A/N: This is set after the remaining boys are saved. Since Piggy was never given a name, I named him. Read and review please!
End of Childhood
It had been twenty years, five months, and six days.
He counted.
It was a frightening obsession, the numbers always running through his head, torturing him, whispering their deadly secrets, their treacherous lies. They haunted his every move, and no matter where he went, what he did, who he saw, they would always follow like a shadow, lurking at the edge of the sunlight, waiting in anticipation for his moment of weakness.
He hated them. He would always hate them.
But he had to live, had to continue, in spite of them. In spite of the burning desire to end it all.
It had been twenty-one years. Twenty-one years, to the day.
He made his annual trip around town. He stopped at the florist's —"Hello, old chap; the usual?"— and he paused at St. Anne's to pray. He had become a religious man; it gave him solace, something to hold on to; but most importantly, it was invisible.
After the church, he walked until noon. Noon was always the time he finally forced himself to move his feet in the direction of the cemetery. He could not bear to face the grave in any form of darkness, so he chose the brightest part of the day to make his visit. Never more than once a year—always on the anniversary—and never for more than a few quiet minutes in silent. In sorrow. In regret.
"Sorry," he mumbled, as he did every year, and offered the flowers to the mound of grass that covered the grave. "So sorry."
In Memory of
Henry Conwell
1928 - 1940
A Wise, True Friend
That night, like he'd done for twenty-one years, he cried himself to sleep. He wept for all that had been good, and all that would be destroyed.
He wept for himself.
And for the twenty-first time, he awoke with a heart that could take no more pain, that would take no more answers.
Like he had done for twenty-one years, he got ready for one more visit.
It had been twenty-one years and one day.
Ralph will never be done grieving.