University of Texas at El Paso ScholarWorks@UTEP Open Access Theses & Dissertations 2020-01-01 Beyond the Crimson Door Erik J. Medina University of Texas at El Paso Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.utep.edu/open_etd Part of the Fine Arts Commons Recommended Citation Medina, Erik J., "Beyond the Crimson Door" (2020). Open Access Theses & Dissertations. 3003. https://scholarworks.utep.edu/open_etd/3003 This is brought to you for free and open access by ScholarWorks@UTEP. It has been accepted for inclusion in Open Access Theses & Dissertations by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks@UTEP. For more information, please contact [email protected]. BEYOND THE CRIMSON DOOR ERIK MEDINA Master’s Program in Creative Writing APPROVED: __________________________________ Daniel Chacon, Ph.D., Chair __________________________________ Paula Cucurella __________________________________ Ilana Lapid _____________________________________ Stephen Crites, Ph.D Dean of the Graduate School BEYOND THE CRIMSON DOOR By ERIK JOSEPH MEDINA THESIS Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at El Paso in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of MASTER OF FINE ARTS Department of Creative Writing THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT EL PASO MAY 2020 ABSTRACT An alcoholic father is forced to raise his daughter after the death of his wife. He has been trying to get better with the help of his doctor, but things only seem to get worse when the nightmares he's been having slowly start to merge with his reality. Not knowing what is real and fake, his world is turned upside down when the nightmares begin to threaten his daughter. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ABSTRACT…………………………………………………………………………..………….iii TABLE OF CONTENTS…………………………………………………………………………iv PREFACE……………………………………………………………………………………...…vi PATTERNS CH1………………………………………………………………………………………………..3 CH2……………………………………………………………………………………………..…5 CH3.……………………………………………………………………………………………...11 CH4.…………………………………………………………………………………………...…14 CH5.……………………………………………………………………………………...………25 CH6.……………………………………………………………………………………...………29 CH7.……………………………………………………………………………………………...39 CH8.…………………………………………………………………………………………...…46 CH9.………………………………………………………………………………………...……56 CH10.………………………………………………………………………………………….…61 PILLS CH1.…………………………………………………………………………………………...…66 CH2.………………………………………………………………………………………...……73 CH3.……………………………………………………………………………………...………77 CH4.…………………………………………………………………………………………...…82 CH5.…………………………………………………………………………………….…..……89 iv CH6.………………………………………………………………………………………...……92 CH7.………………………………………………………………………………………...……96 CH8.…………………………………………………………………………………….………106 CH9.………………………………………………………………………………….…………108 CH10...………………………………………………………………………………………….112 THE CABIN CH1.…………………………………………………………………………………………….116 CH2.…………………………………………………………………………………………….118 CH3.…………………………………………………………………………………………….122 CH4.……………………………………………………………………………………….……139 CH5.……………………………………………………………………………………….……140 CH6.……………………………………………………………………………………….……149 CH7.………………………………………………………………………………………….…152 CH8.……………………………………………………………………………………….……161 CH9.…………………………………………………………………………………….………166 CH10.……………………………………………………………………………………...……169 WORKS CITED…………………………………………………………………………..……179 CURRICULUM VITA…………………………………………………………………………180 v Sleep and Writing: An Analysis of Beyond the Crimson Door The room is violently white as my eyes slowly adjust to the rays of bright light that assault them. I look into the farthest distance of the room and see a red speckle of color standing out in contrast to the whitespace around it. Even though the image in the distance makes me feel nervous, my first instinct is to head for the dot of red and see what it is that is calling me towards it. At first, I hesitate and take my time, trying to make sense of my location, and get some sort of semblance of familiarity. I then start pacing through the room. Before I can get even a few yards down the room, I am struck by what feels like a large thorn at the bottom of my feet. Looking down at the floor there is a branch that had made its way into the room with several small rose thorns strewn about it. I’m confused how it got there but at the same time, the arching vine seems as though it was meant to be there to spill my blood and cause me a pain that I can actually feel in the dream. Although the sensation is bizarre, I continue forward only to realize the speckle of red in front of me, still several yards away, is a large door. The door sends a fear inside myself that I cannot comprehend. Looking at the door, I see it as a way out of this strange room, so I begin to run. The closer I get towards the door, the more vines fly out of every which way of the room and lacerate my body. With the doorknob only a few feet away from my grasp, my body is in searing pain as my flesh holds on by mere bits and pieces intertwining with the thorns like a barbed wire DNA strand. With the agony coursing its way through my body, I’m taken out of the