Jack lay awake. It was probably around midnight, but he couldn't fall asleep. He hadn't been getting the sleep the ship's doctor said he needed, but that came as a surprise to no one.
He knew from experience that there would be no more sleep tonight. Instead he allowed his mind to wander, and wondered what his cabin mates were dreaming of. They all had such awful dreams these days, though he was secretly unsurprised. His meditations were cut short when he heard a whimpering and a cry as one of the others awoke from the nightmares that plagued them all.
Ralph was running, running through the dense underbrush. This time, however, instead of Jack and his tribe, he was being pursued by the grown-ups. Crashing thought the forest, he knew he had to make it to the beach, and that at the beach there would be safety.
Gasping and panting, he finally made it to the beach. Thinking himself safe, he looked around in relief. Instead of the beach, though, he was on the neck. There was a rustle behind him, and he turned leaden with terror. They were behind him, Ralph knew. They were always behind him, following him. Ralph knew that he had the choice not to turn around, but something always compelled him to. With mounting dread, the fair-haired boy turned.
Piggy was there, with his empty head and holding his cracked glasses. Simon was there, bloodied and holding the little boy with the birthmark.
Ralph woke with a cry.
Jack could hear his cabin mate's deep gasps. After a while, their breath slowed to a reasonable rate. Jack lay in bed, thinking. At length, he ventured "… Ralph? What are you dreaming of?"
Suddenly a silence opened up: the silence of people listening very intently. Jack sighed.
"All right, all you, who's awake?" Jack asked. The other boys murmured, embarrassed to have been caught eavesdropping. "Let's go outside to keep from waking the others." The room filled with silent snickers; most of the boys present knew the only one who was likely to be asleep was the officer who had been assigned to keep watch on their cabin.
Once outside, the boys seemed to be more relaxed. There hadn't been much extra room on the ship, so they had been assigned to one of the lounges. Even so, they tended to be edgy in the presence of the grown-ups. They sat outside, facing the ocean. For a while there was only the sound of the motor running and waves sloshing against the hull.
At length, the silence was broken by Ralph. "Look," he began, "I know none of us want to talk, but we've got to sometime. We've only been on the ship for four days and the grown-ups are getting impatient to hear what happened. I think it's better if we talk to each other. That way, maybe we can make sense of it all… maybe we can…" he stopped, unable to think of what he wanted to say.
Maurice spoke up, startling everyone. "I don't think we should talk about it. I think we should forget the whole thing." What little light there was showed that he seemed to be shaking slightly. "I think we should just not talk about it. At all." He paused, and the other boys thought he seemed to be gasping now. A high-pitched whine emerged from his throat and he cried out. One of the boys quickly shushed him.
Nobody wanted the grown-ups to come out. Not now, late at night. They tried to be nice, in their silly way. They pretended to understand, but they continued to insist that what happened on the island hadn't been so very awful.
Roger woke with a start. He had been dreaming, again. Sometimes he tried to stay awake to keep from dreaming, but it never worked. As his breathing slowed and his terror receded, he listened carefully for sounds of the others being awake. He didn't want them to know he too was having nightmares. As he strained to hear any sign that the others knew, it occurred to him that he didn't hear anything at all. Not a sound. No, there was a sound. A slow dripping. He looked down at his hands; they were red with blood.
Roger woke with a start.
That was the problem, right there. He would dream, and his dreams were more real than reality. It was pitch black, so he quietly crept to the door so he could use the outside lights to see by. In the meager illumination provided, he looked at his hands. They were clean, but they felt dirty. He rubbed the back of his left hand with his right. Then he started picking at the palm of his right, near the base of this thumb. Furtively he looked around, and saw his peers sitting by the side of the ship. Roger guiltily walked over to join them.
Jack looked up at Roger. With a nod of greeting, he continued what he was saying. "Look, I don't care what you all think; Ralph is right. We'll never get anywhere if we never talk about it, and we'll have to talk about it anyway. The adults are getting impatient. We need to tell them what happened. Maybe they'll be able to help." Hearing this, Ralph laughed hollowly.
"Oh yes?" he asked. "What? Will they make it like everything never happened? Will they bring Piggy and Simon back?" The group stared. Never had they heard their leader talk in such a manner.
"Hey! I'm on your side!" Jack cried, getting angry. "We can't get back home if we don't tell them where we live!" Ralph muttered an apology.
"I know. I was just… I'm sorry," he finished weakly. "I'm not really myself right now… but, we do need to talk. So let's do it. Right now."
"Should we wake up Samneric, then? They're the only ones who're still asleep."
"No need," came a voice. It was Sam. He was the only one of the twins who seemed to talk anymore. He and Eric seemed closer than ever. They were never apart for more than ten minutes, and they seemed to follow each other around. Where they used to be two boys who were very close, they now were more like one boy spread over two bodies.
As Samneric sat down, Ralph spoke. "We're all having dreams" he said, "Don't any of you deny it."
Roger agreed, picking at his hands, "I've heard most of you scream in the night." He looked guiltily at his own hands, "I have dreams, too." The dark kept the others from seeing his flush.
Throughout the night and into the early morning the boys talked. At dawn, they returned to the lounge to get some sleep. Some things had been sorted out, and they felt ready for the task ahead of them.
