Have you ever read McCarthy’s The Road? It’s a post-vaguepocalypse drama about the post-digital family unit. One of the central characters is a young boy of ten who bears the full uncensored brunt of being horror receptacle for all the inhumanities of survival in a doomed world. Repeatedly, he is exposed to things that make him dance spasmodically, his personal way of dealing with the incomprehensibly terrible. A sort of horror-seisure.

 

I’ve seen some of us do this too, admittedly in less grievous situations, often it’s a particularly bad telephone call. Our trunks pivot at mid-point, arms flailing. Chests violently protrude and buckle as though we’ve become sudden host to private, internal ricochet universes. We writhe and swear silently while completing the call, performing with decorum.

 

I know that low dopamine can trigger a syndrome called Restless Leg; it causes compulsive movement in order to dispel an intense, unpleasant sensation in deep muscle tissue. I wonder if these brief moments of horror tax the brain’s dopamine reserves, contorting the host in inexplicable, accepted patterns.