The Pit and the Pendulum

The Pit and the Pendulum is a short story originally written by Edgar Allan Poe in 1842. The story is one of Poe's masterpieces and one of the most haunting works of horror literature.

The narrator is imprisoned in a cell by the Spanish Inquisition. There, totally in darkness and solitude, his soul, exhausted, has been broken and he has lost all hope.

In addition to the torture of hunger, cold and loneliness, the protagonist is tied up and is fully aware that he is going to die.

In the small cell there is a pendulum with a needle that slowly descends to him. Analyzing the room, he discovers a pit with water nearby. Thanks to the fact that he still has some leftover food, he spreads it over his body so that the rats will come to him and bite the ropes to free him.

However, when he frees himself from the ropes, the pendulum stops and gives him to understand that someone is watching him...

"I was sick—sick unto death with that long agony; and when they at length unbound me, and I was permitted to sit, I felt that my senses were leaving me. The sentence—the dread sentence of death—was the last of distinct accentuation which reached my ears. After that, the sound of the inquisitorial voices seemed merged in one dreamy indeterminate hum".