dream and I awake in a panic. vi I have had this dream of the red door ever since I was a little kid. I always wanted to know what it meant and if it was some kind of metaphor for something missing, or unattainable in my life. During my research, I finally found myself understanding Sigmund Freud’s logic that “The dream is the (disguised) fulfillment of a (suppressed, repressed) wish” (Freud). Even with this knowledge, it is still difficult for me to make sense of what the wish might be. As I chase the answers to this question, there were other questions looming on the horizon. Did others have this same dream? Why was the door always red? Why did I keep having it? It wasn’t until I met my wife that I made the discovery that I wasn’t the only one that had these strange types of dreams. Moreover, I did not know the level of fear which people faced in and out of these dreams. Had I never known about my wife’s random episodes, my novel might have never come into fruition. My wife and I watched the documentary, The Nightmare , at the early start of my career of my graduate studies during a long weekend binge of movie watching. The film was about people that struggle with sleep paralysis. According to the website WebMD, sleep paralysis is defined as, “a feeling of being conscious but unable to move. It occurs when a person passes between stages of wakefulness and sleep” (Felson). When my wife mentioned that she was one of the people that suffered from this bizarre phenomenon, I was pessimistic to say the least. The people in the film sounded like the crazy people that claim to have seen a UFO. Out of curiosity, I asked what her experiences had been like, and oddly enough, they sounded close to what the people in the documentary were explaining. My skepticism rose as the similarities in stories were comparable to those retellings of one person seeing a crop circle then all of a sudden, the world is flooded with the same sightings. Admittedly, I brushed these tales off as pure lore. It was not until I had my own experience with sleep paralysis that I truly realized the fear of it all. People in the documentary described the experience as though they were “having a vii stroke” (The Nightmare), or as though there was someone in the room with them. I found myself under this same category of tales that I once did not believe. One night I woke up and found that I could not move. I knew that I was awake unlike other dreams where it was clear to me by the subtle changes of reality, that I was still dreaming. The room was completely dark except for the reflection of the mirror sliding closet doors. The reflection of the mirrors allowed me to see the room with a three-sixty view from my frozen state. When I looked into the reflection, I could see a shadow behind me trying to push me down into the bed. It was hard to breathe under the pressure of the entity, and it was not until I caught my breath that I was able to wake up and shake off the unsettling and heavy feelings of paralysis that had occurred only seconds before. Thanks to the traumatic event that I experienced, the idea for Beyond the Crimson Door was planted into my mind. The book tells the story of an alcoholic, widowed father who is struggling to get by in raising his daughter. He has been trying to get sober by going to counseling sessions and trying to stay away from booze, but with his constant nightmares, he cannot seem to catch a break. Things get worse when he begins to take medication for his insomnia and at the suggestion of his doctor, she puts him under hypnosis to see why he has been having the reoccurring dream about “The Crimson Door.” What lies beyond the red door are bad memories, realities he does not want to face and inexplicable supernatural occurrences that begin to terrorize him and his daughter, and even eventually his doctor. Originally, I had no idea which direction I wanted to take this novel. Draft after draft, I found myself growing increasing frustrated with the task of writing this story. After several trials and tribulations, I came to the realization that my focus in my writing and in my thinking was in all the wrong places. Thanks to the help of mentors, professors, family, and my own personal viii reflections, I was able to understand the importance of different aspects of my writing that I was lacking. Reading other books also helped me get a better idea of what I wanted to write and how I wanted to write it. Though the challenge of writing a book was overbearing at times, I learned how point of view, story structure, and the editing process were the most crucial components I needed to work with in order to finish my book. These elements, as well as reading the works of other authors, helped me to reach my goal of sharing and crafting the very personal overall theme within my book: the importance of family; while using an unexpected genre such as thriller/science-fiction. When I first started writing my book, it was my intention to make it a very personal account of my protagonist’s life.