The Cask of Amontillado ; By Edgar Allan Poe

The narrator describes his friend Fortunato, a wine connoisseur, against whom he has vowed revenge because Fortunato committed some unnamed wrong against him. The narrator meets Fortunato and tells him about a recent purchase of a case of vintage wine called Amontillado. He needs someone to help him verify that the wine is authentic. Fortunato seems struck by the mention of the Amontillado, but the narrator tells him not to worry if he is busy, that he plans to see another wine connoisseur. Fortunato dismisses this other connoisseur and is keen to see the wine now.

As they head into the narrator's wine cellar, the narrator keeps telling Fortunato to turn back, because the wine is in a deep vault with nitre coating the walls and Fortunato is already coughing. Fortunato insists they carry on. They go deeper and deeper into the tombs underneath the Palazzo until they reach a kind of catacomb, where the narrator's own ancestors are entombed. Within this chamber is the pitch-black entrance to where the narrator says the Amontillado is stored. A pile of bones lies before this dark entrance, the remains of a fourth wall.

As Fortunato looks into this dark corridor, the narrator locks Fortunato to the stone wall. He then starts to build up the fourth wall again, shutting Fortunato in the dark. Fortunato moans in terror, but then he lets out a terrifying laugh as if the whole thing is the narrator’s idea of a joke. The narrator laughs in return until Fortunato falls silent, then builds the rest of the wall. He says that the tomb remains undisturbed half a century later.