So Fatima Caliente was rescued from Adam’s now burnt out house in the flooded Sunset Valley by an eager journalist called Sue Lin. Sue broke the story to the world and Fatima was shot to stardom as a morbid celebrity being hailed as ‘The Modern Holocaust Survivor’. There was fascination surrounding her and her mysterious story, but she didn’t tell anyone anything detailed – she didn’t want to tarnish the memories of the friends she lost by cheapening their stories.

People emerged from her past, including her ex boyfriend Kyle. She’s reunited with Kyle on a live chat show and they quickly fall back in love. Everything seems to be going well for Fatima – she’s married Kyle and settling down, but the hysteria surrounding her life isn’t dying down yet. When she moves in to her new home, she has a visitor: Nina Caliente, her great aunt. Nina has with her a child named Lola Caliente…Fatima’s daughter.

Fatima had blocked this traumatic event out of her mind until that moment. She had been 15 and confused and she and Kyle had had sex without thinking about anything and Fatima had fallen pregnant. Against the wishes of Dina, Fatima had kept the little girl – but when she was born, Dina kidnapped the child and gave her to her sister Nina to look after and raise as her own. Fatima was traumatised by losing her little girl – Dina told her that one day she’d thank her for it.

The memories all come flooding back and this, piling on top of the horrific memories of the Purge of Sunset Valley and discovering she was Adam’s daughter, makes Fatima snap. She loses it and murders Nina, Kyle, Nina’s real daughter Hannah, some journalists outside her house and is about to turn on little Lola when the police arrive.

She’s carted off to Niua Simoa Rehabilitation Clinic where she is put under the observation of Dr. Mariella George.

Mariella wants to write a paper on Fatima, naming her mental issues ‘The Fatima Complex’. This complex involves the lose of sanity after blocked out memories come back and overwhelm the subject. Fatima pretends that she can’t remember anything in order to make Mariella’s life harder.

One night, Fatima has a vision. This vision is very similar to that of Ophelia’s visions of the floods of Sunset Valley, but this time it’s of the volcano in Niua Simoa erupting and destroying everything. Knowing that when Ophelia accepted her own vision she turned to Adam and caused the Purge, Fatima supresses her urges to warn everyone. She knows if she says anything, Mariella will deem her mentally unstable.

Years pass and the visions get stronger and more regular. When she gets a vision of her own mother screaming at her to warn everyone, she runs away from the clinic and hides in an abandoned house on the edge of the island.

The next night, the volcano erupts and kills everyone and everything in its path; including Fatima.

Unfortunately this means i have to stop The Fatima Complex and The Blue Period for good, as i have nothing. I’m so sorry. I’m SO pissed off. Am going to start work on a new story soon, hope this hasn’t made anyone cry (apart from me).

BUUTT

This is still happening, and work on chapter three is happening RIGHT NOW.

Thank you all for your patience, i hope it’s worth it

x

Once a week, depending on her cooperation during her sessions with Dr. Mariella George, Fatima would be allowed to take a walk around the island of Niua Simoa. Fatima often wondered if this was perhaps the best policy to take with a patient – but she knew that there was nowhere for her to go once she was out of the centre’s grounds. She couldn’t swim away from the island, she couldn’t hide in a boat or a house because of her  well-known presence throughout the island. She couldn’t run away because, essentially, she would just be found.

If she wanted to kill herself, which she didn’t any more, she could just do it in her room. So she kept walking across the hot terracotta tiles which wound round the gardens of her new home, her feet bare. She couldn’t wear shoes, they rubbed against her thin skin. They made her come up in blisters and blotches. Raw skin and puss.

So she stuck to the shaded areas as much as she could. Dodging around the burns like a vampire.

That song was still stuck in her head – the song without music or words. Sitting there in her head, on her tongue, silent against the buzz in her ears. She supposed that this was insanity – the inability to define anything, even a song she knew so well. She lived in a permanent haze of clouds and muted music.

