A Cask Of Amontillado Redux

    Moved to the Work Critiques section of Arts. Perhaps you'll have more luck here.

  7. #7
    chriscase's Avatar Chairman Miao
    Civitate Patrician

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    Default Re: A Cask Of Amontillado Redux

    Da Skinna -
    This is a pretty hard piece to get in to. You spend a lot of time at the beginning explaining feelings and ideas about feelings without setting much of a stage. It would be much better if the story started out with something about the hike, or some other specific setting.

    Also, for anyone who does not remember the Cask story, it would be good if you had some way of letting the reader know this is a story about revenge and murder.

    As far as the writing style goes, I know you are paying homage to Poe, but you might consider dropping the Victorian tone. It's difficult enough to penetrate Poe himself. One advantage you have over Poe is you can speak to a modern reader in modern dialect. I would use that, but that's just a personal preference.

    I also wonder about the mechanics of the revenge. One prominent - one might even say critical - aspect of the revenge in the original Cask is how Fortunato is lured to his death. This aspect appears to be missing from your story, and without it (or something like it), this story appears to be more about an impulsive homicide than a devious murder.

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