By Austen Squarepants
During my time in jail, many people have come and asked me… why did I kill Fortunato? What could be so horrible that he did to me? I’ll tell you why. It was a horrible thing that he did, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, MANY years ago when we were still young…. In fact, it was in Kindergarten, and it was coloring time. Everyone was coloring their own pictures. Me, I was drawing someone being hanged. The detail was amazing, I even put glistening blood on that poor guy. When the teacher went by she thought that I had drawn such a beautiful red shiny plane…. anyway, Fortunato was sitting there drawing a sun that had a smiley face and lots of stick figures smiling beneath it. (So…. boring!) He was using a red crayon to color some happy-face person’s hat. I needed the red to add some blood to his leg, where I had drawn a bullet hole. (Perhaps where the cops had shot him when he was caught.) So I asked Fortunato oh so nicely for the red:
“Fortunato, if you don’t give me the red I’ll make this picture come true for you!”
“You mean you’ll give me a nice, big, red, shiny airplane??? That’s so nice of you! Thanks!”
Fortunato went back to work on his happy sunshine picture. And in all of his excitement he broke the red crayon! Now, there’s nothing wrong with a broken crayon, it still works. But then the teacher came along and said:
“Oh my! Have you broken this crayon? Well, there’s no use for that anymore!”
And she threw it out the window. I was devastated. But I didn’t give up hope. I looked around for another red crayon, and found one in John’s hands. I asked him politely for it:
“Gimme that!”
Then I took it and sat back down. But Fortunato thought that I had gotten it for him!
“Oh thank you Amontillado! I was just looking for that!”
And he snatched if from my hand. Then the exact same thing happened: Fortunato went back to work on his happy sunshine picture. And in all of his excitment he broke the red crayon! Now, there’s nothing wrong with a broken crayon, it still works. But then the teacher came along and said:
“Oh my! Have you broken this crayon? Well, there’s no use for that anymore!”
And she threw it out the window. I was devastated. But I didn’t give up hope. I looked around for another red crayon, but this time there wasn’t one! I just CAN’T STAND the fact that I never got to finish my picture! I never forgave Fortunato for that, and that is why I killed him, because he is mean, bad, a thief, not good, bad, not nice, unfair, over-excited, unfair, stupid, idiotic, and mean and a million other things!
Note: This is a prequel to The Cask of Amontillado
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