The Black Cat by Edgar Allan Poe
by Edgar Allan Poe(published 1845) 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 to-morrow I die, and to-day I would unburthen my soul. My immediate purpose is to place before the world, plainly, succinctly, and without comment, a series of mere household events. From my infancy I was noted for the docility and humanity of my disposition. I married early, and was happy to find in my wife a disposition not uncongenial with my own. This latter was a remarkably large and beautiful animal, entirely black, and sagacious to an astonishing degree. Pluto -- this was the cat's name -- was my favorite pet and playmate. One night, returning home, much intoxicated, from one of my haunts about town, I fancied that the cat avoided my presence. In the meantime the cat slowly recovered.
Harrison Bergeron
French Translation from Avice Robitaille. Hindi Translation by Ashwin.Urdu Translation by RealMSRussian translation THE YEAR WAS 2081, and everybody was finally equal. They weren't only equal before God and the law. They were equal every which way.
"The Lives of the Dead" by Tim O'Brien
undefined But this too is true: stories can save us. I'm forty-three years old, and a writer now, and even still, right here, I keep dreaming Linda alive. And Ted Lavender, too, and Kiowa, and Curt Lemon, and a slim young man I killed, and an old man sprawled beside a pigpen, and several others whose bodies I once lifted and dumped into a truck. They're all dead. Start here: a body without a name. Dave Jensen went over and shook the old man's hand. One by one the others did it too. Rat Kiley bent over the corpse. "Pleased as punch," said Henry Dobbins. I was brand-new to the war. After a moment Dave Jensen touched my shoulder. "Be polite now," he said. "No way." "Maybe it's too real for you?" "That's right," I said. Jensen kept after me, but I didn't go near the body. They proposed toasts. Dave Jensen flicked his eyes at me. "Hey, O'Brien," he said, "you got a toast in mind? I found things to do with my hands. For a few moments Kiowa watched the sky. "You did a good thing today," he said.
The Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Allan Poe
by Edgar Allan Poe 1843 TRUE! --nervous --very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am; but why will you say that I am mad? It is impossible to say how first the idea entered my brain; but once conceived, it haunted me day and night. Now this is the point. Upon the eighth night I was more than usually cautious in opening the door. I had my head in, and was about to open the lantern, when my thumb slipped upon the tin fastening, and the old man sprang up in bed, crying out --"Who's there?" I kept quite still and said nothing. Presently I heard a slight groan, and I knew it was the groan of mortal terror. When I had waited a long time, very patiently, without hearing him lie down, I resolved to open a little --a very, very little crevice in the lantern. It was open --wide, wide open --and I grew furious as I gazed upon it. And have I not told you that what you mistake for madness is but over-acuteness of the sense? But even yet I refrained and kept still. The officers were satisfied.
