Dark Story Discussion 1/10/08: "Hole" by Dr Mabeuse

[jomar]

One of the interesting things, jomar, is that you might have had a rich enough enovironment where you didn't have to resort to the Z-axis in your quest for freedom. If you had woods and trees and streams then you had it made.

I grew up in the city, and our hole-digging actually took place in vacant lots or on construction sites where there was like nothing else to do. But there's always the ground, and there's always down. You can always dig a hole. Wherever you go, the ground is always right there. We were like literally trying to dig our way to some kind of freedom.

That's a good point. I had lots of outlets for my boyness. I grew up in the suburbs, but at a time when it hadn't become overpopulated with Starbucks and McMansions and we could safely roam around.

 

[Penelope Street]

Girls weren't allowed there; when they came by, we stopped digging and even sometimes covered up the hole. In fact, now that I think of it, the hole was quite clearly a vaginal symbol! My God! We even stuffed it full of prairie grass and lit fires in it and jumped through it! I mean, how much more symbolic can you get? We were regular little savages! Trying to comes to terms with femininity.

While setting fire to that most holy of effigies certainly seems savage, it also sounds a lot like kids just playing with matches after digging grew tedious.

I grew up in the city, and our hole-digging actually took place in vacant lots or on construction sites where there was like nothing else to do. But there's always the ground, and there's always down. You can always dig a hole. Wherever you go, the ground is always right there. We were like literally trying to dig our way to some kind of freedom.

If boyhood digging is really a quest for freedom, why isn't the pursuit of freedom the theme of the story?

 

[manyeyedhydra]

So it is rape. What the boys do to the earth is rape and what Ray does to Jill is rape. The vein and the heart are symbols saying, "Don't do this to me, I'm alive." The goo in the vein is a red herring and shouldn't be there, probably. But I'm afraid the story is saying that life is rape, and that's not what I wanted to say.

There's a lot of symbolism in that direction. The vein is damaged by the boy's digging. They see it wither and die over a time period. Maybe they try to cover it up or repair it.

Ray could be the abusive new boyfriend for Jill, or just callously after her purely for sex. You could show the detrimental affect of the relationship on Jill over the same time as the boys are seeing the wonderful thing they found in the back garden slowly die.

The adults wouldn't even need to go near the hole. You could run the two strands in parallel.

It wouldn't be a particularly jolly tale though.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

While setting fire to that most holy of effigies certainly seems savage, it also sounds a lot like kids just playing with matches after digging grew tedious.

Or as Freud said, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

Oh, I'm sure that's what it was, but why mess with my fun?

You can look at life as things meaning no more than what they are, and certainly there's enough of life that's like that. But things that stick in your mind usually stick there because they're more than just what they appear to be. They have emotional connotations that something inside us tells us is important, and much of our life is spent trying to identify these events and understand them.

Playing with symbols is an intoxicating game. Had it been night time, I'm sure we would have put the fire out be pissing on it too.

If boyhood digging is really a quest for freedom, why isn't the pursuit of freedom the theme of the story?

Because it isn't "just". It's about manhood and sex and secrets and violation and being boys and making messes and all that stuff.

 

[Black Tulip]

There's a lot of symbolism in that direction. The vein is damaged by the boy's digging. They see it wither and die over a time period. Maybe they try to cover it up or repair it.

Ray could be the abusive new boyfriend for Jill, or just callously after her purely for sex. You could show the detrimental affect of the relationship on Jill over the same time as the boys are seeing the wonderful thing they found in the back garden slowly die.

The adults wouldn't even need to go near the hole. You could run the two strands in parallel.

It wouldn't be a particularly jolly tale though.

I like that thought. Perhaps not what this story is about, but an interesting idea.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

There's a lot of symbolism in that direction. The vein is damaged by the boy's digging. They see it wither and die over a time period. Maybe they try to cover it up or repair it.

Ray could be the abusive new boyfriend for Jill, or just callously after her purely for sex. You could show the detrimental affect of the relationship on Jill over the same time as the boys are seeing the wonderful thing they found in the back garden slowly die.

The adults wouldn't even need to go near the hole. You could run the two strands in parallel.

It wouldn't be a particularly jolly tale though.

