Imprisoned and condemned to death by the Spanish Inquisition, an unnamed man is cruelly tortured by his captors even as an enemy army encircles the city.

A pioneer of the short story genre, Poe's stories typically captured themes of the macabre and included elements of the mysterious. His better-known stories include "The Fall of the House of Usher", "The Pit and the Pendulum", "The Murders in the Rue Morgue", "The Masque of the Red Death" and "The Tell-Tale Heart".

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