horror Archives - The Cracked Door

The Walking Dream (A Short Story)

I woke up groggy from a long night, my muscles sore and my head still tired as if I never really slept. I felt the dream cascade on top of me. It’s feeling looming over my mind with omnipresent vividness, but I could not remember exactly what happened.

I was there when he did it all to me. That’s what I could feel. Who was he again, and what did he do? My memory retreated like a wave. I just had the feeling of standing there.

Except I couldn’t move. I just stood. I just remember standing at attention. For what though? I stood in some kind of line; that’s what it was. A line of other bodies.

While standing there, I woke up for some reason. Well, sort of, I became aware of my presence, of my body, but I could not move. He controlled my body; he controlled all our bodies. We stood in formation at his command. But who even was he?

The part of it that doesn’t make sense is that it felt like I was actually there. It didn’t have the fuzziness that dreams normally have. I felt like I was seeing with my actual eyes, feeling the sensations of my actual body, and moving with my actual limbs. I could still feel it in the way my muscles twitched now from exhaustion just thinking about it. It didn’t feel like a normal dream. No haziness in my perception. I swear I was actually there.

And who were the others? They were countless other bodies; other drones to his will. I guess the more important question remains, who was he? I have a vivid impression in my mind. Of him looming large before me. He did it. He felt like an evil monster bearing down at me from above. But I have no face, no body for him.

And what did he have us do? I can scarcely remember that either. He had us march. He sent us to do his bidding. As he did so, I saw that he saw that I could see him; that even though my body was still under his control, that my sensations had somehow woken up. He brought me back into a deep sleep, and I lost the ability to remember anything at all.

I felt like I had barely slept at all. My mind rushed trying to remember it all yet the air of my memory is quickly evaporating. How was I going to go about my day today? How would I survive work? Exhausted, I feel like I can barely move, even though I just woke up. If I had too many of these restless nights, I would have to see a sleep doctor.

Who was he? I couldn’t get this thought out of my mind. My thoughts felt like ropes that I pulled and pulled until they faded away into nothing. Whoever he was, I did not like him.

I got up and followed the rhythm I had always known to get ready for the day. I was on autopilot, too tired to do anything else. Eventually, I skated out the door, and the dream just remained as a faint feeling. I could not decipher any details. When I thought back, I only felt a looming terror washes over me. My body convulsed with anticipation. I felt the sensation of standing, of marching, of someone staring down at me. Nothing more.

Is the T-Rex a deux machina at the end of the first movie: A Defense

A fearsome beast or a deux machina savior?

I have heard others bemoan how the T-Rex shows up randomly at the very end of the first Jurassic Park movie right when the raptors have them cornered. They call her a deux machina, that is a common trope in movies where some big force inescapably arrives at the last moment and saves the day for the characters.

Whether something is a deux machina is usually subjective, generally labeling something as a “deux machina” if it goes against their expectations for the story and its themes and thus takes them out of the story. What I find interesting about calling the T-Rex a deux machina is that it really demonstrates the tensions between many viewers’ expectations of the movie as an action film and the fact that Jurassic Park is a really horror film. Based on this, it’s actually the second deux machina that no one talks about that I think breaks the story.

The major theme of the first Jurassic Park movie is that life/nature always finds a way. Life goes on because individual organisms are able to take advantage of lucky opportunities/breaks that happen to come their way to survive. The ability for particular species to adapt emerges out of this. Through this, life itself continues on, expanding beyond any boundary humans may set for it. For example, being able to make sex changes because of the frog DNA used to make them was a lucky break that allowed the dinosaurs to survive, and the electric outage was another that the T-Rex took advantage of to remake its world.

With this theme in mind, the characters spend the final act of the movie desperately trying to survive the coming advance of life/nature, specifically the raptors hunting them. The central question is whether they can use their human ingenuity and tools to stop this advancement, and the answer is no. No matter what they do (using a gun, locking the door, escaping through the vent, etc.), the raptors still continue to surround them. It’s all over. That’s when the T-rex comes in, causing the raptors to fight the T-rex, allowing the main cast of characters to escape.

This moment demonstrates the movie’s central theme about nature. Can they use their ingenuity, skills, and technology as humans to survive against nature’s ascension? No, they are ultimately subject to the whims of nature for their very survival. This conclusion to the fight illustrates the final dominance of nature over humanity. The sudden lucky break the T-Rex presents still reinforces this theme. Their only hope for survival lies in a lucky break presented by nature that they must take advantage of, and they do, using it to flee. Just like every other species, their only hope for survival lies in taking advantage of a lucky break.

