The inner world was like a building where several roommates were living in harmony. On the ground floor, there was a beautiful garden with a terrace and a small cave illuminated by candles and glowing pnts. If you passed through a door, you could find a living room, with a couch and a chess board. Those were the only furniture that never changed. The other side of the room was a glitchy mess, blurry, changing form depending on who was using it. Sometimes it was a kitchen, sometimes a computer, maybe a desk with a ptop, or a secretary flooded in books. It wasn’t strange for this pce to change, as it was imaginary. This whole building was. As if to confirm it, there were no windows, and when you looked to the sky while standing in the garden, you could only see an endless immensity of bck void. It might have felt eerie, but for the roommates it was cozy and warm.
In the center of the garden, there were indoor stairs. It didn’t make any sense, but logic didn’t apply here. When climbing, you could see small doors to the side, they led to individual cells, with a ceiling so low you could only crawl. Inside, there was only a mattress and bed sheets. Those were the bedrooms, embedded in the wall as you climbed, like they were paintings. If you continued on the stairs, reaching the next floor, you would find the control room. It wasn’t a pce the roommates could access by themselves, but they were teleported here when it was their time to front.
Thomas was one of the residents of this imaginary building. Like most of them, his appearance was blurry. You could only tell that he was tall and had a somewhat icy aura. That was enough to identify him amongst the others. He was the one who had been living here the longest, since this pce was created in fact.
“Are you having fun, Larotte ?”
Thomas leaned towards the kid pying in the dirt. Her face was blurry too, to the point he couldn’t know if she was tall or small, or even her actual age. Was she really a child ? Nobody would be able to tell. But Thomas had felt who she was from the beginning.
“Yeah ! It’s fun ! I’m making a castle, you want to help ?”
The man squatted next to her in the imaginary garden. His hands weren’t stained by the dirt. In fact, he didn’t even feel the sensation of touching something. But somehow, he was building a castle with this kid.
“It’s done.”
“Yes, it’s really pretty ! Thanks, Thomas ! But, hum… Could you give me some subjects to rule ? To be a queen I need subjects !”
The man smiled. It wasn’t a change in his face, more like a feeling he gave. Then he waved his hand and small dolls, as big as a nail, appeared. There were dozens of them, perfectly proportioned for the newly built castle.
“Thank you, it’s perfect ! I wish I could do it…”
“You will, someday. Learn your triggers first.”
Thomas had been here for so long that he had learned to control his imagination, his intention, to move this fake world. It wasn’t really complicated once you knew how to do it, it was akin to programming your own brain, like rotating an apple in your head.
Suddenly, he felt pulled by something.
“I’ll come by ter. Be nice.”
“Yes ! Have a good time, and tell me what it’s like outside when you come back !”
The man blinked, and suddenly he was in the control room. No, he was in the body of ‘Mariane’. He discreetly looked around him to assess the situation.
‘Ah, we are at therapy again. I guess she couldn’t handle talking about the trauma. Well, since madame Leroux already knows about me, I can rex.’
He slowly straightened his back, raising his head, and met the gaze of the blonde woman sitting in front of him. She must have felt the sudden change, because she immediately tensed up.
“Good morning Thomas, it’s been a while. How have you been ?”
“Like always. So, she couldn’t finish the session ?”
For the blonde therapist, seeing a bubbly girl with eyes full of light suddenly change into an icy woman with an empty gaze was quite disturbing. However, more or less used to this turn of events, she cleared her throat and regained her composure.
“Yes. She must have felt stressed. Talking about your parents is quite triggering for her.”
“It’s not my parents, it’s hers. Please, stop making this mistake.”
The man - or woman - stood up slowly. All his movements felt detached, disconnected from the body, as if someone was trapped in a suit that was way too small. He reached for the handbag, made of an ugly pink leather that he hated, and took out the wallet.
“How much do we owe you ?”
“47€, as usual. I’m really sorry, I feel like I’m chasing you out everytime.”
Thomas shook his head.
“No, it’s normal. You are her therapist, not mine. If you needed to work with all of us, you would be having six clients with unique mental struggles each time, it wouldn’t be fair on you.”
