Valentine (standard:drama, 1319 words)
Author: Freya Griffin	Added: May 10 2005	Views/Reads: 3431/2298	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
A Valentine thirsty for attention

Val Drowns 

Alone again. Val doesn't know why she was always terrified of being
alone. She as other knew, was an independent individual. She went about 
all by herself. Every problems surfacing, she handled by herself. These 
last couple of years, she even paid for herself. But that's what people 
knew. What they didn't know, Val was now curled up in the corner of her 
room. Silently crying for fear of being alone. 

In a bright afternoon, Rambo took Val out for a walk. Not far, just to a
park near her place. It's small, had the tendency to be a junkyard, 
forgotten by the city maintenance department. But the trees were tall, 
and although the breeze brought curious odors; a mixture between animal 
litters, human urine, and decomposing garbage, small flower patches 
brought peace to her heart. There were green steel benches, planted 
firmly to the ground with cement. On those benches were sometimes 
lovers, hoboes or drunken men who got locked out by their wives, kids 
busy chattering their childish gossips, or mothers waiting for their 
dogs and/or children running about the park. Rambo and Val sat on an 
unclaimed bench. 

Barely sitting down, Val was already perplexed, holding back her tears.
Rambo was called because she knew she had to ask someone for help. 
Rambo was the only one who can help, or at least Val thought so. 

“Val, we were born to this world alone. When we had died, we would be
alone too. Nobody is responsible for one's loneliness but that person 
themselves,” was his reply upon her story of fear. 

Perhaps Rambo was wise and Val was being dumb. Maybe he was being dull
when she was getting desperate. Maybe it's just his own idiocy. Val was 
just being too sad. 

Her fear towards loneliness was bulging up by each passing day. Imagine
being marooned at sea, floating in a shark invested water. Sharks love 
the smell of food. Sharks can sense their prey from miles away. Your 
toes were just scratched by reefs and were now currently bleeding. The 
hungry sharks can smell you. There were no passing boat, not even a 
seagull flew by. You couldn't see dry land and your limbs were tired 
trying keeping you afloat. As far as the eyes can see there were only 
salt water and the nauseating blue sky. You can hear the sharks were 
coming. But then you saw something in the horizon. A speedboat. SOMEONE 
is coming! And that someone saw you. Not just anybody, but people you 
knew so well. Brothers, sisters, parents, and even your closest 
friends. All the people you love were on that speedboat. And they 
obviously saw you, waving and pointing. But then they just passed you 
by, waving and pointing. Greet you friendly; as if they didn't realize 
that they're dry and you're in the water and soon in a couple of 
minutes, a group of sharks were coming to have you as dinner. You could 
even see fins by now. You wished those people would turn back, lifted 
you up to the deck and laughingly say “just kidding”, toweled you dry 
and shower you with warm love and attention. But it won't happen. And 
you knew it. This kind of fear is what Val was feeling. 

Val felt as though she was screaming at the top of her lungs with a
broken voice cord, in a claustrophobic room, filled with deaf people. 
Val was not alone in the corner, but nobody listened. 

“What? You think people around you don't exist? Your friends? September,
Opal and Guthrie, your friends do exist, not just a mere ghost. They 
are there for you. You're just being selfish, that's all,” Les 
straightforwardly accused her one Sunday morning when Val was resorting 
to him. He thought she was being too self-centered. That Val thought 
everything should evolve around her. He had a long say about that. 

“You should consider what the others are feeling. There are a lot of
people who had bigger problems than you are, and they are fine with it. 
They don't have any issues. I don't think your problems are much more 
urgent than not being able to know how to make ends meet like some 
people I know. You are just being spoiled!” 

Val felt genuinely guilty. She knew her friends are human and they treat
her like how human should treat their friends. They are all kind, 
treating her with warmth and respect. But somehow Val always felt 
alone. Like she had been standing outside in a blizzard when she was 


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