This differs from regular deux machinas. A typical deux machina is a problem because it undermines the story’s themes by providing lucky coincidences or some overly powerful saving character, technology, or other entity as the reason the characters succeed. Did love save the day, or the grit of persevering, or whatever other central theme the story is based on? No, it was the divine superhero who showed up out of nowhere and fixed the problem. Whether the T-Rex came or not, they are completely subject to nature in that final moment. Thus, surviving based on a lucky draw from nature only reinforces that theme.

The deux machina in the next scene is the bigger problem, since it undermines the theme: the wealthy billionaire somehow arrives outside, with no dinosaurs around, ready with a helicopter to whisk them away to safety. (And for that matter, if he was out there in a car, why didn’t the T-Rex eat him and Malcom in an open convertible before coming into the building? They were easier prey presumably right where the T-Rex was right before.)

The implication of the theme of being subject to the whims of nature is that sure, they survived a few more moments, but they are forever trapped by this new emerging world. The dinosaurs are taking over the island, and outside there are endless more threats for them, whether that be other raptors or some other threat. The best they can hope for are lucky breaks, but you can’t expect that each time. But instead, the billionaire arrives and magically whisks away to the safe human world far away from this nightmare.

This gets to the heart of the tension as to what genre this movie is. In the US, people often categorize Jurassic Park as an action movie, and action as a genre tends to run counter to fatalistic themes. Action movies, at their core, center on how humans can develop and use their skills to surmount improbable odds and achieve success. This makes them inherently achievement-oriented, with viewers expecting the main characters to use their grit and skills to win the day. Hence, in such movies, a coincidence or lucky break being what causes success undermines the key theme of action as a genre and hence a deux machina.

Although officially classified as an action movie, Jurassic Park opposes this common theme of action movies. I would categorize it a horror film, which tend to explore how death is all around us. In the movie, in addition to being awe-inspiring, the natural world produces death. In these movies, survival is the key, but using one’s skills to achieve survival is always how characters survive depending on the film’s themes.

This reflects one of the major tensions in the movie. It wants to show how we should both marvel and fear nature, but it also wants to give regular people good clean fun. Obviously, it would not be as graphic as some horror films can be given that it was intended to be a family film. That’s fine, but horror films can still explore fatalistic themes in a child-friendly way (just look at the number of horror stories written for children).

Instead, though, we see the characters whisked off to safety. They wanted viewers to both feel the horror that the characters are now victims of the new natural world they accidentally unleashed but still receive the action-movie catharsis of seeing characters survive this apocalypse and literally fly into the sunset. These contradict each other and make the viewer feel cheated.

Most viewers blame the T-Rex as the source because they expect the characters will come up with a way to get out of their mess like a typical action hero. But if after the T-Rex accidently saves them, the group were still trapped in this hostile world instead of having the cavalry arrive to pick them up, viewers’ expectations based on action films would be firmly pulled out from underneath them, and they would have to confront the key theme that they are really subject to the whims of nature.

Ghosts at the Window (Short Story)

As she was drifting off to sleep, she heard the tap on her window. It jolted her awake. At first she thought it was just a tree swaying against the glass, but then she realized, “No, someone was tapping on her window.”

She knew not to look. The ghost is looking for a soul. If she gets up to examine what it is, it’ll know she was there. The best thing to do is to lay still. Not to even open her eyes. If she could lie perfectly still, it would be able to tell there was a living person in this room.

Tap tap tap. Why did it stay here so long? She remembered. The last resident of this home was fascinated with the world of the ghosts and would talk with them, until eventually getting sucked into their realm forever more. The ghost must have frequently come to visit her at night.

The ghost let out a moan sounding just like the howling wind. It was calling for her friend. The ghost must have done this every night since she left. Did it not know that she was in her world now? Why was it looking for her here? Maybe it was returning to this familiar spot, hoping that she could find another participant there to hang out with.

If so, what was the ghost like as a companion? Some learned a lot from the ghosts, reporting that the ghosts gave them a different perspective on the cosmos around them. Others grew paler and paler from the encounters until they too roamed the streets at night looking for new souls.

She did not care to learn about these ghosts. It was too risky. Instead, she lied there with her eyes closed as other worlds knocked on her window, hoping it would all go away soon.

The Ghost among the Banana Trees (A Short Story)

Hello, let me tell you my story. I think many don’t understand how and why I live my afterlife in this forest. Many don’t really seem to understand the forest either or the things that live in it at all for that matter.

I am here to respect my community. There is little left of it, so I cherish what remains. My community was once the center of this place, full of families and their homes, animals, and markets. That was over a hundred years ago. Now, all that is left are the trees. I can still hear the whisper of my kin from the banana trees. That’s why I live in these trees.

