WARNING: Dark themes, homosexuality, and made-up names.

Note: Here, the characters may or may not be British; it's not significant to the story.

The setting is around the 1990s to present day.

Author's note: Jack is a bastard. Piggy needs love. 'Nuff said.

Lord of the Flies belongs to William Golding.

That night was astoundingly humid.

A fair-haired man lay on the once-pristine sheets, an ugly green closely resembling crushed olives marred by the browning flow of blood from his orifices.

Ralph read the clock.

1 :13 a.m.

A dead hour.

The short-haired man sat in the study, grading the last quarter-ream of crinkled brown quiz papers, deliberately ignorant as he had been when Ralph walked into the apartment room no less than an hour ago.

Piggy. Ralph mused, clenching the sheets between his tight white fingers. Poor... poor...

-

He was a schoolboy of twelve, that day in the dusty old playground. Handsome, unmarred by puberty and the apple of many eyes.

His was the unspoken respect; unchallenged, passive. He'd been sitting on the rock formation sidling the playground, watching the fat boy being picked on by stronger kids, weaker kids, anyone who'd simply plucked up the gall to poke fun at the epitome of inadequacy of their elementary, also known as the pathetic fat boy they'd so rightfully christened 'Piggy'.

Ralph, by some fancy, had defended him. Simply stood in the way of the more aggressive attackers.

There was no kindness to the act, a way to pass the time, but for a few more years, it had been beneficial. Ralph had no actual friends; people kept him at a distance, considered him with a detached respect and the awe one would give one of those gods on Olympus. It was only Piggy who latched onto him with as much vigor, injecting his views as an intellectual, constantly dogging (or perhaps pigging) for some sign of approval from Ralph.

It happened as typically as anything, their graduation in which Ralph received high honors (supported on the Academic shoulders of dear old Piggy) and the once well-abused 'Piggy' as valedictorian, their futures bright as students, slowly dimming with a financial recession slamming into their faces.

Ralph couldn't recount which of the dozen events led to what he had now, but it had been like this for so long as he could remember that it seemed that anything before it was a distinct, but fleeting dream.

Piggy had become a teacher at a nearby private school, wearing old, dust-gray suits uniformly throughout the week, leaving at early hours in the morning and barely getting any sleep at night. He held the airs of a teacher now, knowing frown, thinking wrinkles etched into his brow, glasses perched on his nose.

He was less 'piggy' now, and under the name "Mister Harris" at the school, he seemed a different person from childhood days.

Ralph almost forgot the pink face and upturned nose and balloon-like demeanor that had defined him in childhood.

Paul-'Piggy'-Harris had said once that Ralph didn't change very much at all since the 'old days', except 'that he was legal enough for The Job'.

The Job, the not-to-be-mentioned before the general public occupation that Ralph had taken up since he'd turned nineteen.

Unlike Piggy's honest living, or good old Simon's simple menial tasks as a janitor-window cleaner-miscellaneous job taker in the rich glass office building a few blocks across, Ralph had made use of his attractive face to earn money the only way he could now.

The RLD, Simon had suggested once. It wasn't catchy, but it was the general term for the Red Lights Districts of the top whore houses of the lesser places in the city. It was where Ralph earned his own daily bread.

..... I'll be cutting it off short from here.

Leave a review or I'll keep the rest of it hostage 83

-with love from your favorite lazy-ass author, Billie.