Ah, hello. Author here. This has been on my mind for a few days, and I just need to vent a little. Don't take this story as a reflection of the kind of person I am. Thanks. ;)

Anyway, this is a "what if" story for Lord of the Flies. It asks what would have happened had Simon's body stayed on the island instead of being dragged out to sea. Would the kids feel bad for what they did? Would it affect the descent into savagery at all? I attempt to answer these questions in my story. Warning: Involves many dark themes and a character going completely insane.

Piggy awoke, dazed and disoriented. There was a brief moment of forgetful bliss before the surge of emotions returned. He tried to pick out some of them, but many were hard to identify. There was definitely some depression in there. Anger. Guilt, too. Before he had time to wonder where they came from, his memory fully returned and all traces of bliss were gone.

It was the dance that got him. It started innocent. They were having fun, just a little fun. They ate meat and talked and laughed, just like in the Home Countries. There was nothing wrong with meat, was there? A bit of meat. Nothing wrong with a little meat... Piggy shook his head. No. He would not become like the others. It was his job to be the voice of reason, and he couldn't afford to shirk this responsibility.

Fiercely, he rejected any memories of the dance threatening to surface. He wasn't a murderer, was he? No, of course not! He'd been on the outside of the circle. Yes, he'd been on the outside. He hadn't even touched the beast, let alone hurt it.

Piggy sat up inside the makeshift shelter, leaves beneath him rustling as he moved. There were two figures walking along the beach. They appeared to be arguing. Curious as to what they were saying, Piggy crept forward in the shelter. More leaves turned. After a few seconds, he realized with dismay that getting closer hadn't made a bit of difference. He got awkwardly to his feet and went a bit closer.

"Well, what do you think we ought to do about it, Roger?" Piggy recognized the voice as Jack's.

"I don't know. I thought we could—"

"What?"

"We could use it as bait. For the pigs." Roger sounded as though he were hiding something. Jack seemed to pick up on this.

"What else? You have another idea."

"We could eat it."

Jack laughed, clearly thinking Roger was joking. "Yes, and cook one of the littluns to go along with it."

Piggy's stomach churned. There was something off about the conversation. He wasn't sure he wanted to know what was being discussed, but the curiosity got the better of him and he crept forward.

"Yeah," Roger said, laughing awkwardly. "Cook a littlun."

Jack laughed again, and for a while they stared at the ground. Neither of them said a word. Jack was slightly horrified, but Roger showed no trace of emotion.

Piggy suddenly realized he was in full view of the two boys. Their heads turned, eyes still wide.

"Hullo..." Piggy said, mustering his willpower to avoid looking at the ground. Whatever it was, he knew it was horrifying and that it had something to do with the dance from last night.

Roger smirked. "Well, if it isn't the Big Fatty," he said. "Come on, too scared to look at it?"

"I'm—I'm not scared!" Piggy insisted. Immediately he removed his broken spectacles and cleaned the remaining lens. With the world blurred, even briefly, he had an excuse to not look at...whatever it was.

"I bet you are," Roger said. "You're just like a littlun. What, can't stand a little blood?"

Jack suddenly joined in. "Come on. Put your specs back on, you little crybaby!"

Piggy's temper flared. "Maybe I don't want to see 'cos I still got some sense! Maybe I don't want to be filthy like you! Maybe I don't want to start killing pigs—"

"Or people," Roger interrupted. "Oh wait—you already have." He and Jack started laughing again. But Piggy could tell Jack's laughter sounded forced.

"What are you talking about? I never killed nobody, ever! I wouldn't! I wouldn't!"

"Are you sure?" Roger asked between bouts of laughter. "Simon seems to disagree."

A cold rush ran down Piggy's spine, and he shivered. "Never say that! It was just an accident! That's all it was. Now don't you pretend it was anything different, you hear?"

Piggy heard someone else step up beside him. He turned to see who it was. There Ralph stood, yellow hair falling in his face. "Piggy..." he began to say, but then cut himself off. "Simon? Simon!"

As quickly as he had shown up, Ralph was gone, kneeling next to the brown and red blur that Piggy assumed was—he gulped—Simon's body.

