Utah Prisoners in 1889.
"So, you've killed more than once?" Allen's cellmate asked.
"Sure have," Allen responded, with a sly grin on his face. "I'm not a one-trick pony."
The cellmate found that funny. He liked Allen, whether or not the story he was about to tell was true. Something about his arrogance made him appealing. Plus, the guy was easy to talk to.
"Alright, go on," the cellmate goaded.
"It was a few years ago, back in my wine tasting days," Allen recalled. "I used to be quite the connoisseur back then, and I guess I still am. I had flasks of the finest bourbon you've ever seen," he boasted. "But there was this one man, John Vogel. Oh, how I hated him..." The anger swelled in his eyes.
"How I hated him.
"We used to be friends. Best friends actually, until he stole my Lenore.
"I knew something was wrong one night when she cancelled on me at the last minute, and I could've sworn I heard his voice in the background. I loved her, and at the time I trusted her, but the suspicious man in me had to know for sure. I drove to her neighborhood and parked a few houses away from her driveway. Sure enough, there was John's car."
Allen paused. The memories stirred up a plethora of emotions.
"I was infuriated. The woman I loved, and whom I thought loved me, was with my best friend. It was bad enough to feel the sting of a woman who rejects you, but to reject you and go after your best friend...it's just sickening."
The cellmate was enthralled by this point. What he thought would turn out to be something like a hit-and-run from a convenience store actually ended up being one interesting story.
"So you offed the bastard?" he interjected.
"Not right away," Allen responded. His face and voice was somber at this point. His mind was whirling with emotions not expressed for years. It was almost therapeutic to let it all out, yet still uncomfortable to deal with the haunting memories.
"I proceeded to pretend like nothing was wrong. I would get my revenge...I had to. You see, John was quite the wine connoisseur, as am I. That was one of the things we shared and one of the things we always talked about. I was not fond of his political stances or musical tastes, but the man knew his wine.
"A week or so after the incident at Lenore's house, I invited John over for a wine tasting. He immediately obliged. The man almost never refused a drink, especially something of mine.
"I started him off with a few glasses of brandy, and then we progressed to a Merlot, a personal favorite of mine, and then I suggested we try an Amontillado that I had recently found."
"What's an Amontillado?" the cellmate queried. "Personally I've always been partial to the cheap stuff that gets you loaded after half a bottle."
Allen turned towards his listener and explained, "Amontillado is a very dry sherry from Spain." He wanted to continue, but realized the futility of further explaining.
"I suggested we go down to my wine cellar and try a few sips. He followed me down the cellar, which was quite comical, I must say. Knowing his weakness for the drink, I purposely knew he would intoxicate himself, making him easier to kill.
"As he stumbled down the stairs behind me, we finally arrived at my cellar. I escorted him to the back, but there were no wine racks.
"He was puzzled, though thoroughly inebriated. In his drunken state, he still wondered where the Amontillado was. I gestured to the corner of the room, and his drunkenness carried him over there."
Allen started smiling again. Recalling the events that followed cheered him up. He had almost forgotten the pain of losing his Lenore to this man. Revenge has a tendency to help one forget one's pains.
"The drunken moron was easily manipulated. I told him to sit in a chair, which was conveniently located in the corner. He flopped down. The brandy started to hit him hard, and he rested. He sat down and closed his eyes briefly, and while he did so I tied him to the chair as hastily as I could.
"After I tied the final knot, the brandy began to wear off. He asked why he was being tied down, and what all of this had to do with Amontillado. I said nothing, and began to go to work."
"Work? What do you mean work?" the cellmate asked.
"I began to wall him in, brick by brick. I had ordered three pallets of bricks and enough mortar to build a small house."
"Wait...I don't get it. You walled the man in as he sat there?"
"Yes," Allen coldly responded.
"Wow...that's a first for me, and I thought I'd heard everything. So after you walled him in, what did you do? You just walked away and let him sit there?"
The man was trying to wrap his mind around what he had just heard.
"I got my revenge. That's all that matters." Allen sat back down on the bunk bed, a smile returning back to his face.
"All of that for a woman? Man, no broad is worth that."
"Possibly, except for my true love Lenore."
For this part of the story, I wanted to include this variation of The Cask of Amontillado as a serial killer's "tough guy" story to try to get some credentials in prison. I thought that the original was sinister and cold enough to be told by a sadistic serial killer.
The basic story plot is pretty much the same as the original, only with the character's names changed. In the original, the murderer (Allen) gets his associate drunk and takes him to the cellar, where in his intoxicated state, he gets chained to the wall, and then is walled in brick by brick.
One change I decided to make was including a love story between Allen and his love Lenore, so I can segue into my adaptation of The Raven.
I saw that this story would be perfect to be told by a prisoner, because in the original he's never caught. In fact, the story mentions that it's been fifty years since that incident, and no one has disturbed him.
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