The Cask of Amontillado

Fortunato had wronged me a thousand times, but it was one final insult that made me vow revenge — a revenge so complete that he would never suspect it was coming.One evening during carnival season, dressed in a jester’s costume with little bells on his cap, Fortunato greeted me warmly in the street, already half drunk.I told him I had bought a cask of what I believed to be rare Amontillado wine, but that I was worried it might be a fake, and I planned to ask a man named Luchesi to taste it and judge.

As I had hoped, Fortunato was proud of his own knowledge of wine, and he insisted at once that only he, not Luchesi, could properly judge such a rare Amontillado.I led him down into my family’s ancient underground vaults, where the cask was supposedly stored, plying him with more wine as we walked deeper into the damp, dark passages.The cold, damp air made Fortunato cough again and again, but whenever he paused to catch his breath, I insisted with false concern that we should turn back for his health.

Each time, proud and eager for the wine, he refused to turn back, insisting that a little cough would never be the death of him.At last we reached a small, deep niche at the very end of the innermost crypt, walled with the bones of my ancestors stacked high on either side.While Fortunato, confused by the wine, stepped into the niche to look for the cask, I quickly fastened two chains around his waist, locking him fast to the stone wall.

Behind a pile of bones I had hidden a supply of building stone and mortar, and I began, one stone at a time, to wall up the entrance to the niche.At first Fortunato only laughed, certain this must be some kind of joke arranged for the carnival, but as the wall grew higher, his laughter slowly faded.He called out to me, and rattled his chains, but I worked on calmly, saying nothing at all, laying stone after stone in the dark.

When only one final stone remained to be set in place, the voice from inside the niche had already grown faint and then fallen completely silent.I set the last stone into the mortar, plastered over the new wall to match the old one, and stacked the bones back up in front of it exactly as they had been.For the past fifty years, no one has disturbed those bones, and no one but myself has ever known exactly what became of Fortunato that carnival night. In pace requiescat — may he rest in peace.