liquidnight:“What boots it to tell of the long, long hours of horror more than mortal, during which I counted the rushing oscillations of the steel! Inch by inch—line by line—with a descent only appreciable at intervals that seemed ages—down and still down it came! Days passed—it might have been that many days passed—ere it swept so closely over me as to fan me with its acrid breath. The odor of sharp steel forced itself into my nostrils. I prayed—I wearied heaven with my prayer for its more speedy descent. I grew frantically mad, and struggled to force myself upward against the sweep of the fearful scimitar. And then I fell suddenly calm, and lay smiling at the glittering death, as a child at some rare bauble.”
—Edgar Allan Poe, The Pit and the Pendulum
From The Illustrated Edgar Allan Poe by Wilfried “Sätty” Podriech
(via forgottencityiram, liquidnight)
“What boots it to tell of the long, long hours of horror more than mortal, during which I counted the rushing...