The island was mostly empty on this side. The other side of Niua Simoa was buzzing – full of the poor and the rich. Each side of the coin kept to their own people, of course, but they occasionally had to mix in order to go to the market. Fatima didn’t really mix with either of the sides of the coin. She was the rim of the coin, sitting just on the outside of both sides of society – unsure which one to slide in to. Unsure if she’d even be allowed.

The beach opposite the Centre was her favourite place to go on her little outings. It was a beautiful section of sand which rarely saw anyone else. It was just her and the water – calm, but not chilling. She often wondered why the ‘superiors’ as Mariella kept calling them would send her to somewhere so secluded. She’d come from a version of Sunset Valley which contained no living people. Why couldn’t they see that maybe she needed people around her, to remind her that society was normal everywhere else?

Mariella often said that Fatima was too intelligent for her own good. Fatima saw it as rational thought. It didn’t take much to be sensitive to someone’s needs.

She came to the waters of Niua Simoa to think. She didn’t get time to think during Mariella’s sessions – she was too busy trying to avoid the questions, to hide what she knew, to repress the reality of what she’d just faced. The water didn’t judge her, didn’t label her – didn’t want to name a new complex after her.

Standing there always made her remember one particular event. It was the water. Water brought back memories.

Water reminded her of Sunset Valley. Reminded her of sitting on the newly formed island around the Goth Mansion, the last survivor of The Purge. Alone in that barren land of water and greenery.

She was a survivor. That’s all she could think about during that time. She stood there the day after her friends and family had died and watched the water surround her. There was nothing left.

Covered in Ophelia’s blood.

She’d done what she’d had to do to survive.

She’d been the strongest – the fittest. She hadn’t known then that Ophelia was her sister, that Adam was their father. At the time the only links she had were Dina and Eve. If she had known she might have acted differently – but it was too late. She’d done the deed. She’d made it through the flood, the purge, the pain.

She stood there for hours that day. Numb. She didn’t really think that day – she just stared.

Was there anything left to think about?

She hadn’t even been inside – she hadn’t even wiped the blood from her face.

She could still taste Ophelia in her mouth. She hadn’t had a weapon. She’d had no choice – Ophelia was a threat. Extreme situations call for extreme reactions. Fatima had never seen herself as a biter, a gnawer, a gouger.

Going inside the house was a risk she knew she’d have to take eventually. She didn’t want to see who hadn’t survived – but she did want to see if there was hope for any of them. She wasn’t certain that she was the last one standing; there was always that chance – that sliver of hope.

The house stank of blood and rot – congealed damp and dust. She imagined that the smell was not so dissimilar from that of a coffin. The air was hot and thick like a greenhouse. The windows were steamed up, the lights were faded.

Everything seemed dead to her.

He was waiting there for her.

Adam. Father. Enemy.

She screamed. How else was she to react? He had killed everyone she loved.

He sat. Staring. Cold. Emotionless. Dead.

But then he was gone as if he’d never been there in the first place.

She waited for a few minutes. She told herself it was to make sure that he had really gone – to make sure he wasn’t real. But in truth she couldn’t move. She was frozen to the spot, cemented by fear. She didn’t even move her eyes in case he stood in the corner of them, waiting to stab her like he did her mother.

It took her fifteen minutes to muster the courage to move. To walk – to see. But when she did she found herself moving up. She wanted to go to the roof – to see Janice, to see if she had made it out alive. Everything was so dark and cold – so lifeless. The wood seemed to groan as she moved across it. It had given up.

But as she reached the attic with its sporadic clutter and dust, she felt something pull at her. She no longer wanted to see the roof. There was a room in the corner of her eye – the place she never dared to look – which wanted her inside it. There was a familiar smell coming from within, or perhaps it was a warmth that felt comforting to her bare, sore skin. It called to her silently, a whisper in her ear – an echo through the blood.

So she eased her way in to the dark room just off the attic with its bay windows at one end looking out across the ocean of Sunset Valley. The sunken town.

