David wants to leave the house on Shenker Road. He tries, but it calls him back. If he ignores it then the house just tries harder to reclaim him. Something inside of him won't let David just walk away, either. What is it that drives him back through that door time after time?
Knowing his history with the house, why would Melissa ever steer him back into that abyss in the first place?
Why do characters in horror stories always make such poor decisions?!?
We have to look no further than any given newscast to see a myriad of people being arrested and locked away as a result of their poor decision making skills. I think that it's extremely easy for people on the outside to criticize or 'Monday Morning Quarterback' the decisions that people make in stories because they don't fully understand what someone who is desperate, broken, hopeless is capable of rationalizing. Someone who is in that dire of a situation tends to become singularly focused on a goal and, not only ignores more rational means of attaining the goal, is completely unaware of such a possibility. The human psyche is hardwired with several survival mechanisms. A fine example is the fight or flight response. If cornered, an animal (yes, at the end of the day humans are animals driven by instinct) will either lash out at an aggressor or run like heck away from such threat. It doesn't consider the other possibilities such as trickery or submissiveness in the face of danger. There is simply a need to attack or escape.
Teens in a horror movie will run to a basement and hide rather than run screaming out into the night because there is an instinctive safety in finding the darkest, least explored area to hide in. The brain recognizes that it is not a well traveled area and the mind, in panic, finds comfort in having two walls behind it to brace for an impending attack. Running out into the open makes you an open target, like a gazelle on the open Serengeti. It's easy to sit back and say "JUST RUN OUT OF THERE!" without realizing that, if faced with a similar situation, your body would probably flip to autopilot and do the exact same thing that exasperates you when a fictional character does it.
I was really conscious of reactionary behavior like that in my book. David isn't prone to panic, but he definitely has a fight reaction, versus flight. He views the only way out as being through his target rather than around it. There are other forces in David's head, and he is even aware of them, but can't bring himself to quite break completely free of it. Does he make poor decisions? Oh, yes - many. Are they decisions that any of us might also make under similar duress? You may surprise yourself.
Give it a free read on Kindle Unlimited and ask yourself, what would you do in David Bennett's shoes?
The Morbid Fascinations of David Bennett.
https://www.amazon.com/Morbid-Fascinations-David-Bennett-ebook/dp/B07ZG4N2XB
No comments:
Post a Comment