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. And yet you call me mad?

Well, that's a fine how-do-you-do. Me? Mad? I don't think so. Homey better check himself down, comin' all up here in my face, talkin' 'bout I'm mad! Huh!

(What? I'm just sayin'...)

Above all, I heard the snoring of the old man upstairs, as he monotonously buzzed his way through cord after cord of those imaginary logs that a noisy sleeper is said to be sawing in their sleep, zzz-zzz, like a slumbering lumberjack in subconscious imitation of the trademark sound effects of their daytime metier. When WOULD the man shut up? That's what I wanted to know. Not that I minded him, personally, of course. Indeed, he paid his rent on time and even gave me an occasional tomato from his almost surprisingly thriving section of the communal garden out back. Oh, no, it wasn't the man who bothered me: It was his nose:

That nobby, wart-riddled honker, of such a prodigious bulk relative to the modest-sized cabeza upon which it sat that Cyrano de Bergerac himself might have felt compelled to laugh at it. That nose was everywhere: Sneezing, sniffling, running outright, assuming a tell-tale brightness on Sunday mornings following the old man's weekly debauches at the local pub (whereto, in fairness, however, I myself accompanied him on most, if not all, occasions), and finally depriving me of sleep each night with its bang-on impersonation of a professional-grade band saw. Yes, it was his nose that bothered me: I had no problem with his ears (ears are ears, after all), and his mouth was what you might call 'standard issue' (though the almost feminine thinness of the lips might have bespoken a stingy soul to an over-scrupulous physiognomist), nor did he have one of those hideous, pale-blue, vulture-like eyes that makes one's blood run cold (which is more than I can say for my previous tenant, who had JUST such an eye, if I remember rightly)! I tell you it was the man's nose, his whole nose, and nothing but the nose that drove me mad!

Well, not so much mad, as crazy -- but in the non-pathological acceptation of that word, of course, since (and this is the last time I'm going to say this, so you may want to write it down just in case...): I, Horatio P. Knifewielder III, am not now, and have never been, mad! (Heh heh heh heh! Ahem. No, seriously. I'm as sane as the day is long, dawg -- huh! -- and then some.)



But dig:

I was never nicer to the old man than in the days just before I whacked him. I even made breakfast for him on several of those increasingly suspenseful Sunday mornings just before the deed -- which, however, was probably little more than a mixed blessing from his point of view since I'm not exactly Chef-Boy-R-Dee myself. Still, one knows how to operate a toaster and a microwave oven and pour a glass of milk. True, the bacon I served him was, in retrospect, perhaps a trifle over-crispy, and I may have occasionally overcooked one of the egg dishes (although I certainly never "burnt" them, as he seemed to think), but at least he never suspected my true motives in being so outwardly nice to him. Little did he know that I was merely throwing him off his guard in preparation for strangling him with his very own pillow! Ha ha! I would have laughed in his face merely thinking about this cleverness of mine and thus given myself away, except for the fact that the ghastliness of his nasal apparatus effectively discouraged me from looking at him at all, save through the feature-blurring lens of peripheral vision.

It was the evening following the third such breakfast of this kind when I decided to act. As usual, the old man had woken me from my beauty sleep around 2:00 A.M. with his impossibly loud snoring. This, indeed, happened almost every night, but this time my resident Jimmy Durante had gone too far, for tonight he had wakened me in the middle of my first-ever nightmare about... (you guessed it) NOSES! I kid you not: I was having a nightmare about noses, such was my obsession with that feature now on account of the trouble that I'd been having with my nasally challenged tenant down the hall.

