Lord of the Flies: Chapter Thirteen

What happened afterwards.

The early morning seemed to Jack a poor replica of a morning on the island beaches. He knelt on the deck of the cruiser and rocked with his arms round his knees. The mask of clay was gone from his gaunt and burnt face and he knew, and everyone else knew, he was no longer Chief.

Jack peered through the mass of red that hung in front of his face, undone from its tie, and stared without seeing. The other boys tiptoed when they were near him; even Roger. Not one of them knew what would happen should they wake Jack from his stupor. Ralph didn't like to look at him, crouched there on the deck like the very beast that had driven them to madness.

Ralph sat apart from the others, like Jack, only he did so out of fear and resentment. Sam and Eric shot him guilty glances and once or twice made as if to sit by him, but something always seemed to stop them from doing so, glancing back at the tribe and Roger fearfully, out of habit. 

Ralph didn't look at them and fiddled with his hair, pushing it back and shaking it off his face and combing through it with dirty fingers. He didn't want to admit it, but he felt as though he was still stranded on that island, but he was alone this time, and he'd wasted every ounce of strength and everyone was watching him from boats too far to swim to.

---

It didn't seem to matter to the gaggle of dirty boys how much time had passed since their rescue. The crewmen would peer at them and scratch their heads and ask their comrades and speculate. Rumors spread through the ship faster than the fire.

As the sky was growing light after six days of shivering and avoiding the others, Ralph stood by the edge of the ship and watched the sun stain the water with bright colors. It was a sickeningly cheerful display after the horror that had taken place.

He felt a weight on his shoulder and he shook violently, his mop of hair lashing against his face as he twisted round like a startled dog.

"What..."

"Ralph."

A cold chill fled up Ralph's spine and he threw himself somewhat hastily against the railing, his chest pumping. As if back from the dead was Jack, his red hair tied up again. Ralph noted this and ruefully he realized that he never did put his back like he'd meant to do.

Jack had his ragged black cap with its gold badge in his hands and was wringing it between his hands. "I..." he seemed at a loss for words.

Ralph fought his thudding heart and brought his breathing to normal, but not without difficulty. Jack pulled a face as though he wanted to spit out something horrid.

"What happened back on the island…you know."

"You killed Piggy."

"Roger," Jack interrupted sharply. "Roger did it. He pushed on the rock. He killed Piggy."

Ralph was gasping a little and the words started to pour from his mouth. "If...if you hadn't gone and taken Piggy's specs. If you hadn't stolen our fire…I told you, we had to keep the fire…I told you."

Jack vented his emotions upon the deck of the cruiser. Ralph fell silent quickly and stared, gasping, feeling as if on the brink of crying but straining against it with all of his might. 

Jack stamped his foot twice more to drive the point home. "Won't you let me talk?"

"You betrayed us. Me and Piggy and Samneric."

"Shut up! Just shut up, will you!"

"...and then you hunted me! With spears, like a pig! One of your stupid pigs." Ralph was worked into a frenzy, and he wiped spittle from the corner of his mouth with the back of his filthy hand. Jack stamped his foot harshly.

"I'm trying to apologize!"

Ralph subsided and stared at Jack. He was angry and tired and dirty, and six days ago he had been running for his life through an island foolishly set alight to smoke him out.

"Apologize?"

Jack flushed and looked furiously over Ralph's shoulder, refusing to look at him directly. 

"I didn't kill Piggy. I brought the ship to the island. I saved us."

"Saved us!"

Ralph's cry of outrage carried over the deck. A white seabird banked overhead and echoed him, a plaintive keening as it rose.

Jack spared the bird not a glance, and clenched his knuckles at his side till they were white.

Ralph let out a harsh sigh. "You weren't even thinking..."

"...I got us rescued..."

"Shut up!" Ralph half-sobbed and dropped to the deck, his legs folding under him alarmingly fast.

Jack stepped back quickly and frowned.

