#5daysToVals Contest Entry – Submitted by James Ademuyiwa

The pictures in her head started getting blurry, pictures of the memories he left behind.

It is another Valentine. She is lonely, scared of mingling, wants to reap off the need to get a lover for the season, but these memories are stubborn.

She sat by the window of her cozy room, the room spiced up with the cash gathered from her Internet Fraudster boyfriend. She was busy recovering some of the sweet memories of the days he was a good guy through the clicking of the wall clock, maybe they would help heal her wounds.

She came to an interception when the voice of her mother came ringing, “do not sell your pride for money when you get to school”. At the drop of the pen in her hand, she ended the trance into her mother’s voice.

“What will I do now?” Tola quizzed her dented heart. “Should I swallow my ego and go begging at his door?”

“No!!!” She screamed. She’d remember the promises he gave while he was about to ‘deflower’ her on the last Valentine’s day, of not to date or have sex with someone else aside her. Of him getting married to her after her graduation coming in few weeks.

These promises were shattered when Tola caught Tunji in bed with her best friend Tomi, when she decided to go visit her boyfriend incognito. Unknowingly to her, she was only tailoring her own trauma of separation.

The pen that dropped from her hand, was the one she is using to write a death note while staring at the cup of HYPO before her.

It reads in some paragraphs of the letter, “Tola, I will never forgive you with what you’ve done, even till death, I will not allow my ghost to rest till it haunts you down. You took my pride through vain promises, not only that, you went ahead to make up with my best friend.

If you don’t know, I must tell you I’m now two weeks gone. Now, you should know the death of two innocent beings are on your neck. You BASTARD!!!”

She wouldn’t know the drop of tears from her eyes are already contending with the quantity of HYPO in the cup. Her eyes are swollen, mucus flowing helplessly from her nose. “Now my life is ruined”, she concluded.

Courageously, she picked up the cup of HYPO, looked at it disgustingly more than three times, but she had to free her soul from despair so, she poured it freely into her throat.

She sat backwards, waiting to die instantly but nothing happened.

She noticed some disagreements within her stomach, it seems the intestines have been tampered, now all she could do to ease the pain is to grunt, no more strength to wail, it seems she is now regretting her action but, she is very close than being too late to reverse that.

Now, the struggling could not be maintained on the chair, she now found pleasure in rolling on the ground, her eyeballs striving with the lids not to close them, the blurry part of her memory now moves to her vision, she is now highly intoxicated with dizziness.

While rolling on the floor, she aimed at opening the door to seek for help, when she faintly heard a knock on the door.

It was Tomi who had come to apologise for the act of betrayal, only to stand as her calvary who saved her but not the foetus.