The plot was muddled to my waking mind, but I appeared to be the protagonist in a sort of dreamscape adaptation of a Gogol short story called (appropriately enough) "The Nose," an absurdist satire that I hadn't read (or even consciously remembered) in well over a decade, but wherein, as I now recalled, a Civic Counselor wakes to find that his own organ of smell has gone AWOL during the night, leaving him with a ridiculous pancake-flat expanse between eyes and lips. I had reached that part of the narrative wherein I (in my apparent role as the luckless Major Kovalev) had become cognizant of my loss while gazing in the mirror in preparation for my morning shave. "Perhaps this is only my imagination?" I muttered to myself, in the middle of a dumbfounded discourse that I later learned to be drawn almost verbatim from the civil servant's actual lines in the original story. "The devil only knows what this vileness means! If even there had been something to take the nose's place! But, as it is, there's nothing there at all.�



No sooner had my dream-shrouded avatar spoken these lines, when my attention was arrested by a loud buzzing noise emanating from some region outside of the current dreamscape, like the muffled roar of a thousand recently disturbed honeybees. Where had I heard that noise before? Why did it sound so irritatingly familiar to me? Ah, yes, I suddenly recalled: The old sawmill in the bedroom down the hallway must be revving up as usual in preparation for his "nightly run." There was only one thing to do: I had to rush down to Old Man Buzz Saw at once and put a dramatic and (preferably) lasting stop to this audiological onslaught of his. (I had reminded old Snagglepuss just last night that there was a "no snoring" provision in his lease, and yet here he was setting up again tonight for business as usual. What's up with that? Not that he could have cured his condition overnight, of course, but at least he could have purchased a cheap set of nose plugs at CVS Pharmacy wherewith to muffle the otherwise floorboard-rattling resonance of his ear-offending schnozz.)

So thinking, I began walking (or so I then fancied) in the general direction of the ungodly commotion, determined to silence it once and for all, when suddenly: BAM!

I found myself lying on my bedroom floor with a badly sprained ankle. What the devil had happened? I didn't remember anyone spraining their ankle in that Gogol story that I was just now reenacting in my dreams.

Luckily, a rare moment of self-possession came over my historically antsy soul at this moment, during which I saw my situation clearly:

I had been sleepwalking in the general direction of the offensive snoring, no doubt intending to confront the old man for his ongoing thoughtlessness with respect to his poor landlord (i.e., moi), when I had tumbled to the floor due to the 3 foot height discrepancy between that latter feature and my bed, the result being that I had done my ankle a mischief -- and not just in my dreams either, but in my real, bona fide waking life! ("Paging Dr. Scholl's. Emergency at the Poe residence. Dr. Scholl's: Emergency at the Poe residence.") But then my growing sense of psychical discomfiture with the ongoing buzz down the hall so trumped my feelings of physical pain that I could think of nothing now but the need to silence my tenant on the QT and "by any means necessary," up to and including his instant murder by suffocation with a very large pillow indeed! (What can I say, if you snooze, you lose in my household, gang, at least if you snooze so discourteously as Old Faithful down the hall there.)

Well, I soon began walking (or rather limping) down the dimly lit hallway, with my mind bent on vengeance. (The man's hour had come: he could be sure of that!) At first I was careful to tiptoe for fear of waking the snorer, until it occurred to me that I could stomp down the hall like the Jolly Green Giant himself without being heard over a wood-sawing racket of THIS magnitude. So thinking, I closed the remaining distance between myself and the old man's door with a determined (if somewhat painful) sprint, until I found myself upon the very threshold of the old man's apartment with my hand (I want to say my right hand, in this case) on the actual doorknob to his actual room! Now I would make him pay for interrupting my beauty sleep like this. I'm as reasonable as the next extremely nervous person, but this had been going on for what, two years now? How much longer could my face (long accounted "handsome" by the female portion of the local peasantry, God love 'em) parry these blows against the punching bag of its finite recuperative powers? (Just last week at my part-time bank teller job, I came across a crude caricature of my person, with enormous bags under my eyes, scribbled on a Post-It note that had been surreptitiously glued to my countertop sometime during my 15-minute coffee break in the office canteen. Of course, I immediately gave that flunky Chris a sharp look since it would have been just like him to pull such a stunt, but I've yet to find a smoking gun to link him to the incident. Besides, he so enjoys taking credit for dissing me that the very lack of a confession on his part tends to exonerate him in this case. No, it must have been a sort of "copycat dissing" perpetrated no doubt by a new-hire who is as yet blissfully unfamiliar with my exacting standards when it comes to being respected by my peers. Kirby: that's who it was! That new guy with the stupid orange hair!)




