Derek's inner voice "Dean"
"Okay, just for Liana, we will do it all again." There was a pause and then in slow, deliberate speech: "I have never passed out. There is an aura. It is not like a classic epileptic aura. It does not start in the extremities and radiate; it is not associated with any part of the body. Yes, there are sometimes paresthesias, burning sensations, tingling irritations, itches. And there are photisms, buzzing noises, and occasionally complex patterns of tones. But they are always after the fact, never associated with the onset of the aura. The auras are always psychic. No, that does not rule out epilepsy. Psychic auras often occur with epilepsy." The voice had a bored yet breathless quality. "I have never had convulsions -- except once under special circumstances not relevant to this discussion. Otherwise, I have not even come close to what most people would call a seizure. No hysteria; no suggestion of hysteria. The Plexiglas wall is undoubtedly an aura, a psychic aura. I sense its approach before it actually affects my perceptual functions. I can feel its presence behind me the way you know someone is staring at the back of your head. And then there is a
distance--""But Dean. . ." interrupted Liana. "There you go again offering the private memoirs and confessions of a justified sinner."
"Hear me out, Liana," came the irritated reply. "And then there is a distance, a distancing. Subject and objects become removed from one another. And it intensifies and the beginning stages are like looking at the world through the wrong end of a pair of binoculars. A tunnel appears in the visual space: inside of the channel, everything is crystal clear; outside, blurred and distorted. And there is pulsation: closer and farther and closer and farther. Infinite depth and too, too close. Ink wash of liquid thick color pours down the parallel-distance alley to saturate my eye sockets with sapphire rose or Day-glo yellow or international orange or dense jade. And then the experience stabilizes and the visual sense of it is like looking at the world through an inch thick wall of Plexiglas. There is a separation so solid, I feel like I can reach out and tap it. This Plexiglas is not metaphorical! It's a Goode opportunity for looking through. And if it intensifies enough, I feel a sinking sensation, as if something had dropped from my solar plexus to the pit of my stomach, and I feel like I am about to blackout. But I never fugue. I put my head between my knees or I jerk my attention away from the sinking feeling and somehow the Plexiglas wall disappears."