Forest of Horrors

Smoke and Mirrors

Synopsis: A child's mind can do such astonishing things to keep them safe. It's just a shame it takes such horrible things for that to occur.

A.K.A. Ryouma does his best to navigate whatever the hell is going on in his head, but it is not easy.

Note: this is portraying Ryouma as being a DID system whose system stems from RAMCOA

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It's amazing what a child's mind is capable of. A sad fact that it could get so bad one's mind would have to go so far, but it was amazing to see it could manage something like that. At least, that was one way to look at it. To try and make a positive out of the hell.

Ryouma didn't know much. It was to be expected. But, he could remember the first time he ever met someone else who was in his head.

He had only been maybe 10 or so when this had happened. He had been crying in his small little room in the cursed child development place. It had been another horrible day of being forced into experiments.

"Don't cry. It's okay." A voice had spoken, startling the young child.

Ryouma looked around the room, but didn't see anyone. He was scared to speak. They weren't meant to make noise. He would get yelled at if he did.

"You can talk to me like if you were thinking. I think? That's what we do." The voice continued.

'Like I'm thinking?' Ryouma replied in his head.

"Yeah! Uh... I know I wasn't supposed to talk to you but... you were so sad."

'Who are you?'

"I'm you! I think. I'm confused to. There's a few of us that live here. But, I can't tell you. He'll get mad at me."

'Like... my consciousness?' Ryouma questioned. He had gotten his hands on a lot of medical books. That was something he had read about before.

"Maybe?"

'Do you... have a name?'

"Yeah, but... I don't know if I'm allowed to tell you."

Ryouma had no idea what to think about any of this. There were other people in his head? How come he never knew until now? Why was there someone trying to keep it a secret from him?

Why did it seem like he was missing so much about this? They were all interacting with each other but yet he wasn't allowed to?

It was then Ryouma finally realized he never could remember the actual experiments, just feel the residual emotions.

...

As time went on, Ryouma learned more. He figured out what exactly was going on. It wasn't something he liked, but he had to live with it.

Dissociative Identity Disorder

That was what he had found to describe his issue. There were other people, so to speak, living in his head with him. They were all pieces of the same consciousness, just fractured apart.

The part he had met back then vanished not long after. Ryouma always wondered if it was because they had told him things when he wasn't meant to know. It did feel like things got worse once he found out. His memory certainly seemed worse. Or maybe now that he knew amnesia was a big part of this he simply was able to see when he forgot things easier? It was hard to say.

Ryouma was grateful that he wasn't the one chosen to remember the bad parts of this life. He still had the ability to recall the emotions at times, but the actual events were something he couldn't bring to his mind. If he thought about it too hard, he got a bad headache and often he would come back to reality to see that hours had passed. He figured it was better to just stop digging into it at that point.