Rousing myself from these interesting (if somewhat irrelevant) reflections, I proceeded, slowly (oh, so slowly!) to open the door before me, until just an itsy-bitsy sliver of the hall light above me shone through the miniscule gap between door and door jamb, starkly illuminating a correspondingly paper-thin slice of the seemingly pitch-black chamber within. So far, so good, yes? What was my horror, however, when I found that this narrow curtain of light had fallen upon the very object of my loathing: the old man's nose itself! The schnozz was always hideous, of course, but tonight its ugliness had "outheroded Herod." The giant wart-studded nostrils flared in tandem to the accompaniment of each now extraordinarily loud snore, revealing a mucous concavity beneath of such repellant aspect as to give me flashbacks to some of the worst tissue-free sneezes that I had witnessed back in grade school (including one incident on a morning bus ride wherein a friend of mine in the aisle seat beside me so villainously unloaded directly into his cupped hands before him that I couldn't eat a bite of lunch in the school cafeteria a whole four hours later!)

Yes, if the light had fallen elsewhere (on those vaguely feminine lips of his, perhaps, or on the lobes of his wholly unexceptionable ears) I dare say I might have eventually repented of my mission as usual and hobbled resignedly back to bed, the more so in that the loud snoring typically abated every night about 3:00 A.M., at which time it usually morphed into a kind of peevish mumbling interspersed with soft, sighing whistles, not unlike those trademark slide-whistle sighs emitted by Larry when the Three Stooges are sleeping (or rather attempting to sleep) in the same large but inadequately sheeted bed. But staring at the now glaringly highlighted bulbous honker before me, I could no longer stay my hand. The old man's time had come. I threw open the door and raced (or rather painfully hobbled) over to the bed, wrapped my hands around the predictably scrawny neck of my nemesis and began to strangle him but good! Then, however, recalling that I had originally intended to smother this obnoxious Pinocchio, not strangle him, I wrenched the victim's pillow out from behind his balding coconut and smushed it all up in his face, real forceful like, being careful, however, to center the object squarely over his horrific honker so as to prevent so much as one drop of the old man's considerable nasal effluvia from landing anywhere on my fastidious person.

"Yes!" I cried triumphantly. "That's what I'm talking about now!"

The old man was dead. Stone dead. (Tee-hee!)

Not bad for a "madman," huh? (Ah, gee. I amaze myself sometimes.)

I won't go into details about the flawless body disposal routine that I then put into operation, since it's not my business to brag, merely to state facts. Suffice it to say, that a completely untraceable set of victim remains were soon buried behind the wall in my bedroom, which I then plastered over so consistently with the rest of the apartment paint job that even Norm Abram from "This Old House" would have had difficulty detecting the cheat.

So there I am, admiring my own handiwork, looking forward to an endless stream of sleep-filled nights now that the Saw Mill next-doors had gone out of business... when my attention was arrested by a series of decisive raps upon the front door of my time-honored group house.

Who could it be?

Not that it mattered, of course: Let it be the police themselves, I thought. Bring it on! After all, I have nothing to fear.

And so thinking, I positively skipped toward the staircase, eager to show any would-be busybodies below that I was far too calm and collected to have just murdered anyone, much less my own tenant, even if (bless him) he had admittedly tried my patience at times with his sometimes surprisingly loud snoring.

(I say I "skipped" toward the staircase, but this gait, alas, was soon exchanged for a limp, as I was soon painfully reminded that my ankle remained as sore as ever as a result of the incident of the night before.)

"Gentlemen," I cried, as I opened the door to four uniformed members of the local constabulary. "What may I do for you this fine morning?!"