History has taken much from us, but time can do that. Society around us changes. Now, Thailand is a country, whatever that means, and people in this area have moved around quite a bit, preferring to build their cities where their lines of stone that they call “roads” meet rather than in the networks that existed in my time. Sure, whatever, but I will not forget this village tucked into what is now a forest.

As I tend to my trees, nearby men almost intrude me with their existence. What fantasies do they conjure in their minds when they feel my presence? I notice their desire and energy gives me more power and reality. I prefer the invisibility; what need do I have from you living humans? Nevertheless, I have never felt as eyed as when men hike through my forest.

It reminds me how the attention the King and those court officials would give me when I was alive. When the Thai king brought me to his palace, his newest wife, oh you wouldn’t believe their stares. His many male officials took one look at my beauty and just assumed I was a slut, sleeping my way to the top. Why else would a woman enter their court?

My community, that was why I was there. My community were the ones who sent me. When they noticed that the king had taken an eye to me, I didn’t even want to go, but they said I could be the community’s ambassador, their hope. They said I could advocate on the community’s behalf at the court. The Thai Kingdom had spent too long trying to ravish our area. Standing on the edge of its borders, his army came after us whenever he wanted to prove his glory through war. The buffer between him and the enemy kingdom, he would slowly absorb us all, one village at a time, squares to capture in his diplomatic chessboard. They convinced me that it would be best for our community for me to go, the marriage might convince him to think twice before sacking us again.

But, the court officials practically came after me from day one. I had some allies, but many took one look at me and seemed to become my sworn enemies. Some opposed my community and wanted to keep it down; I think others were just jealous of how my beauty seemed to give me power. They made up some charge of adultery to get rid of me, finding some guy they could claim I slept with. I did have one lover who kept me warm from the chilling fires of political intrigue, but it was not who they accused me of loving. I was clever enough not to get caught with my actual lover. No, they picked someone who they also wanted to execute, a way to kill two birds with one stone.

I find the big struggles that living humans put themselves through perplexing. Over the years of my afterlife, I have realized how pointless it is. Men most of all. They seem to be caught up in grand narratives of gain and glory. They still do so now. All I see in this modern world is destructive fire, coming to consume my community from all sides. Deforestation, pollution, your society seems almost designed to destroy all I hold most dear. I guess that is how the world works; you can only build your world on the ashes of other worlds’ pasts. But I will keep my coal burning as long as I can. Then, I too will splinter, becoming the seed of whatever comes next.

Likewise, many Thai men seem to become entranced by me when they see me. They notice my beauty and my traditional green dress and project their fantasy for what they consider the simpler, Thai “traditional woman.” Many men in your current world seem to live what they consider unsuccessful lives. I am their solution, their simpler times. If they want to come live with me, to live out this fantasy, I tolerate it. That is their choice. I have more important things to think about to keep my community going than their little mortal lives.

I know others say that I entrap these men in a spell, keep them as a type of prisoner, and make them forget their past lives. I do nothing of the sort. Most men are initially drawn by my beauty, and those who stay do so because they see in me a beauty of Thailand’s past, or what they consider to be Thailand’s past. It’s not my fault if some get lost in their nostalgic world and slowly forget the present.

I am still largely indifferent to the ways of men, after seeing how destructive they can be, but I still enjoy sex with the men who join me. Well, at least with some of them. What the living don’t know about me is that I have multiple banana trees in the forest with multiple men, and you wouldn’t believe how easy it is to hide that fact. Some men are more considerate than others, but for most, they are not used to thinking outside their own world. All I need to do is dote on them. A few minutes of pampering a day, and they assume I will serve them always. Then I can leave for another home with another guy and do the same thing, and neither is the wiser.

Over time, I can slowly pull back my devotion, and they will start doting on me instead. Many men are not used to thinking beyond their quests, their desires, or their cravings enough to ask too many questions about what I am actually up to. They aren’t used to thinking of me as an independent person. To them, I represent the beauty of a bygone past, or what they think the past was like, when women supposedly quietly honored and served their husbands. I am the sense of success that they felt they could never get in the cruel world around them given their lowly positions. I can use this to my advantage.

Some might consider me exploitative, even predatory, but I’m not. They are like pets to me. Dogs live far shorter lives and possess neither as much wisdom or intelligence as humans, but humans still keep them around for their own amusement and affection. They give the dogs great lives in their care. Just like that, a regular human is far younger, less wise, and less mature, and unless they become a centuries-old ghost like me, has no real chance of catching up. I give them a great life, full of a sense of pride and pleasure, removed from the troubles of normal life that the current world throws at them. The mature ones with enough, without the insecurity and self-absorption eventually desire to escape, figuring out the ultimate emptiness of what I’m offering them. In time, they leave. Their choice, I don’t confine them against their will. To the others, life within my care seems to be what they want, so I give it to them. Little do they know that their energy and desire help preserve the trees they live in.

