How is your amnesia doing? Can you recap how you got your current memories and do you remember anything new?
“Meh.”
“Here we go again: Last year I woke up in the outskirts of Bentley’s forest on the 8th of July. I was hurt – a head wound, my neck was strained, my lower back hurt though nothing severe. I didn’t remember how it happened or what exactly ‘it’ was. I didn’t remember anything other than my first name. It’s Ryan, but when you go to the hospital Ryan is not enough for them to call your family, when you go to the police it’s hardly enough to know if someone has reported you missing, when you go to apply for a job they send you away ‘cause you don’t have an ID, let alone a social security number. You know what it’s just good enough for? Being admitted to the hospital, because you’re confused, in fact, so confused you supposedly might end up hurting yourself or someone else. So, I am in the hospital. I get tested, get to hear ‘Do you remember yet?’ every goddamn day until they finally realise that ‘No, I don’t and I won’t.’ and I have to wonder who I am, what happened, where I am… They can’t keep you hospitalised forever, though. After about two months they let me go into a world that is entirely unfamiliar to me and with no one who can help me. I depend on a support system, because I’ve no money, no job, no family to take me in. So, I get a little apartment with empty walls, no decoration, only filled with the few items a single person needs to survive and honestly, it doesn’t bother me how untenanted it looks. I’m outside all day anyway, walking a city I’ve no memory of, meeting strangers who’re just as unfamiliar to me as I am to myself. For a while I thought that’s how it’d be from now on – every day the dull walks, forever the empty brain. That’s when the first nightmare came. I was in the woods again, someone was hunting me and as it turned out, it was me and someone else trying to kill… me, I guess. It absolutely did not make any sense to me. It still somehow doesn’t. Still, the nightmare had one good thing. It led me straight into the arms of Olivia Bentley who later tried everything in her might to make me remember at least something. Unsuccessfully, I might add. I also met this blonde girl, I don’t quite remember her name, but she said she had a similiar vision. She saw her own death. I know it sounds ridiculous, but I figured that dream, that nightmare might’ve been me foreseeing my own death. Turns out, that was a fucking stupid idea and the blonde chick is probably crazy. I had another nightmare, the second one, and it was different to the first. I was shot, but I was still able to hear the conversation between my killers. It made me think – two nightmares taking place in a forest and me quite clearly being a part of whatever was happening – so I went into Bentley’s woods, thinking if I can’t remember the town, there might be something in the forest that can help. Well, I was right. After almost four months of being on my own, being a no one called Ryan, I met a young man who recognised me… and who immediately attacked me. It was a lovely reunion, really. He broke my nose, threw a knife at me and threatened to kill me. He also told me, my name was Ryan Gibbons, I had fucked something up and I had a little brother: Him. I believed him at first, then I figured why the fuck would I believe a stranger saying he’s my brother, but the third nightmare came and it cleared a few things. I shot him, in the dream I mean. I assume I was running from them and then I turned and shot my little brother. In return, I killed myself again, or maybe not. I switched position with my dream-self, so technically… this time I was the killer instead of the victim. It’s an odd feeling to even consider this to be the truth. Yet, I’ve scars. I’ve scarred knuckles from wounds my dream told me were created by repeatedly punching someone in the face for shooting my brother. That makes you question if maybe, just maybe these nightmares are visions from the past you can’t remember otherwise. I tried to ignore it; the possibility of me not being who I thought I am, but it didn’t work too well. Only a month later, I had the next dream. Liv was in it and of course, they were meaning to kill her. I didn’t… I couldn’t sleep again after that. It started to drive me insane! I didn’t want to see any more nightmares of me dying or killing or whatever. Needless to say, it was a mistake. If you don’t sleep enough, you start to drift into daydreams more and more frequently. Reality begins to mix with whatever shit your brain is coming up with. Mine just had to come up with murder. On Bentley’s Christmas Gala I lost it, and in the process, I lost Olivia. In retrospect, that might’ve been a terrible mistake from my side but luck on hers. I am getting closer to who I am, but at the same time I feel as though I’m as far away as I’ve ever been. I left. I burried myself in the library for months to come, because if it was in my past it means many people died in the forest. I digged myself through the archive, but there’s nothing worthwhile in there and everyone I ask has never heard of killings happening inside the forest. I had one more dream though. A dream quite recently in which Death told me we were old friends. I know that sounds insane, but I can’t just brush it off. I need to find out what all of this is about. I need to find a way into the police archive. The deaths must’ve happened recently– in my dreams my brother and I do not look a day older than now – and especially when the murderers obviously haven’t been found yet, the police station must be filled with warnings and news on the crimes.”