“You just went to the Twilight Zone,” Rod Serling says before each episode of The Twilight Zone. A show that leaves viewers in a macabre state. Instead of drawing a conclusion like most shows, the show usually ends mysteriously. It uses similar elements to other short half-hour shows, but does it differently. This whimsical style is also present in literature, more specifically in short stories. Although other stories use the same literary devices, HP Lovecraft's "The Beast in the Cave" is uniquely mysterious because of its suspenseful plot, gripping diction, and, most importantly, disturbing theme. , HP Lovecraft develops a suspenseful plot to create tension throughout the story which inevitably leaves the reader disturbed and the story hanging. The plot itself seems simple, but at the same time it is complicated. Victoria Nelson talks about how Lovecraft's stories tease the reader "with the tantalizing prospect of total loss of control, of possession or engulfment, while at the same time remaining safely contained within the belt of a formalized, almost ritualized narrative." With “The Beast In The Cave”, the protagonist faces only one conflict throughout the story making it a simple plot; however, the predicament he finds himself in provides the complexity and tension that Lovecraft creates in other stories as well. The complexity of the plot begins when the reader is introduced to a man lost in a cave and his light source goes out and continues when the man realizes that “starving to death would be proof of [his] ultimate destiny” ( 1). Readers get a sense of the desperation the man feels, and this is where tensions begin to build. Alt...... middle of paper......s. Design215 Inc., 2005-2011. Network. 10 December 2011. .Fahy, Thomas Richard. The philosophy of horror. Lexington, KY: University of Kentucky, 2010. Print.King, Stephen. "Grandmother." Skeleton crew. New York: Signet, 1986. 464-494. Lovecraft, H.P. "The beast in the cave." HP Lovecraft's Transition: The Road to Madness. New York: Ballantine Books, 1996. 1-6. Nelson, Victoria. The Secret Life of Puppets. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 2001. WNC Database. Network. December 7, 2011. Tibbetts, John C. The Gothic Imagination: Conversations on Fantasy, Horror, and Science Fiction in the Media. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011. Print."The Use of Force--William Carlos Williams (1883-1963)." Classic short stories. B&L Associates, Bangor, Maine, United States, 1995-2007. Network. December 10. 2011. .