"What's that you say, gentlemen? The neighbors heard a scream during the night that came from these premises? Oh, that must have been my cat Pluto. I'm a sleepwalker, you see, and I never fail to step on the beast's tail whenever I take one of my dream-shrouded rambles through these time-honored (if somewhat dusty) halls of mine. No wonder I haven't seen that cat this morning. She must still be sulking over my latest blunder.

"All-ee-all-ee-in-free, Pluto! Papa's sorry!

How's that, gentlemen? Of COURSE you can come in. It's not like I'm hiding a murder victim in here, after all! Ha ha!"

What on earth was I saying?! I thought a little ad-libbing on my part would make me appear carefree and therefore above suspicion in the eyes of the police, but I hadn't counted on blurting out stupid lines like that last one. Imagine cracking jokes about a supposititious corpse on the premises at a time like this. Fortunately, the foursome appeared to have taken that comment for the harmless wisecrack that it ostensibly was meant to be, but I might not be so lucky next time, so I'd better can the small-talk as much as possible. (God, I wished that they would leave!)

"You know, this is a very well-constructed house, gentlemen."

Great! NOW what am I talking about?!

"Yes, a very well-constructed house, indeed, gentlemen. What, are you leaving so soon, gentlemen? Please, first, let me show you the rest of the house. My bedroom, for instance, is right upstairs. Won't you follow me?"

All too readily, the constables accepted my fate-tempting offer of a tour of my inner chambers, perhaps because they were looking forward to the "tea and biscuits" that, as they now only half-jokingly reminded me, I had offered them "just minutes ago, old boy." To be sure, I couldn't recall making that particular offer, but then I was nervously spouting so much nonsense now in my increasingly futile attempt to appear casual that God alone knows what I had already told them. Well, at least a trip to the kitchen at this point would buy me some time to come up with a strategy for extricating myself from this high-stakes end game that I had blundered into with these loose lips of mine.

"Here, gentlemen: Please, be seated on these chairs while I pop downstairs to get you your tea!"

But no sooner had I turned to leave, when my attention was arrested by a distant buzzing noise emanating from behind my bedroom wall, like the muffled roar of a thousand recently disturbed honeybees.

"Ah, gentlemen!" I cried, desperate to say something, anything to keep them from noticing the distant sound. "I'm so glad you came! But then, it's getting late, and I just remembered that I'm all out of tea." Oh, why wouldn't they leave! How unlucky can you get! I'll have to keep making noise, however, because those "bees" of mine were becoming louder and louder.

"Did you know I'm a tap-dancer, gentlemen? Yes, indeed. I even teach courses down at the local one-room schoolhouse every Wednesday night. How about I give you a free lesson right now on our way downstairs? No, seriously, your money's no good here, gentlemen. Now watch my feet closely -- (and forgive the tennis shoes, too, by the way, gentlemen, my tap shoes are in the shop -- I blew out a heel last night during my debut performance of "Lord of the Dance" at the Unitarian Church down on Broad Street).

Here we go now: right, right, left, left, right, right, left, left, right:

And so saying, I frantically began tapping away as loudly as possible, like a regular Fred Astaire, convinced that the "bees" behind the wall were growing louder than ever. (Needless to say, the pain was excruciating at this point on account of my dodgy ankle, but such was my desperate determination that I didn't so much as wince.)

But the police officers didn't budge, much less follow me downstairs while contemplating my footwork. Did they think that I was dancing up here for my health?! No, they must hear the hideous buzzing just as well as I do. They're making mock of me, the wretches! That's what I thought, and that's what I think! but I could bear those hypocritical smiles no longer!

I tapped defiantly over to the wall behind which I had buried Mr. Nose not five hours earlier, and dramatically spinning around on tiptoe, I pointed to the very scene of the crime right in the middle of performing my dramatic routine-ending curtsey.

"Villains," I shrieked, "dissemble no more! I admit the deed! Tear up the planks here! Here! It is the snoring of his hideous nose!"