"Ralph! You get back here!" he shouted, still unable to put his glasses back on. Nervously, he rubbed the remaining lens between his thumb and forefinger. "Don't you touch that dirty thing, you hear?"

"Piggy, don't say that!" Ralph cried. "We can still save him. I know we can. He isn't gone yet."

"Yeah, he's not gone," Roger said, snickering.

"Don't! Stop it!" Piggy insisted. "Ralph, you get back here right now!"

But Ralph didn't even seem to hear Piggy, or Roger for that matter. "Come on, Simon, I know you can make it," he was saying. "You'll be okay; I know you will." He was working around the body, but Piggy couldn't tell exactly what he was doing without his specs.

Throughout all of this, Jack had been strangely silent. But he finally decided to speak. "Ralph, stop it."

"No—no, you stop it, Jack! You and your pigs! This is all your fault!" Ralph sounded out of breath.

Piggy tuned out of the argument and instead focused on the churning in his stomach and the buzzing in his ears. This couldn't be happening. What was this? Not so long ago, it seemed, he'd been back in the Home Countries. Maybe none of this was happening at all. Was it possible that the whole island was only a nightmare, a figment of his imagination? Perhaps he had never even gotten on the plane and was asleep in his own bed right now. Yes, that must be it: he was only asleep. And by that logic, he thought, whatever was before him could only be as bad as he could imagine. Anything following those rules couldn't be too horrible.

Slowly, Piggy slid his broken spectacles back onto his face. As the world blurred and shifted into focus, he could only think one thing. Well, this is most certainly not a dream. And if it is, I must be completely bonkers. Jack was staring blankly down at Ralph; Roger seemed to be grinning. Ralph was desperately trying to resuscitate what was left of the corpse, namely a mangled mess of blood and torn flesh. Piggy refused to examine it further and turned around, breathing heavily.

A few littluns had emerged from the shelters and were making their way toward the beach to see what the commotion was.

"Go back," Piggy said, his voice hollow. "Don't look at the beach; just go back to your shelters. Be good. What'ud grown-ups think?"

The littlun called Percival took one look past Piggy and burst into tears. He ran back to the shelters as though a ghost were at his heels. Some of the littluns reacted similarly, crying and fleeing. But a few shouted excitedly and rushed down to the beach to join Jack, Roger, and Ralph.

"Get back here!" Piggy cried vainly. "Don't look at that!" He clawed the specs from his face and turned around again.

"He's dead, Ralph. Now stop it. Come back here. Let's give him a nice funeral, like back in the Home Countries. We could bury him, and—" Piggy found he could not continue. Instead his voice became silent, and he broke off, sniveling.

Even though almost everything was a big blur, Piggy could tell Ralph was pushing Simon's chest, trying to force a dead heart to beat. It was no use. Ralph was batty, Jack frozen, Roger taking some sick delight in all of this. And now Piggy had given up.

He turned around, slipped on his specs, and walked into the forest. What he needed was time to think. He couldn't blow the conch to call an assembly. He couldn't try to talk sense into Ralph. He couldn't try to convince anyone else to hold an assembly, either—no one ever listened to him. If only Simon were here now! He might be able to bring Ralph back to reason. Of course, if Simon were here, Ralph wouldn't be barmy in the first place.

Before long, Piggy came to a clearing. Butterflies danced in the morning sunlight and the candlebuds were open; their scent was pouring out all over the island. But these weren't what got his attention. Near a pile of blackened guts was the head of a pig, stuck on the end of a spear and grinning at him. Come here, child, it seemed to say. I've had a nice talk with a friend of yours. And look where he is now. The head seemed to laugh.

Piggy shook his head. This was ridiculous. A talking pig's head? It was as dead as the mangled corpse on the beach. Still, the gruesome sight made his stomach churn and his head spin. Buzzing flies found their way to his sweaty body, and he swatted them away. They buzzed around his ears crawled around in his hair and on his arms. Piggy swatted them again and walked up to the pig's head. It was only a rotting head, that was all. The blood was drying and the soft tissue was starting to decay. It would be completely harmless if the bacteria didn't pose a health hazard. Piggy turned his back to it and headed toward the mountain, not wanting to waste his time examining a dead animal's head.