No, that's a great idea, and in the version that Verdad reminded me of, this is very close to what I was thinking. That's a very Ray Bradbury-ish type story, and I've lately come to appreciate how big an influence he was on me as I was growing up, especially in horror-fantasy. This whole set-up is very Bradburian--the windy Midwestern night, the weird body part in the earth, the children and the adults. I should probably be ashamed.

What Bradbury knew before anyone is that kids already live in a parallel, magical universe where there might very well be hearts in the earth or monsters in trees, and of course they wouldn't tell grown-ups about them, but these things would be affected by the grown-ups' actions since they're projections of the kids' emotional states.

As I imagined it, the story would happen on two levels: the kids' world and the grownups' world. The kids (including Billy's younger sister, who he protects) find this heart and don't know what to make of it but it obviously symbolizes their anxiety over Billy's mom's upcoming sexual liaison with Ray. They sneak out to the hole that night as Jill & Ray are getting drunk and witness this horrible writhing and shuddering of the vein and the heart and have to run away, but the sex in the house actually resolved itself and Ray and Jill love each other, and when the kids come back to the hole, the crisis is over and the heart is gone, or turns out to have been a root after all.

I wanted something darker than this though. I really wanted to tap into the darker urges of sex, the things that make people bite and scratch when they make love; that feeling that you could "love someone to death" and what that's all about.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

Afterword

I think we're getting to the end here, though if you have more suggestions or critiques, I'm certainly all ears, but this might be a good place for a summing up.

First I'd just like to give my sincere thanks to all who've taken the time and effort to read and comment. You've given me some excellent suggestions and ways to approach this problem, and it's always a pleasure to see the way we work and how we work as writers, how our minds operate.

My original plea for help in asking for help in finding a story to go with the initial image of the boys uncovering a vein in the earth turns out to have been disingenuous. I didn't realize it when I started this thread, but I'm trying to do a specific kind of horror kind of horror here. Despite the surrealism, the horror this story aims to tap into is real: it's a horrific, depersonalized view of human sexuality where a man is a shovel and a woman is a hole and love-making has all the tenderness of an excavation.

The images I was trying to conflate and merge are the boys digging a hole in the earth and Ray shoving his cock into Jill's ass. Round mother earth and Jill on her knees; the feel of the shovel against one's arms as you dig and the feel of her rectum against his cock as he shoves. The kind of unconscious anticipatory horror of what you're going to find when you dig and what you're going to find when you fuck.

If I've failed anywhere along this trail of linked metaphors, then I've failed totally. I mean, I know I've screwed up Ray's speeches and a bunch of other stuff in the story, but that's the metaphorical backbone of the story. That's what I want people to take away from this story: that association of digging and sex and definite unease.

So once again, thank you all. I really appreciate this,

--Zoot

 

[bluebell]

Late to the excavation

I feel a little reluctant to share my thoughts because I can't decide if they sound rude, obnoxious, uppity, or all of the above. Still, I do want to share because I really enjoyed it. Advance apologies if this comes across as any of those things.
I think I'll share with the honesty button on full volume.

"Hole" was one of the only Halloween contest entries that I read last year (time constraints). I admit, I've undergone a serious change in thought between that time and now, as I re-read it.

I was mildly fascinated and almost sick to my stomach (more rounds of apologies) when I read it for the first time in October. I barely made it to the end, and when I got there I remember thinking, "What in the hell was all that about? And where's the ending?"
So I strove to put it out of my mind, though the reasoning was just about the images, it had nothing directly to do with the writing.
Silly me. I know myself better than that. I know when something ruffles me that much and that strongly up front, my feelings about it will most certainly change.

I never forgot it. To the time when I saw it was up for discussion here I could see that vein pulsing during the most random moments. I could literally feel what it would have been like to be awake that night in the windy weather, discovering something completely surreal that, by all accounts, shouldn't even exist to freak you out.

So when I re-read the story, I was a little weirded out, just in anticipation.

And it's utterly different for me. I mean, the plot was the same and everything I remembered was still there in all its grotesque technicolor, but maybe the way I read it was different.
I think it's fabulous.
Perhaps it could use some smoothing here or there, but I didn't read it and feel that I'd fallen off a precipice at the end, or that as a reader I'd been gypped of a plot arc.

