The Tell-Tale Heart, by Edgar Allan Poe, is a short story about a man who kills an older man because of his "Evil Eye", then brags about his 'sanity'. He says he is completely sane because of his careful actions and thorough disposal of the body; this could definitely spark controversy. Was he legitimately insane? Sane? Was he hallucinating the whole thing? Is it a dream?
It's interesting how the narrator says that the old man has never wronged him before the story takes place. This poses the question: "Is it really that necessary to kill someone because of their eye?" (Well, things that annoy you enough COULD make you want to do something about it...) But I'm not saying that killing him was the right thing to do. Also, the killer waits eight days until he takes action, signifying that he might have had some form of conscience, but when the old man wakes up and our killer sees the eye, it puts him over the top and he loses control.
Ok, so in the text Mr. McCarthy gave us, the part where the storyteller dismembers the body is cut out. This is HUGE because it tells us a whole bunch about him, that he would take his time out to cut off the head and limbs of the old man.
The next morning, the killer "hears" (or hallucinates) a beating heart, forcing him to confess to the police (I think out of guilt).
According to wikipedia.com and other superstitions, death watch beetles bang their heads against a wall to make a sound similar to a heartbeat when death is near.
"I kept quite still and said nothing. For a whole hour I did not move a muscle, and in the meantime I did not hear him lie down. He was still sitting up in the bed listening;—just as I have done, night after night, hearkening to the death watches in the wall."
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