The Cubicle and the walls
Omne labor nullusque lusus Dubiem stolidum puerum faciebat. - Note on the entrance to Dubi’s office.
I WAS sick, sick unto death, with that long agony, and when they at length unbound me, and I was permitted to sit, I felt that my senses were leaving me. The sentence, the dread sentence of dreariness, was the last of distinct accentuation which reached my ears. After that, the sound of the inquisitorial voices seemed merged in one dreamy indeterminate hum. It conveyed to my soul the idea of BOREDOM, perhaps from its association in fancy with the burr of a mill-wheel. This only for a brief period, for presently I heard no more. Yet, for a while, I saw, but with how terrible an exaggeration! I saw the lips of the black-robed judges. They appeared to me white -- whiter than the sheet upon which I trace these words -- and thin even to grotesqueness; thin with the intensity of their expression of firmness, of immovable resolution, of stern contempt of human torture. I saw that the decrees of what to me was fate were still issuing from those lips. I saw them writhe with a deadly locution. I saw them fashion the syllables of my name, and I shuddered, because no sound succeeded. I saw, too, for a few moments of delirious horror, the soft and nearly imperceptible waving of the sable draperies which enwrapped the walls of the apartment; and then my vision fell upon the seven tall candles upon the table.
…
I could no longer doubt the doom prepared for me by monkish ingenuity in torture. My cognizance of the pit had become known to the inquisitorial agents -- the CUBICLE, whose horrors had been destined for so bold a recusant as myself -- the cubicle, typical of hell, and regarded by rumor as the Ultima Thule of all their punishments.
…
The vibration of the ceiling was at right angles to my length. I saw that the walls were designed to crush my entire body. It would fray every bone in my body -- it would return and repeat its operation -- again -- and again. Notwithstanding its terrifically wide coverage, (some thirty feet or more,) and the hissing vigor of its descent, sufficient to sunder these very walls of plaster, still the crushing of my bones would be all that, for several minutes, it would accomplish. And at this thought I paused. I dared not go farther than this reflection. I dwelt upon it with a pertinacity of attention -- as if, in so dwelling, I could arrest here the descent of the wall. I forced myself to ponder upon the sound of the wall as it should pass through the body -- upon the peculiar thrilling sensation which the friction of cloth and dry wall produces in the nerves. I pondered upon all this frivolity until my teeth were on edge.
Down -- steadily down it crept. I took a frenzied pleasure in contrasting its downward with its horizontal velocity. Down - closer -- far and wide -- with the shriek and the plunge of a damned spirit! to my heart, with the stealthy pace of the tiger. I alternately laughed and howled, as the one or the other idea grew predominant.
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I should have probably given it a little more effort, I know. I just had this image in my head and wanted to see if it works or not. Just like the whole chainsaws in poetry business... Oh well, maybe some day I will sit down and ruin E.A.Poe's work more thoroughly.