Monday Morning Required Reading. I remember reading this story for the first time in a high school English class and being both profoundly disturbed and morbidly fascinated. And that pretty much describes my ongoing relationship with Edgar Allan Poe. So, for your Monday, here is something slightly (or perhaps, profoundly) disturbing. Edgar Allan Poe's "The Cask of Amontillado":

The thousand injuries of Fortunato I had borne as I best could; but when he ventured upon insult, I vowed revenge. You, who so well know the nature of my soul, will not supposed, however, that I gave utterance to a threat. At length I would be avenged; this was a point definitely settled -- but the very definitiveness with which it was resolved precluded the idea of risk. I must not only punish, but punish with impunity. A wrong is unredressed when retribution overtakes its redresser. It is equally unredressed when the avenger fails to make himself felt as such to him who has done the wrong. [KEEP READING]