The Black Cat

chapter 5

One day she came down into the cellar with me to cut some wood (we were now poor to have a servant). Of course, the cat followed me down the stairs and nearly made me fall. This made me so angry, that i took the axe and tried to cut the animal in two. But as i brought the axe down, my wife stopped my arm with her hand. This made me even more angry, and i pulled her hand away from my wrist, lifted the tool again, brought it down hard and buried it in the top of her head.

I had to hide the body. I knew i could not take it out of the house. The neightbours noticed everything. I thought of burying it on the floor of the cellar. I thought of throwing it into the river at the end of the garden. I thought of putting it into a wooden box and talking it out of the house that way. In the end, i decided to hide the body in one of the walls of the cellar.

It was quite an old building, near the river, so the walls of the cellar were quite wet and the plaster was soft. There was new plaster on one of the walls, and i knew that underneath it the wall was not very strong. I also knew that this wall was very thick. I could hide the body in the middle of it.

It was not difficuls. I took off some plaster, took out a few stones and made a hole in the earth that filled the middle of the wall. I put my wife there, put back the stones, made some new plaster and put it on the wall. Then i cleaned the floor, and looked carefully round. Everything looked just as it did before. Nobody would ever know.

Next, i went upstairs to kill the cat. The animal was bringing me bad luck. I had to kill it. I searched everywhere, but i could not find him. I was sure it was because of my wife's murder; he was too cleaver to come near me now.

I waited all evening, but i did not see the evil animal. He did not come black during the night either. And so, for the first time in a long time, i slept well. When i woke up the next morning, i was surprised to see that the cat still was not there.