Fiction Reviews: The Pit And The Pendulum

This short story narrates the horror and unspeakable suffering of an unnamed narrator condemned to death by the Spanish inquisition, charged with offences never demonstrated.

This man is imprisoned in a room around him where there are four candelabras with four tall candles lit up and the black-clad, hooded jailers whose lips pass the death sentence.

The unknown man is tired, he feels the breath of death, he is losing his five senses, he believes to see some angels ready to save him but it's a hallucination, they are specters. The four candles have reached the end of their lives, he faints then he is in total darkness.

He closes his eyes at the speed of light and remembers his life. Death is close to him but it is helpless. He thought that his death is not so far away. Is it a matter of minutes? days? A great anguish oppresses him. He desperately searches for a glimmer of light. He can't see anything, but he can move. He maps the room where he's locked up; it's small. He listen to a door that opens and closes in a few seconds, he sees the instruments of torture, faints for the second time, and then finds himself tied to a table, the prison is slightly illuminated. He's dying of thirst. He hears a mechanical noise that marks the seconds; it's a pendulum moving above his head, which gets closer and closer to his chest, the pendulum doesn't move anymore. He crawls along the prison floor; there's very little light. He realizes he is on the edge of a precipice; the pit is very deep.

The walls slowly become boiling, they are moving slowly toward him, pushing him to dive into the void. A powerful hand grabs him. It's General Lasalle of the French army who has entered Toledo and is free.