A woman called Katti, 22 years of age, born in 2017.
Romanian, a student in law. Has a younger sister, and many half siblings she has never met. Father died in Libya four months after her younger sisters birth. Distraught her mother cannot cope with looking after the both of them, and at the age of nine she is made to live on the streets.
A local orphanage picks her up off the street after a short amount of time which she perceives as months, and she wastes her time reading books, as the orphanage cannot afford for her to go to mainstream school. She is discovered to have Savant Syndrome once she reads a Latin textbook cover to cover, and is writing poetry fluently in the language the next day.
Once the story of her talent hits the press, she quickly finds a set of foster parents who make a living off of her, making her recite works of Shakespeare word for word, much to peoples amazement. After six years of hard labour, she is found by a prestigious university who offers her a scholarship there in exchange for explaining to the professors and staff how she can pick up such complicated concepts so fast. She studies law at the university for 5 years, and graduates with honours. She moves to Thailand to study some more unusual law cases that are currently open, and is directed to an asylum in Chiang Mai.
She is greeted by three women when she arrives, who are packing and just about to leave. When she asks then why they are so desperate to leave, she is shown to a locked corridor in the back of the building. All the other women leave, but the youngest, a very beautiful woman called Chailai, stays to open the doors. All the young women in the ward are extremely thin, and Chailai tells Katti that they have refused to eat for weeks. They won't let her touch them, and do not believe that it is her when they tell them. At the very end of the corridor is a girl around sixteen, tied down with restraints. Chailai says she is called Khwamba. Her and the other women running the asylum are convinced she is a witch, as before she arrived, the other people on the ward were admitted with completely different ailments. Each and every one of the women in the ward is convinced that they cannot die, and are trapped in an eternal state of immortality. They continue to believe this even when other people on the ward die of starvation.
After much research and investigation, Katti and Chailai discover that the women have developed Cotard Capgras, a disorder where they believe they are all dead, and only their souls have survived, and that the people they know have been replaced with doubles for continuity, and cannot be trusted. They nurse and look after Khwamba intensely, and find out about her past, including her deep involvement in the Thai drug trade. They later conclude that this is what must have caused her paranoia. Katti goes away for a month to Southern Thailand to find out more about the drug trade and try and find Khwamba's estranged brother, Phuna. When she arrives in the slums in the small town of Krong Pinang; she finds Khwamba's brother the leader of a large drug ring, which his sister once fell trap to. Disgusted by his betrayal, she reports him to the national police, and leaves without seeing him again.
When she returns to the asylum, she finds that Chailai has fallen ill. Like the other women, she refuses to eat and doesn't let Katti near her. When Katti questions Khwamba, she says she fell like it after a few weeks of her looking after her constantly. Once Katti tells her of what she saw of her brother and what happened, she begins to trust her much more. Chailai later dies of starvation, and Katti falls into grief. Khwamba begins to trust Katti's words and starts to eat again, and is soon able to stand. Weeks of vigourous teaching convinces her that Katti is the real and only her, and always will be. The news of Chailai's death hits the press, and Khwamba is wanted as a mass murderer. Pitying her, Katti takes her away back to Romania, and they live over 3 months without problems.
In the dead of the night, someone knocks on the door. Katti runs to Khwamba's room to take her away before they find her, but she is balancing precariously on the balcony ledge. She turns and says that she'll be fine because she never was alive, and she jumps. End.
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Points: 1042
Reviews: 2