Staring Back (A Short Story)

He had a long day at work, and he drove home exhausted, finally free to let his mind unwind. He looked out into the suburban expanse before him, full of businesses, parks with kids playing, and a few uncultivated fields. That’s where he first saw it. It was a skinny, pale figure, maybe six and a half feet tall, in a field about 50 yards away. It seemed to just stand there looking towards him. What a strange scarecrow, he thought? He felt momentarily gripped by its wilting look making him think about how life slowly erodes us just like erosion conquers hillsides over the centuries. Then his mind moved on to other things.

He felt weird when he saw it again during his drive a few days later. This time it was in the small woods next to someone’s suburban property, only 20 yards away. At this distance, he could get a better look at it. Like before, it was skinny, and pale, but he could not tell its gender. It just stared at him. Its expression was like that of curiosity that had slowly wilted away into a tired indifference. What was it doing, and how did it get here?

He would frequently see it on his drives home from work, sometimes multiple times. He always sensed that it was always there, but he only really noticed it when his mind was tired, bored, or otherwise wandering. He wasn’t sure why his mind would drift towards the figure. All he knew was that when he was busy, he didn’t think about or see it. But when he took a break, out there in the grass or by a tree somewhere, it was, staring right back at him with its expressionless face. Just thinking about it made him feel exhausted.

He didn’t tell his friends or family about it for fear that they would think he was crazy. Deep down, he couldn’t shake his own fear that he was going crazy, and he assumed if he told others, they would write him off as such. He even felt too ashamed to think about it and would do all he could to remove it from his mind.

One Saturday, he felt it all day. He tried to fill his day with activities like chores, striking conversations with random strangers he met, all in the hope that he could distract himself from knowing that the figure was there with him.

That night, when he went to bed, he couldn’t stop thinking about it. He glanced out the window and saw it there in the backyard staring up at him, a stone’s throw away. He slammed the curtains shut, and all the other curtains in his house. But that didn’t matter. He couldn’t sleep, knowing it was out there. He finally decided to open his bedroom window and confront it.

“What do you want?” he shouted. No response. He desperately continued shouting, his demands transitioning into begging, “What are you, and what do you want with me? Why do you keep following me?” But it said nothing. It just stared back at him with the same indifferent, lethargic expression it always has.

Furious, he finally decided enough is enough. He went outside to attack it. He rushed right up to it, but each step he took towards it, it seemed to move away. Floating above the ground, it slid backwards maintaining the same distance of about 20 feet from him. He chased it down the street in the middle of the night. It could not go through objects, opting to go around cars, poles, and other obstructions with ease, as it continued to stare at him. Finally, he had it trapped in a street with a deadend, but it somehow disappeared behind the fence of a house, where he was unable to follow. He went home defeated.

He was never able to elude the figure. As he tried to live his life, some days he saw it only once; others multiple times. He couldn’t avoid thinking about it, whenever he went outside, he wondered whether he would see it in the background somewhere, and whenever he was indoors, he wondered whether it was watching him. Slowly, he became too exhausted to handle many of his daily activities. He stopped wanting to see friends and family, only doing the bare minimum at work. Others told him he looked tired and indifferent, and one day he looked in the mirror only to realize that other than several wrinkles from the stress, his exhausted face looked just like that of the figure.

Dust to Dust: Tales of an Interplanetary Lawn Serviceman (A Short Story)

He had passed the interview and now had a job. On the rocket ship, his mind wandered as he sped through space. His other colleagues weren’t really talking, so he was alone with his thoughts. He was glad to finally find work. Now he could pay his bills and afford school for his daughter.

He was an Interplanetary Lawn Serviceman. Or, that was the job title they had given them. Some wealthier person in her nice home on a distant planet had hired them to cut her lawn and trim her hedges. Why did she need to fly them several millions of kilometers away just to do that? He didn’t really care enough to think about that. He was just glad he was going to get a paycheck.

As they entered the planet’s atmosphere, he was struck by how large its sun was from here. This planet must have had a much closer orbit than his. He had never seen anything like it. It covered the three quarters of the sky in a big radiating ball of yellow.

They landed on the surface and prepared to dock. He immediately felt the heat. Covered in a thick suit, the several thousand degrees only felt like a 100 or 110 F, like he was sitting on a tanning bed, but that was still very hot for his body.