I think the primary conflict with this story is that it's a powder keg of image and emotion, but because those things don't always translate into a line of action, it's easy to mistake it for a flop. Or think that it's not going anywhere.
So, maybe it isn't going anywhere. Maybe that's not the point at all.
I think one of the great (but rewarding) risks of a story like this is that both the writer and the reader must be brave enough to take a little more time, a little more care with minutiae. It's easy to dismiss something that doesn't immediately cleave to our mind's eye. We might not even notice we're doing it.
And this story, I think, is like that. The small things become the really important things, the axis of the action.

Maybe some of the unresolved feelings about what the story lacks have to do with how we've been trained over time to read/see/think. The way we choose what movies to watch and which books to read. Not so closely anymore, not in so much precious detail. (Not necessarily the Dickensian kind, btw.)
It's become primarily a linear equation, with character x action + plot equalling payoff, and thus, satisfaction.

Sure, there was a vein in the ground. There was a heart. It was weird, and in the light of day it so would not have made sense. It doesn't fit into everyday life. It doesn't fit into ordinary "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" kinds of actions, but it sure does fit into the wiggle spaces of what makes that stuff so damned creepy for us.
It seemed to be a greater, more encompassing horror rather than the localized horror of a town becoming infested with rabid, blood-sucking chipmunks that can only be vaporized when sprayed by the semen of Himalayan mountain goats. A life horror. The kind of horror that clutches your heart when you sit down to honestly ponder "forever" and what that means. The sort of horror that threatens your entire being, your whole mind, and takes you with it. It needed to be something so odd and disturbing and not of everyday life in order to make a point.

I felt like some of it was about saturation. The consciousness that slaps you when you've masturbated entirely too much and you feel like a dirty person and you're disgusted with yourself for letting it become so important that you have an orgasm (or ten). You feel almost sick at your behavior and yet you know that given the chance you would do it again, and will. The gritty nature of humanity, which makes us uncomfortable but is still beautiful in its raw edges.
Basically, what you said here:

We're all aware of this link. We all talk about sex being "dirty" and we get off on it. Sex is beautiful, of course, but it also has its coarse and vulgar side, its shameful, abject side that scares and attracts us, and I think I came close to mining it in a pretty pure form here. Well, maybe not close, but I made a start. So this is more than a Halloween story to me. This is a story I'd keep and work on, This one's important. There's something about digging a hole that makes people stop and look, even today in big cities. It's primal, archetypal, and (in my opinion) it's sexual, at least on a subconscious level, so this story matters to me and it bothers me a lot that I can't get it right. It wants to be said. It haunts me.

Miscellany:

- I didn't really see Ray and Jill as white trash. I didn't see their characters as these deliciously well-rounded people, but on second reading I actually enjoyed that. The sex made more sense that way. I liked that they came across a little more thinly. It made a nice counterbalance to the heavy intangibles.

- I didn't think Ray was an asshole, either. I thought of him as just another man with just another woman you don't know, and you wouldn't expect him to say the things he said, but he did. Like, when someone you'd never expect "deep" thoughts from says something that astounds you in its clarity and poignance. Even if it's simple.
I think that's why the anal works, too. At our sexual core, we're still geometry. The feelings are what make it more. And the fact remains that for a lot of people, anal really is the height of sexual perversion. It becomes excitingly voyeuristic.

- A few of Ray's musings could be pruned, but I liked the unexpected dialogue that came to the surface. It might even be more effective if he didn't tip his cards so much while they're outside. He talks about people burying bad things in the ground outside and inside, too, which reinforces the point but also dilutes it. You could trim off what Ray says outside and play the scene to it's weirdest edge, with the dichotomies of crazy weather and the wild discoveries of the vein and heart versus everyday practicality. Then he and Jill go inside where his musings slowly build to a frenzy, culminating in the sex. Which is pretty much what you have now, but if you decided that was an interesting direction to go in you could shape it a little differently.