Ralph sighed bitterly, and he put his face in his hands. "We are rescued, that's all that matters."

Jack could only nod in wary agreement.

---

Disoriented and unsteady on their legs, unbalanced by the weight of their new clothes and shoes, the boys filed down the ramp and stood in awe on the hard ground of the wharf.

Roger went as if to push back his shock of hair but found there wasn't much to push back. The other boys also had fresh haircuts, no longer weighed down and blinded by the dirty strands falling in their eyes. They all looked a strange bunch, ragged, brown and skinny, with too-big clothes hanging off their thin frames and too-big shoes loose and strange on their calloused feet.

They weren't the same boys who had, brimming with innocence and naivety, said everything polite and been well-groomed for their mothers. Scarred by the happenings on the island, they were tainted by savagery and fear. 

The savagery in particular weighed heavy on Roger's mind. He saw, through a white haze, Piggy's body broken on the rocks, and he forced down the impulse to be thoroughly sick, but he couldn't stop the cold, disgusting feeling of shame and despair from weighing on his shoulders.

Roger sat down on the wharf and drew his legs close to his chest, his forehead brought against his knees with a thud. The other boys glanced at him, and quickly averted their eyes as though merely looking at him would bring them to their deaths. Sam and Eric in particular opted to stay well away from him, huddled together on the edge of the group.

Eyelids flickered and shut. Roger laid his head back against a stack of crates and breathed in.

They weren't in London. They were somewhere near it, in a town. Having spent the last three months on that Navy ship that had rescued them from the island, Roger was disoriented and a bit dazed, though that was nothing compared to the younger boys, some of whom had fallen ill, and others who had cried every day from trauma.

This had been their last day aboard the cruiser. Today, they were to board a train headed for London.

Roger wasn't quite sure what he felt about that. What would he tell his mum? He looked at Jack, walking about as confidently as he used to be, but there was an air of edginess about him. Ralph was jumpy and never spoke anymore. Roger didn't look at Ralph a lot; even after months, it was hard to forget that he, Roger, had almost killed him, and stuck his head on a spear like the pig.

Pig. Piggy.

Piggy's absence stuck out like a sore thumb. His asthma, and his specs, and him being such a know-it-all everywhere he went. This time, Roger was sick. He was sick all over the wharf and when he got to his feet and wiped his mouth, all of the boys looked away quickly.

---

That was a whole year past. Safe in the adult world, without the wilderness pressing in, each of the surviving boys kept firmly silent about what had happened on that island so many months ago. Roger didn't know or care for the reasons. Perhaps they wanted to forget, or perhaps they simply didn't believe what they had gone through. Either way, there had been no call to Court, and Roger hadn't been put away for manslaughter. 

Roger ran and pushed his friends about when they played, but sometimes the games would get rough, and Roger found himself reaching for his double-tipped spear, left behind on the sands of the island. 

"Kill the beast! Cut his throat! Spill his blood!"

The chant would come back to haunt him, echo in his head and make his heart pound. It was then that Roger thirsted for blood; pig or man, it didn't matter, and itched to run wild.

Roger had always been a silent sort of boy. He was even quieter these days, though, and eyed adults with distrust and his fellow age-mates with envy. They had no idea what the world was really like. They said, "Yes ma'am," and "No sir," and held their parents in the highest regard.

But really, adults weren't much better than children, Roger mused bitterly, as he sat high in the branches of a tree. The war shook the very roots of the world, ravaged lands and took lives, many lives. War was evil. What had been done to Piggy and Simon, well, Roger could categorize that as evil, too.

Evil, Roger thought, was born of fear. Everyone was afraid sometime, Roger knew this, but real fear wasn't jumping away from a spider. Real fear was something that lurked deep inside man's heart, something that crawled up the spine and infected the mind with madness.

Roger put his head in his arms. He wasn't so sure he wanted to grow up anymore.

Author's Note

Done for school assignment in freshman year: write an epilogue to Lord of the Flies.