I thought when I posted those other two stories of mine, it might
relieve my writer's block on the story I WANT to work on.

   This work is what P. D. Q. Bach would have referred to as heavily
recycled. In other words stolen. This is of course a time honored
method. As Albert Einstein said "... steal from one person it's
plagiarism, ... steal from four, it's scholarship." Using this definition
this work is definitely plagiarism.

   But as someone else once said (I think it was Samuel Clemens, but
I'm not sure), If you're gonna steal, steal from the best. So the
following is stolen from one of the best American authors ever. His
works aren't as well read as, for example, Melville and Hemingway, but
his works will last at least as long as theirs.

   The title comes from one of the two stories that most of the prose
was lifted from. The other is entitled "The Cask of Amontillado". I hope
this story is seen, not as a desecration, but as a mark of my admiration
of Edgar Allen Poe.

   Who doesn't think of Happosai when they hear the title:

			THE IMP OF THE PERVERSE

   The thousand injuries of Happosai 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 suppose, however, that 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 must be understood that neither by word nor deed had I given
Happosai cause to doubt my good will. I continued, as was my wont to
smile in his face, and he did not perceive that my smile now was at the
thought of his Destruction.

   It is impossible that any deed could have been wrought with a more
thorough deliberation. For weeks, for months, I pondered upon the means
of the murder. I rejected a thousand schemes, because their
accomplishment involved a chance of detection. At length, in reading
some French Memoirs, I found an account of a nearly fatal illness that
occurred to Madame Pilau, through the agency of a smoldering
handkerchief accidentally poisoned.

  The idea struck my fancy at once. I knew my victim's habit of ironing
panties. I knew, too, that his collection was stored around his bed. But
I need not vex you with impertinent details. I need not describe the
easy artifices by which I substituted women's undergarments of my own
preparation for the ones which he recently stole. The next morning he
was discovered dead in his bed, and the Coroner's verdict was- "Death by
the visitation of God."

   Following a vast brawl, it was determined that Ranma Saotome was the
new master of `Anything Goes'. Shortly thereafter, Akane married him,
and the dojo passed to the two of them. Genma Saotome and my father
retired, and only occasionally teach a class. For myself, all went well
for years. The idea of detection never once entered my brain. Of the
remains of the master's fatal collection I had myself carefully
disposed. I had left no shadow of a clue by which it would be possible
to convict, or even to suspect me of the crime. It is inconceivable how
rich a sentiment of satisfaction arose in my bosom as I reflected upon
my absolute security. For a very long period of time I was accustomed to
revel in this sentiment. It afforded me more real delight than all the
mere domestic peace accruing from my sin.

   But there arrived at length an epoch, from which the pleasurable
feeling grew, by scarcely perceptible gradations, into a haunting and
harassing thought. It harassed because it haunted. I could scarcely get
rid of it for an instant. It is quite a common thing to be thus annoyed
with the ringing in our ears, or rather in our memories, of the burthen
of some ordinary song. Nor will we be the less tormented if the song in
itself be good. In this manner, at last, I would perpetually catch
myself pondering upon my security, and repeating, in a low undertone,
the phrase, "I am safe."

   One day, whilst visiting my new fiancee, I arrested myself in the act
of murmuring, half aloud, these customary syllables. In a fit of
petulance, I remodeled them thus; "I am safe- I am safe- yes- if I be
not fool enough to make open confession!"

   No sooner had I spoken these words, than I felt an icy chill creep to
my heart. Suddenly my own casual self-suggestion that I might possibly
be fool enough to confess the murder of which I had been guilty,
confronted me, as if the very ghost of him whom I had murdered- and
beckoned me on to death.

   At first, I made an effort to shake off this nightmare of the soul. I
felt a maddening desire to shriek aloud. Every succeeding wave of
thought overwhelmed me with new terror, for, alas! I well, too well
understood that to speak, in my situation, was to be lost. My fiancee
noticed my agitation. I tried to think of anything else. At length, my
fiancee took to alarm. I felt then the consummation of my fate. Could I
have torn out my tongue, I would have done it, but he held me in his
arms, and tried to calm my anxiety. I gasped for breath. For a moment I
experienced all the pangs of suffocation; I became blind, and deaf, and
giddy; and then some invisible fiend, I thought, struck me with his
broad palm upon the back. The long imprisoned secret burst forth from my
soul.

   He said that I spoke with a distinct enunciation, but with marked
emphasis and passionate hurry, as if in dread of interruption before
concluding the brief, but pregnant sentences that consigned me to this
hell. Having related all that would have been necessary for the fullest
judicial conviction, I fell prostrate in a swoon.

   Due to his love for me, no one else is ever likely to find out. Due
to his new revulsion of me, I shall never be Kasumi Ono.

			       THE END.