She saw what was pulling her in as soon as she stopped to look.

Her grandma stood staring out the windows with a small smile on her aged face. The comforting scent of home, the beautiful warmth of love – the overwhelming relief of seeing the woman who had raised her like a mother, hit her like a tidal wave.

Tight embrace, sniffing her skin to make sure it was her – smelled like  home.

She felt her grandma’s breath on the sensitive nape of her soft neck. Warm, welcoming air like a summer breeze. It had been so long since she’d felt her grandmother’s skin or heard her gentle yet decisive voice. She thought that she’d lost her forever – her last link to real love. Her last reminder that someone actually cared for her. Fatima thought that she’d lost that.

She had lost that. She’d lost all of that.

She’d really believed that Dina was alive – still there to comfort her and see the future through by her side. But she wasn’t. The woman she saw as her mother had died before Fatima had even tried to come to terms with the concept of her not being there any more. Not being in the bedroom next door, not cooking her pancakes in the morning – not hearing her sweet voice as she sang to her beloved plants in the back garden.

She stood there hopefully for a moment or two – begging the air around her to send her grandmother back. Just for another minute. Just for another hug. All she needed was to know that everything would be okay. No one had said that to her yet – she didn’t know whether she’d even be found on this new island. She could rot there unnoticed by the rest of the world for all she knew.

When she made it up to the roof she found herself calm in the face of what awaited her. She’d almost seen it coming – she’d expected there to be more visitors, why stop at just two?

But these ones didn’t turn to face her. They just stared out at the world around them.The others had faced her – Dina had even hugged her.

Two blood splattered bridal gowns atop the roof. Two scorned souls – one her sister, the other her friend. Fatima didn’t know at this point that Janice had in fact accidentally murdered her sister. She thought it was Adam’s doing. She didn’t know either that Janice had thrown herself from the roof once she had killed Adam. All she knew was that they wouldn’t look at her. Smile at her. Comfort her.

But she didn’t want to spend her time checking over her shoulder – looking in the corner of her eye to see if one of them was following her, watching her – waiting for her to slip up. She needed to get rid of them. She needed to repress the scars the left in her mind.

She needed to perform an Exorcism of sorts, a cleansing – a purge of her own kind.

As night fell around the underwater world of Sunset Valley, she knew that she had to do something. She had to get rid of Them. The people who haunted her days and nights. She had to wipe them from existence like stains beneath a cloth.

And so she used the one thing she had. Fire. Gas. Matches. Blaze against the night sky like a torch.

Fire, in its beautiful fury, cleanses everything in its path.

Puts the restless back in to a rest.

Burns the evil from a wound.

Purges what is left of a memory you want to destroy. An old photograph melting at the corners, or a body crinkling in to ash. It’s all the same – it’s all reduced back to what we all become. Ash. Dust. Nothing.

Fatima laughed gently as she stared out at the beach in front of her. She knew everything – she remembered all of it, of course she did. She knew things that even Mariella didn’t know; and she didn’t plan on her letting her know any time soon.

Next Chapter

Previous Chapter

The Niua House of Rehabilitation had once been a palace. It had once homed the most powerful family on the island. It had been the beacon of tradition for the rest of the town, which varied between unable to feed their families and able to feast upon the finest luxuries the trading network had to offer. But the palace no longer homed the leaders. No, it now homed the troubled and the disenchanted. The fearful and the paranoid. It homed Fatima Caliente.

Niua Simoa was a tropical island burning with constant Summer, but when the rain came (which was rare) it would rain for months without falter. The rain would not sputter and choke and come to an end. It would not fizzle out like fire. It would start at full speed, then end as abruptly as it began. The locals said that the last rain season broke the royal family. When the rain started, the family showed cracks in their powerful facade. By the time the rain had stopped, they were all dead. Murdered by each other or their people.

When The Royals left, The Troubled arrived, magnetised towards the peaceful blue water surrounding the sandy island like moths to a flame.

