“You’ve just been through the Twilight Zone,” says Rod Serling before each episode of The Twilight Zone. A show that leaves its viewers in a macabre state. Instead of drawing a conclusion like most shows, the series usually ends mysteriously. It uses similar elements to other short half-hour shows, but does it in a different way. This extravagant style is also found in literature, more particularly in short stories. Even though other short stories use the same literary devices, HP Lovecraft's "The Beast in the Cave" is particularly mysterious because of the story's suspenseful intrigue, compelling diction, and, most importantly, eclipsing theme. , HP Lovecraft develops a suspenseful plot in order to create tension throughout the story that inevitably leaves the reader unsettled and the story hanging. The plot itself seems simple, but at the same time it is complicated. Victoria Nelson explains how Lovecraft's stories tease the reader "with the tantalizing prospect of complete loss of control, possession, or engulfment, while at the same time remaining safe within the framework of a formalized, almost ritualized narrative ". With “The Beast in the Cave,” the protagonist only faces one conflict throughout the story, making it a simple plot; however, the predicament he finds himself in also provides the complexity and tension that Lovecraft creates in other stories. 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 "to die of starvation would constitute [his] ultimate fate" (1). Readers sense the sense of despair the man feels, and this is where tensions begin to rise. Alt...... middle of paper ......s. Design215 Inc., 2005-2011. Internet. December 10, 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, HP. “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. Internet. 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. Internet. December 10. 2011. .