He paid for the session, and greeted the therapist before exiting the room. Immediately, he transformed. His aura became warm, his eyes more lively, and his back was slightly bent forwards. He was emuting Mariane, so as to not raise suspicion. He smiled brightly at the receptionist and walked through the door. Even if the girl appeared bright, inside Thomas felt bad. He understood the therapist, it wasn’t possible for her to take care of every personality, that would require too much work for someone who doesn’t have the training to do so. Dissociative Identity Disorder was quite rare, and the only therapy that existed was in the US. Nothing was yet prepared to help french patients, they just had to fend off in the wild, finding their own way to survive. One of them was emuting the principal personality, and hoping to live a life as normal as possible. But it was just wishful thinking.
Each personality was an entirely different being, with their own thoughts, likes, dislikes, and skills. What would happen if you were a librarian, but a personality who can’t read fronts at work ? Or if you were an accountant, but a personality was bad at maths ? To sum up, ‘Mariane’ was a system trapped in a world that was not made for them. Even more so, since only Thomas knew how to emute Mariane.
While thinking about her, a high pitched voice resounded in his head.
“Are you out of the clinic ? I’m sorry, I just couldn’t handle it.”
Mariane had come into the control room with him. It was a cofront. She didn’t have the ability to move the body, but she could see and hear everything.
“It’s not your fault. Don’t worry about it.”
“But I know that you hate being the one to clean up my mess…”
“I told you not to worry about it. Now shush, I’m trying to find the bus stop.”
He wasn’t really angry at Mariane, in fact he felt quite protective of the girl. DID happens when children suffer from trauma at a young age, when they haven’t yet formed their own identity, and can’t handle the reality of what is happening. They end up fragmenting their personality, and small pieces of themselves, the parts they can’t handle, form new identities. In that way, the trauma is shared by several people, and one child doesn’t have to shoulder things so hard it would destroy them. It was a defense mechanism of the brain, in a form.
Thomas also had a trauma within him, but he was more sympathetic of Mariane. He was created by the trauma, his personality was based on it, he was the keeper of that dark memory and his role was to hold on to it. But it was not the case for Mariane. She was the original one, the little girl who had been hurt. It was unfair for her to live such a terrible life, having people trapped in your brain, when all she did was suffer.
He entered the bus and presented his transport card with a smile before sitting near the front.
“So, what happened recently ?”
“Nothing much. Sabrina was angry at me yesterday because I didn’t do the dishes and I was te for rent, but that’s all. I just read comics.”
Thomas nodded. If Mariane and her roommate had a fight, he needed to act carefully when he would be at home.
“Oh, we are switching !”
The man was feeling it too. His consciousness was slowly removing itself from the body, crawling back to him while leaving the limbs.
“Don’t forget to do the dishes, and pay the rent on time.”
“I will !”
Thomas closed his eyes and…
-Woosh
He was back in the garden of the inner world. Larotte ran to welcome him.
“That was quick ! So ? What happened ?”
It was a little ritual for him to sit at the garden’s table and tell the others about the outside world. After all, he was one of the principal personalities, the others didn’t front as much. Some never even went to the control room, as if the brain was preventing them from seeing the outside world.
“Let me sit, I’ll tell you.”
Thomas walked to the table and the three chairs in a ft area of the garden. He sat and raised his head, meeting eyes with an old dy. She was blurry too, it was impossible to say what she looked like, but she gave off an air of being a senior.
“I didn’t see you come, Anne-Antoinette.”
“I will always be here for your stories.”
The old woman giggled and took pce at the table with Larotte and Thomas. A gloomy looking teenager was standing behind a tree, badly hiding from the crowd and eavesdropping.
“Ignore Peacock, you know how he is. He needs new materials to write his poems, but he doesn’t want us to think he likes our company.”
Thomas nodded at Anne-Antoinette’s words, and started narrating the hour he had lived in Mariane’s body. It wasn’t interesting, but he was embellishing the story by telling about the clothes people wore, the shape of the clouds, and the color of the cars. It was all the entertainment they had in this world : A few stories, and each other.