Doctor Mariella George was put in charge of The Troubled. She was shipped from her small practice in New Orleans to this uncomfortably claustrophobic house in Niua Simoa due to her experience with this variety of Troubled.

Mariella George specialised in the Freudian explanations of insanity. Oedipus, Elektra – they were her closest friends. She delved in to her patients’ pasts with increased vigour the second she discovered a link to  their mothers or fathers. She specialised in the Chimney Sweeping approach to patients – sit them down, talk to them, clear the soot and coal out from their minds with her special brush. She was brilliant at what she did, just a glance at her patient track record proved this.

But her superiors had suggested that she might need a challenge.

Fatima Caliente, who slept in the room above Mariella, was that challenge. According to Mariella’s notes, Fatima had ‘regressed back to her safest moment in the life – back to when she was living with her grandmother Dina Caliente in Sunset Valley; early teens. She uses denial and fantasy to create a wall around her therapy sessions and refuses to acknowledge the Purge of Sunset Valley. She believes that her mother, grandmother and sister are still alive.’

Mariella had heard about The Purge of Sunset Valley. Everyone had. When Fatima had been discovered alive in the Goth Mansion surrounded by bodies of her loved ones five years previously by some lucky investigative journalist, it had been the biggest news story anyone had ever heard. Fatima had become a celebrity. She was the modern equivalent of a Holocaust survivor. She was Anne Frank, but alive – which made her stories more edible.

At the time, Fatima had been surprisingly open about her experiences. But then something happened. She broke. She flipped. She shut down and was sent here in to the arms of Mariella George and the fresh air of the island. Seclusion was the answer – or that’s what the superiors decided. A secluded island would take her away from the media’s eye, take the pressure of normality away.

Mariella was scared of her, there was no denying that. She knew what Fatima had done. She’d read the notes, saw the colour photographs – seen the detail. Mariella saw behind Fatima’s eyes the crackling lightening of disjointed danger. As long as Fatima stayed in her regressed state of mind, Mariella knew she was in no immediate danger; but as soon as Fatima came out of her shell, she knew that things could change in seconds. They could all end up dead.

Mariella knew who Fatima’s father had been. She’d seen those photographs as well – she’d spoken to his old therapist. She’d spoken to the friends of the nurse he’d butchered and raped when he was in an Asylum. This was more than Elektra, more than Oedipus. Mariella was dealing with The Fatima Complex.

Mariella held the Chimney Sweeping sessions outside. It seemed silly to tuck them away in the dark rooms of the ex palace when it was beautiful, bright and fresh outside. Fresh air can do marvellous things for the mind and she knew it. It cleared them out – made them think clearly. It made everything seem easier than before.

Footsteps on the boards. The light footsteps of a twenty-six year old girl who hadn’t eaten properly since her arrival.

She waited with pleasant suspense as Fatima approached the other arm-chair. Warm leather awaited her.

Clouds hung in Fatima’s eyes. Clouds of uncertainty. Clouds blocking her from telling the truth. Clouds in the shape of her father.

There was a song in her head. A song she couldn’t remember. A song that kept playing without lyrics or music. It was just there – nestled like a maggot. Reminding her it was there every so often by poking her. It was there – listen to it. Listen to me.

“Did you sleep better last night?” The opening question was important, it had to seem nonchalant. It had to seem as if Mariella wasn’t in fact looking for hidden signs of hysteria.

Silent answer of a forced smile. The circles beneath her eyes told a different story, a story of another sleepless night full of images Fatima didn’t recognise as reality. Images of her sister. Images of her father. Images of her grandmother.

She was used to this – the defensive silence at the start of a session. Fatima started most sessions in this way, but would end them with an unusually blunt fact.

“I saw my daughter last night.” Fatima’s eyes were vacant, but her voice was filled with certainty.

This session was destined to be very different.

Next Chapter

I don’t want to tell you too much. It’s coming soon though…