As he walked, he wondered what the difference was. If he could stand to look a rotting head in the face, why couldn't he look at the body on the beach? It was just dead organic material. The only difference was that there was more of it in the body. Maybe it was also more freshly dead, but only by a tiny bit. Or maybe it was that the head belonged to an animal, and the corpse belonged to a person. But what did that even mean? Why was looking at a dead human different from looking at a dead animal? Did it have something to do with the fact that dead animals could be eaten and dead humans couldn't? Roger seems to think differently, Piggy thought to himself, remembering the dark boy's comment and shuddering.

Piggy, remembering his asthma, decided that he couldn't make it up the mountain after all. He could face the body. Plus, he needed to be there to ward away the littluns and possibly balance out the lack of sanity back there. He squared his shoulders and headed back.

When he cleared the trees, he saw that Ralph was still busy with the body. But he wasn't doing CPR this time. Instead, he had a heavy mess of guts in his hands and was trying to dump them back into the empty abdominal cavity. Piggy couldn't remember seeing them before, but he supposed it was possible—in all the chaos last night, someone might have ripped the abdomen and...

Piggy shuddered. Who was he fooling? This was a thousand times worse than the head, ten thousand times worse. His legs were made of rubber and his stomach was hollow. But his feet continued to move him closer the very thing he dreaded.

"Look, Piggy!" Ralph said gleefully. "He's alive! I saved him!" The fair-haired boy lifted the body under the armpits and the guts fell out again. Ralph didn't even seem to notice. His eyes shone. The same couldn't be said for Simon, though: the eyes were gone and had left behind two empty, bloody sockets. Piggy tasted vomit in his mouth.

"Put it down, Ralph," he said. His voice shook. "Blow the conch, call an assembly, let's bury him..."

"Why would we do that? I saved him, Piggy!" Ralph laughed. A crazed look flashed across his face. "Ralph...Ralph, you'll get back to where you came from," he said in a sad imitation of Simon's voice. "I think we ought to climb the mountain..." He moved the body around and it flopped in his arms like a rag doll.

Piggy was shaking all over. His stomach lurched, and he tried to keep from throwing up. "Ralph..."

He turned away and saw Jack standing there, completely frozen. He moved his hand in front of the redhead's face, but he didn't respond.

Roger started snickering. "You're all so funny! You should see the looks on your faces!"

"Shut up, Roger!" Jack snapped suddenly, making Piggy jump. "You've no right to say that, no right to—" He stood there, fuming. "I'm going to call an assembly," he said. "I'm going to be chief, and—and—well, I don't know, but something is going to be different!"

Jack spun around and walked toward the platform with his nose in the air. Piggy followed quickly, trying to get as far away from Ralph as possible. Roger stayed and laughed.

Soon the sound of the conch rang out across the island. Littluns scrambled onto the platform, followed by slightly older children, and finally most of the biguns. Ralph struggled along the beach, dragging the body.

Jack jumped off the platform and hollered to him: "Leave that there! Just leave it!"

"I can't!" Ralph called back. "He needs my help. We're best friends, and I'm not going to leave him there for you to hurt again!" Piggy's heart sank. So much for helping Ralph.

"Stay on the beach, then! We don't want him here!" Jack turned to the assembly.

"Now, then. You can all tell that Ralph's barmy..."

One of the littluns raised his hand. "Does this have something to do with the dance?"

Jack flinched. "Yes, but—"

Another littlun: "Is Ralph still going to be chief?"

"Well, no, but—"

"Can we still hunt?"

"Yes, but—"

Jack was cut off again by more and more littluns—and older boys—asking questions.

"I don't know!" Jack shouted. "None of you have the conch, so listen to me! Ralph is batty, so I'm going to be chief!"

"Why is he batty?" Henry asked.

"Shut up, just shut up!" Jack's face was red. "It doesn't matter. I'm going to be chief now, and we're going to hunt."

Piggy stood and took the conch with sweaty hands. "What about the fire?"

"The bloody fire doesn't matter," Jack spat. "We'll never get off this blasted island." He sat down, looking defeated.

I know that it ends kind of abruptly, but I don't feel like writing more right now. I'll come out with another chapter soon, hopefully.