Rather, it is playing on that concept of discovery of the unknown
But why must we jump into our hole? Why aren’t these people driven to drop cell-phones into the hole and record what happens inside?
Because if you read the whole story you find out that the people whose holes these were did something horrific to deserve this fate over and over again. So their compulsion stems from an external source outside of their control.
I’m not against Karma in stories. Mind you, I don’t believe in Karma, but I accept it as a storytelling mechanism. But things with karma don’t get more horrific, if anything, it lessens the horror because “I’m a good person, so that won’t happen to me”. Innocent people dying in horrible ways is more horrific, at least to me.
But as I said before, horror is subjective. I’ve given this particular story a lot of thought and… it just doesn’t scare me. And no matter how much I ponder on it, I can’t make the story scare me. I don’t know if its my personal experiences or something. But it just doesn’t work for me.
Stories ultimately are a way for the author to try to connect with the audience.
If there’s a connection here you feel with the author, that’s real. But all I’m saying is that this story, despite me reading it in its entirety, failed to connect with me.
That’s fine. Horror is always subjective. But throughout the entire horror here, I just couldn’t get around the fact that this magical compulsion-mechanism could have been solved through much less… horrifying… means? Again, cellphone on a long string. Or whatever. If they really wanted to “explore” the hole (and yes, I seem to recall that “feeling of exploration” being suggested in the story).
