[Schuldig is hardly in the habit of eating any strange, unusually-colored fungus he happens to come across. He's pretty sure most people don't have anything even resembling a habit like that, and it's one of the few traits he shares with normal people. He doesn't like being normal if he can possibly avoid it, but some similarities to the rest of the human race (things like breathing and not spontaneously bursting into flame) just have to be accepted.
But something about these mushrooms is just that damn compelling. He finds a cluster of three and, on impulse, eats them all, one after the other. He'd never been good at resisting temptation - perhaps because he'd never really bothered trying to be.
After today, however, he'll seriously start to consider it, because what follows are some of the worst hours of his life. Spontaneously bursting into flames would honestly be preferable.
It's been years since he's slept long, or deeply, and one of the reasons for that is because he usually only returns to this place in his nightmares. And, on one mind-fracturing occasion, through Mayfield itself...but on that occasion, he'd swapped places with his younger self. Today, he's back in Rosenkrüs, which would be horror enough if he was still an adult...but he's a child again, scrawny and malnourished, telepathy still as unreliable as a half-broken colt. No, more than a child again - he's Keane again. The boy he'd sworn up and down was dead, had been destroyed as thoroughly as Schuldig had ever destroyed anyone.
He's wearing the old threadbare grey institutional clothing, but he couldn't feel more vulnerable if he were naked.
His arms wrap around himself defensively, eyes darting as they take in his surroundings. They keep changing, which is the most terrifying part of all - even in Rosenkrüs, some places are worse than others, and his mind is picking out the worst to selectively subject him to.
At times, he's in the isolation chamber - a padded room with no windows, no sound, no light. And shielded, such as only a psychics' institute could manage, shutting his telepathy down so that he was utterly alone with nothing but his own shrieks for company. Sometimes they let him scream; at others, he'd been warned that every sound would be another hour in the room, and would have to sit shaking through the silence.
Sometimes, he finds himself in the yard - as bleak and spartan as everything in Rosenkrüs, meant for exercising them and little else. But it was also where the instructors had lined them up. There was never any knowing what a line-up meant; all students, especially the telepaths, were kept in the dark. Sometimes it would simply be to announce the most recent evaluation findings - publicly announcing the low achievers, making them targets to their classmates and terrifying them with the acute awareness of what would happen if their performances didn't improve. But just as often, it was for the disposal of those Rosenkrüs had determined were too weak, that were simply going to be a drain on the school's resources - or, at worst, an active danger to the other students. Sometimes they were simply shot where they stood in line, next to their fellow psychics; sometimes they were called forward and shot. When the instructors particularly wanted to scare them, they would call students forward and then shoot the ones not called on - the procedure was never the same, to keep them guessing and afraid. And, every now and then, they would be lined up to observe a psychic who'd, as the instructors put it, 'dropped out' - a psychic whose mind had fractured, gone permanently catatonic. One instructor had simply taken to burying the dropouts alive rather than waste bullets, and on one occasion had made the students do the burying; the boy had simply laid there as the dirt fell on him.
Most often, though, he finds himself in the room.
There's nothing special about the room. It's an instructor's office - small, holding little more than a desk and the chair behind it. It could be a particularly cheerless guidance counselor's or principal's office, if there were a chair in front of the desk...but, of course, all Rosenkrüs students are expected to stand at attention when being spoken to, like the child soldiers they're being groomed to be. Being twisted into becoming. It's unremarkable, uninteresting.
Whenever his thoughts take him there, Schuldig/Keane wants to rip off his own skin, and his heart slams against his chest so hard that his whole body shakes.
The more his mind cycles through the places where he'd lived - and the room, where he'd died - the more of Schuldig slips away. He was never in these places, not like this; Rosenkrüs is Keane's world, and these torments belong to someone else. The memories from this other life are too strong to entertain long; it's why he never has. Now, submerged in them, out of his element, Schuldig drowns.
What parts of his mind don't simply shut down in horror and self-defense are almost entirely Keane - who, as much as Schuldig hates him, still endured the worst of their shared lives, and can weather these memories where Schuldig can't. It's a complete mind-shattering regression, and the adult backed into a corner of the study - no longer the Space Room; he's too far gone to maintain it - is almost unrecognizable, shaking and making a low, soft sound in the back of his throat like a wounded animal.]
[[OOC NOTE: For any housemates/possible visitors to 1492 Kramden, Schuldig is actually low-grade projecting his hallucinations telepathically. You may see flashes of what he's seeing, and/or briefly sense his emotions. This is up to player discretion!]]