In front of him was a large home amidst a block of identical rows. It looked like all the others he’d expect from the suburbs of his home planet. A large panel house with a garage, and a little street connecting it to the other homes in the small neighborhood. A small patio with a few plants desperately clinging to life sat there. In the back was a nearly impeccable green lawn, an almost perfect square. Kept nicely despite subtle coats of brownish planetary dust.

In the horizon lay a barren hellscape of dust and sand. Some of it had melted in the heat, leading to small streams of molten sand flowing into molten lakes. Little sand dunes had carved themselves along these little molten streams. The shifting sands ended harshly at the property line where her lawn started, which, except for little sprinklings of dust, formed an impeccable boundary between their little suburban community and the planet’s lifeless austerity. The suburban town looked like an oasis of order within the desolate planet.

His manager motioned to get to work. His one colleague started mowing the lawn, while another took care of the hedges and plants on the patio to try to keep them alive. He took the special blower they gave him and blew the planetary dust back into the wasteland.

After a few minutes of this meditative work, all the dust he so meticulously blew off her lawn flew into the great beyond, falling a lava stream. At the edge of the property, he started to feel the same wind that must have swept the dust up in the first place, trying to suck him out as well.

Suddenly a windstorm appeared on the horizon in front of them: a wall of brown dust rushing straight towards them. His manager was sounding the warning for them to get into the rocket ship as soon as possible. He managed to turn around, but he could barely move. He pleaded as the ship boarded and took off without him. Unable to take any steps towards it.

Then suddenly the wind flipped in the other direction. The vortex had gotten closer. It launched him straight towards the house. The rocket ship taking off spun out of control in this whirlwind, careening into the horizon. Fate unknown.

He crashed into a big glass window, clearly built sturdy enough to enable the residents to look out at the planet’s beautiful barren landscape even during a fierce storm. He tried knocking on the window, desperate to get his crew’s attention, but the wind switched directions again, slamming him into the window. He was trapped. Where were they? He managed to move his hand along the window towards the nearby door, but before he could reach it, an extra strong blast of wind shattered the glass beneath him. His body forced through the window and landed harshly against the wall on the couch.

His hand was broken, but magically his suit was fine. This was the most important part because any exposure of the elements to his skin would instantly kill him. He climbed against the wind to round the corner of the hallway, but once he entered the hallway, the wind knocked him over and right into the wall in the bedroom.

That’s where he saw her. The owner, lying there dead on the bed. She must have died in her sleep, and judging by the age of the corpse, it must have been a months ago.

Why were they servicing a dead lady’s lawn? He didn’t have much time to think about that, though, as the house collapsed above him. Finally and now the wind crumpled its foundations.

Why were they servicing a dead lady’s lawn? He didn’t have much time to think about that, though, as the house collapsed above him. The storm had punctured the home’s counterpressure system against storms like this, and now the harsh wind crumpled its foundations.

The accountant skimmed through her report. There was an unforeseen weather event. The rocket ship, crew, and equipment were all destroyed. The potential for this happening was nothing the company hadn’t already accounted for and insured. The filing for it was pretty routine.

The house had been destroyed, however. This was more complicated. They now had to contact the owner to try to see whether she would like a change in service. After many attempts to reach her, she had not responded. The latest crew was sent to knock on her door and ask her in-person. Her account still had autopay, set up to her bank and brokerage account, so they would supply a service to as long as she continued to pay.

She could never know this, but she wondered, if something happened to the lady, how much interest was accruing from her stock portfolio in this account. Depending on how much dividends she got in her portfolio, the lady probably could fund the considerable money for these lawn service fees in perpetuity.

The accountant noticed a few reports from this planet: it seemed to be getting hotter the weather more extreme. She would log this in the book for her manager to review. She had already done it a few times with the other cases. She knew he was busy, though; he would get to it when he could. If the planet gets too close to the sun, their insurance will no longer cover the trips given the increased risk associated with extreme weather, and they will have to withdraw their service. Usually there is a lag of several months, but eventually their insurance figures out what is happening, makes a new risk assessment, and demands they pull the service to the planet. That forces her manager to finally act.

Meanwhile, she looked at the rocket ships planning to go out in the coming weeks. Each one for a different lawn. Would they have been more efficient for the company if they pulled the requests together into one longer visit? Probably, but the cost to have them come on their chosen day according to their schedule ultimately passes to the owners of the homes, and they don’t seem to mind. The company not only gets more revenue from single trips like this and can use that to hire more lawn service workers and build more rocket ships. This leads to its stock price going up. She wonders, though, what it would be like to be on one of these ships.

(If you would like to read more short stories, you can browse them here.)