- When I read the story, I took the boys' plot to be some sort of misdirection. Like, their purpose was to start things off and become the springboard for the real issues. Most of the dialogue between them fit, but there were a few moments where I had a hard time matching up the playful banter and wondering whether boys really would say stuff like that. For example, the vein of minerals discussion. It made me wonder how old these boys were; old enough to know something like that?
Also, I completely forgot that the little sister existed. I understand that it made a cool, mysterious point for the boys to stop digging when she was around, but I'm not sure what she really added by being there. To that end, I wonder if it would make sense to not name the boys or their sister. To make them even more shadowy than Jill and Ray. Fill them with enough details to make sure the reader feels like they're real, keep the dialogue, but maybe don't sketch them out in so much practical coloring. It might create a different sort of platform for the Jill/Ray moments and make it feel more like a swell of event and emotion.
It could be a bad idea, but I thought I'd toss it out there.

- I thought the part with the boys getting freaked out about the spider eggs while getting the pick was great. I would be that way, too. I love when people capture details like that.

- The description of the heart bursting out of the ground was amazing.

...as she watched, the wall opposite where she was standing began to pulse too, then cracked, fissured, and slumped into the hole, revealing a massive heart-like object as big as a large pumpkin, glistening red and purple in the beam of the light, rivulets of dirt spilling from it.

...

The thing rolled slightly back and forth as it beat, pressing out a little nest for itself in the damp earth. It was traced with more veins and was definitely organic. The beats were very slow, almost relaxed, hypnotic, and it trembled after each beat. With each contraction, a thick, viscous bolus of the gruel slid within the vein and disappeared into the darkness at the other side of the hole.

God, that's brilliant. I almost can't stand it.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

My apologies, BlueBell7. I didn't see this till just now, and I'm very sorry about that, because if I could have paid someone to write the perfect review of this story for me, this would have been it. This is exactly the reaction I was hoping for - exactly - and oh, how amazingly good it feels to get it! Like hitting a bulls eye dead straight on!

When you said this:

It seemed to be a greater, more encompassing horror rather than the localized horror of a town becoming infested with rabid, blood-sucking chipmunks that can only be vaporized when sprayed by the semen of Himalayan mountain goats. A life horror. The kind of horror that clutches your heart when you sit down to honestly ponder "forever" and what that means. The sort of horror that threatens your entire being, your whole mind, and takes you with it. It needed to be something so odd and disturbing and not of everyday life in order to make a point.

Yes, yes. A thousand times yes! This was what I was trying to get at. The very weirdness-of-being horror. Existential horror. Sickness-unto-death horror. The kind of horror insane people feel when life is just more than they can bear. Sometimes, during moments of great mental strain or exhaustion, these mental states impinge on our normal waking consciousness and we get a glimpse of them, and once seen, we rarely forget what the world looked like at the time. A place of utter horror.

I have nothing to add to this review exceopt to thank you for understanding. It takes two to make a story work: an author and a reader who understands, and you made this story work for me. Thank you again.

--Zoot

 

[wishfulthinking]

Hi Doc,

I'm not going to be much help. After reading your story, I found out I am a porno prude. I was just too uncomfortable about having a substantial part of a story told through the eyes of a kid (I even had to go back and check if it was submitted under non-erotic) that I new would have sexual tones in it somewhere or other, and was thinking about sexual stuff.

So, briefly:

* I think you tried to hard to convince me, or push ideas at me, rather than let me discover it eg it was a vein, or eg that digging the earth was sexually perverted.

* I don't think you built up Ray's character enough for me to believe the guy wanting to get his rocks off in sleepy suburbia with a dead end job could also sprout philosophical stuff (well, the part about the job and surburbia might not be true, but there was a stretch for me). I write and drop things here and there about characters to build a picture rather than devote some space early on in the piece, and your story has made me question whether I give enough or the dangers of that way of approaching things, so thank you.

* the sex seemed to tame for the frame of mind he was in (perverted, sexual, earthy, dirty) and strange for her given her state of mind (kid comes before sex). But hey, I was hoping for something outdoorsy rather than the living room, so I'm a bit biased


But, incredibly atmospheric as always! And take my comments as being overly critical given that I couldn't get comfortable so I'm focusing more on the writing than the story without having a good balance.

I'll just have a quick read of what everyone else had to say now!

 

[bluebell]

<more good stuff>

Thanks, Zoot.
The gratification is just as overwhelming on my end. (If I can be so bold to declare it as such.)