The Pit and the Pendulum;

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”.