Dementation o

Experimentation.  Amplifying the emotions of the emotionless, of
the dull and drained, is there something beneath the nothing?
Reach into a coma ordrug-burnout or tedium-numbed wage-slave.
Pull !something! out.  You pull what they are feeling out, and
multiply it, exponentiate it until it becomes visible from with-
out.  It only turns up the volume, never tunes the frequency of
changes the channel.  Extending the analogy, it makes a picture
out of the static, even though electronic amplification merely
makes noise louder.  Clarity.


Dementation oo

Encephalourban legends.  Images that a rested mind ignores are
brought halfway into view.  Just long enough for there be a real
fear of a nearly-recognized presence.  More insightful than
Rorschach inkblots, to be sure. 

Pop-culture extraction.  Word-image association.  I say nails.
What's the first image that comes to mind, that causes you to
jerk your head around, that scritches along the edge of earshot?
Gouges in the slate blackboard representing the moment's calm.

Dysesthesia.  Cold sweat reversing itself, traveling UP your
back.  Motion-sensations, both internal and external.  Senses 
of balance.  Senses of proportion, and comparative senses and
judgements.  Everyday horrors overlooked, just like the corner-
of-the-eye is tugged-at with grotesque rarities.  Phantom limbs.
Unintended motions that never actually occurred.

Faces look ugly, when you're alone.  Deathly palor.  Pancake and
kohl.  Spidery veins.  Plastic smiles.  Leering.  Wrong gestures.
Body language ventriloquism.

Knots in the wood.  Faces through the fence.  Movement behind
mouseholes.  Presences outside windows.  Lurkers in mirrors.
Only in the unreachable, yet so very near side of the mirrors.

Deja Vu.  Sans-post posttraumatic premonitions and flashbacks.
Time slides past, thick and slick and just out of reach.  Run-
ning in slow motion.  Inevitability.  Lack of control due to 
a perceived lack of time to react.  Everything stops for just 
a second (which can last any amount of time), something moves,
outside of time, is witnessed, witnesses being witnessed, and
time starts again.  Vertigo.

Mechanical menace.  Machines with intent.  Swiss-timed malice.
Cat's-eye green and demonic red LEDs.  Impossible, undesigned-
for motion and unexplained noise.  The unsightly malign shape 
of a fender wanting a dent where your head could shortly be.

Insects.

Old friends.  Long-dead, brought back to half-life in half-caught
glimpses.  An overheard conversation on a dead phone line.  One's
own voice.

Shadows alert and freeze.  All shadowplay stops and they become
still and still more quiet.  They pause, watching their watcher.



-Vis
<vis@jps.net>