Syboleth ch. 16: Valerie, 2032

AN: If you've already read Chapter 15 when I posted it as Chapter ?+1 back in December, please reread between Chapters 14 and 16 before continuing. Basically, I was a big dumdum and posted the chapters out of order at first.

Chapter 16: Valerie, 2032

TWO YEARS EARLIER

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It had been a hell of a year. Valerie had gone off her medication after the rape, and the resulting manic episode had made what was already going to be a rough go of it much much worse. But she had found what must have been about a third of a blunt of some good weed on the sidewalk, and she was going to make the most of it.

Grabbing her knapsack, she went out the side door of the dilapidated shelter she spent most of her time at nowadays into an alleyway and lit the blunt up with a matchbox she had borrowed from the supplies closet. She took a deep drag, then came the revenge of the coughing. But it was worth it. With her low tolerance Valerie was instantly taken to happier heights. And with another drag, higher still.

It was a miracle that she had come down from the mania as quickly as she had, if you could call it quick. Her plan to source Abilify from overseas had saved her ass. Her transgender friend had been the one to originally recommend the grey market pharmacy in Vanuatu that she had purchased 400 tablets of generic aripiprazole from, and that same friend had checked in on her three months into a heavy mania asking if she needed help ordering.

So she had naturally reacted with disgust and indignation, and set off to prove that she could order that shit on her own thank you very much. Five weeks, one failed transfer and one successful transfer later, she had four hundred tablets of aripiprazole stashed away.

She took half a tablet every day, so now she had three hundred. She felt as if she might explode out of pure misery any day now, but at least her depression provided cold comfort that she was, for now, not manic.

Now that she was high, she turned her attention to her favorite pastime while in the alleyway, which was watching the water drip from the leaky gutter.

It dripped with a rhythm, such that Valerie could zone out counting one drop, then two, then four, then eight, and so on, usually until she reached around the middle of one hundred twenty-eight drops of water. Then she would lose interest and go back inside, clutching her knapsack.

This time when she started counting one hundred twenty-eight drops she finished, but she didn't continue to two hundred fifty-six. Instead, she continued thinking about the past year, wasting a perfectly good high.

Derek.

She wished she could say that Derek had never reentered her life, but he had. If he hadn't, maybe she would've acknowledged that she was manic so much sooner. But he had, and she had fucked him consensually this time, and everything was forever made wrong.

To accept that she had been manic meant to accept that that was the horrifically illogical action that it was, to make consummate her rapist's attraction, and so she had to put it off for many months, but eventually she had nothing left but to face up to the frigid atrocity of what she had done to herself.

She went to a less leaky, less dynamic part of the awning and pulled the battered laplet that Garrett had ordered for her just before Derek had raped her out of her knapsack. She tapped it alive and pulled the keyboard out, navigating to a special part of the Internet just to torment herself. The Plain Dealer's letter to the editor about her.

She must have read this thing fifty times now, but the sting never faded. Someone—who knew who!—had seen fit to talk about her life as if they knew her. Worse, it seemed like they did know her. What right did they have to say those things so publicly at her lowest moment?

It had been a little while after the rape — how long, Valerie was not at all sure. She had gone to the bridge to jump, and somebody had talked her out of it. Then the newspaper saw fit to publish a small story about it, and some unknown fucker in her life had seen fit to blab to the newspaper about her. That had made her burgeoning manic episode after the pits that had led to that suicide attempt so, so much more agitated.

Whatever. Valerie turned her attention to the messaging program that she had been using intermittently since the mania after spamming many friends out of her life during it. But never Garrett. She hadn't spoken to Garrett in just about a year. She had transferred her messages from the phone to the laplet when her phone started to finally die, but she had never responded to him.

Never responded to the hilarious video he had sent her of Charlie Rosenberg getting nailed with a bucket of water.

Maybe it was time to reach out. She opened his thread, and considered for a moment. Then she dismissed those worries; she knew Garry wouldn't care what she said as long as she said something.

Fuck yeah. Nice job.

Then, after what could have been no more than ten seconds, Garrett started typing a reply.

I'm sure you're doing a nice job now too, if you're finally replying.

As if nothing had happened between them.

God, did she ever love him.

Next chapter: https://www.youngwriterssociety.com/work/Aet%20Lindling/Syboleth-ch-17-Royalty-161616