Nightmare Fuel, Day the 30th. Wrapping up a month of horrible things

Today is All Hallows Eve, a fitting day to close out the 2013 Nightmare Fuel season. IN the past month, I've shared fairy-tales, all-dialog stories, flash pieces, poetry, Keroac-style wordsalad, a homemade Zen koan, and more. We'll wrap with an homage to one of the great American writers of short horror fiction. If there's a prompt today I may or may not put a bow on the month tomorrow; we did repeat Day 19, so I'll count this as 31 entries in 30 days.

Thanks, as always, for listening.

"Against the Wall"
by L Czhorat Suskin

Weeks have past, months blessed by his absence, yet still I hear his voice. In my dreams, yes, but also in my waking hours, no matter how far from my cellars I hear him.

"For the love..."

I remember everything. The thousand injuries of my foe, and now this, the thousand and first.

Blessed by his absence I have called these months, but in truth absent he is not. He whispers to me through each stone, through each brick. A thousand and one steps from my cellar he whispers still, a thousand and one feet from my cellars I hear his whispers.

They hear him as well. No fool am I, I know that they are there and I know that they listen to the stones. It was Fortunato himself who told me, told me with that obscene, grotesque gesture and his talk of Masons. Oh, how I wish I had heeded the warning, how I wish to have chosen to lead Fortunato to some other doom through his appetites. But no, fool I was we marched onward, through the path chosen for us in the catacombs, never once to look back.

"For the love of..."

His whispers I still hear, but there is more. I know, deep in my bones I know that you hear the same. Every brick in this accursed town whispers his story, repeats his last words. If his last words they were, if his infernal magic has not brought him escape, if his brothers have not heard already, have not unearthed him, are not plotting, plotting their vengeance.

I am well practiced with rapier. I have taken to carrying my trowel, the very same trowel, as my main gauche. You will not stop me. None of you will stop me.

I know that you hear. There will be this time no libations. No Medoc, no Amontillado. 

Image by our hostess, +Bliss Morgan 

You protest? Still you protest your innocence? Fool. I heard the whispering in the stone, and I know you hear it as well. I know you are of them, and heard his last words. Hear it from my lips, from living human lips, once more before your death.

"For the love of God, Montresor".

Yes. For the love of God.