The Black Cat

By Edgar Allan Poe

While being a truly macabre tale, one cannot deny it's dark, alluring, beauty. It is a tale of one man's spiralling descent into the realm of madness. The narrator, who is also the protagonist of the of this masterpiece of fiction, tells his story from his cell, awaiting execution for his horrible crimes.
He tells of his journey from caring child, and later caring man, into the shattered shell of a twisted mind, a perverted mind. Altough the story does not offer a definitive cataclysm to his alteration from a loving being to a hateful monstrosity, it does blame the consuming of alcohol for his change.
He never seems to even attempt to justify his actions to the reader, and seems quite aware of the fact that he has commited atrocities worthy of his death sentence.

This story is quite amazing in the way it is told. Mr.Poe truly outdid himself with this story. It does not appear to be written to entertain the reader, but does so merely by being humble. I will not describe the events or the conclusion of it in to much detail, as I wish all the people who hasn't read it yet, to do so post-haste.
It would truly take a genius to imagine and create a tale as bizarre, sick and twisted such as this one: "The corpse already greatly decayed and clotted with gore, stood erect before the eyes of the spectators."
Altough this quote does not quite capture the psychological horror of this novel, it does provide an insight into the pervertive aspects of it.