Edgar Allan Poe uses his words economically in the “Tell-Tale Heart” – it is one of his shortest stories—to provide a study of paranoia and mental deterioration. Iggy knows this feeling well.
TRUE! –nervous –very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am; but why will you say that I am mad? The disease had sharpened my senses –not destroyed –not dulled them. Above all was the sense of hearing acute. I heard all things in the heaven and in the earth. I heard many things in hell. How, then, am I mad? Hearken! and observe how healthily –how calmly I can tell you the whole story.