Officer Perks surveyed the boys. They were sleeping, but never very soundly. The so-called 'littluns' seemed fine. They slept soundly and were absurdly energetic during the day. He could hear them yelling in the cafeteria from here. Breakfast always turned into a food fight for them. While it was good to see them having fun, it meant an extra hour cleaning the cafeteria. Even this was infinitely preferable to the dull and weary air that the 'olduns' had. Olduns was a very apt name, too. They didn't act like little ten- and twelve-year old boys. They didn't show any interest in the machinery or the way the ship worked. They just sat dully when asked to describe what had happened.
Perks felt annoyed when he remembered the last six times he'd had to ask them what happened. Then he felt ashamed for being annoyed. From what he'd managed to get out of them, it was no surprise at all that they were suffering from shellshock. He couldn't imagine what he would have done in their place. There had been two—maybe three—killed, for goodness' sake!
Judging from how long their hair had been, he guessed that they had been on the island for maybe three months. The captain may have been disappointed that all these British boys had failed so miserably, but he thought what happened explained a lot about people. It was a bit of a downer, but it didn't come as much surprise.
As Perks had been thinking such thoughts, one of the boys began to cry out. His name started with an R… Ron? Richard?
The R-boy woke, clawing at his hands. Apparently realizing that it was only a dream, he looked around the room. When he caught sight of Perks, he froze.
"Good morning," Perks said uncertainly. "I'm officer Perks."
The boy unfroze and introduced himself as Roger. The two watched each other in silence, Roger rubbing at his hands.
Perks was the first to break the silence. "What's wrong with your hands?" Roger flinched and looked down. He mumbled something Perks couldn't hear. "I'm sorry? What was that?" the man asked cheerfully.
"I can't get them clean," Roger repeated, still looking down. At that Perks looked mildly surprised.
"Would you like to go wash your hands?" he asked, trying to remain cheerful. The boy shook his head mutely. "May I see them?" Officer Perks was not happy with was he saw. There was a strip of skin on the palms of both hands that had been picked raw. He wondered what the boy was doing. "Roger," he began slowly, "you shouldn't do this to yourself. You-" He stopped as one of the other boys woke with a scream.
Quick as a wink, Roger pulled his hands back. "Eric," he asked, "what were you dreaming about?" The boy called Eric panted noisily, muttering all the while. Then he turned to Roger with a faint look of terror.
"None of your business," he snapped, clutching his twin. Perks wondered what had happened between the two of them to make Eric so hostile.
Now Roger had drawn away from the officer, back into his mind. With a mental sigh, Perks glanced around the room. Now most of the boys were awake. As he surveyed them, Perks was not happy that they all looked so ill. All of them were very thin and had a haunted look about them. The doctor had given them all a look on day one. He said that they were all suffering from fatigue, malnourishment, and probably had picked up some diseases and/or parasites. "Any other problems," he had hinted "will be those we cannot see."
Perks was aware of a whispering. The boys had formed a huddle in a distant corner of the room, and seemed to be holding a conference. Every so often one of the boys would stick his head out of the clump to look at Perks.
Finally, one of the boys came over to him. "Is the captain or someone free? We'd like to talk to him." This was the kind of thing Perks was hoping for. Finally, they were willing to reach out and tell everyone what had happened. Perks smiled.
There had been a conference. There hadn't been much talking after the boys had started speaking. Any good humor had fled in the face of such bleak acts. Now the dozen or so olduns were sitting on one side of the room, while the adults went into a huddle of their own on the other side. After a minute or so, Officer Perks, who had gone quite pale, came over to them.
"You may return to the lounge, now,' he told them. The boys—if such a term still applied—filed out.
The room was full of harsh whispers.
"Can you believe that?"
"The part with the pig—"
"All those things that happened—"
The whispers were cut off by the captain speaking. He was pale, but he was relatively composed. "The important thing now, I think, is deciding what we should do with these boys. I have already contacted the base, and they are in the process of locating the parents. However, we have a dilemma on our hands."
While the adults debated what the moral thing to do with the children would be, the children themselves were having a conference of their own.
"What do we do now?" asked Sam, clinging to Eric.
"We wait, I suppose," replied Ralph.
"What do you think they'll do?" asked Roger. Sam turned on him.
"You just shut up and keep quiet, you hear?" he yelled, "None of us want you here, so just shut up!"
"Hey! Don't talk to him like that!" cried Jack, jumping to his feet. Roger had turned deep, deep red. He was staring intently at his hands in his lap. "You come in here and yell at him like that—" continued Jack, working himself into a fury.
"—don't you yell at me! When did you step in to stop him? He was hitting us, us all tied up! You didn't do anything to stop him! You coulda stopped him any time you liked! But you didn't now you—" This litany was cut short by Ralph's hand on his shoulder.
"Quiet. Look at Roger," the boy said quietly. Roger was curled up in his seat, shaking.
"I'm sorry," he said. His throat and eyes burned with unshed tears. "I'm sorry. I can't control myself. I-I—" he broke off, turning to face the wall. Now the blood was back, fresh and red like the pig's blood. It was all over his hands…
Samneric watched in apathetic silence as Roger started feverishly scratching at his own hands. They were even unmoved when he started tearing at his palms with his nails. In the end, it was Maurice who made the first move to stop him.
"Stop! Stop! You're drawing blood!" And it was true. Little beads of red were appearing, merging, and them smearing on the boy's hands. Ralph also moved to stop this self-destruction. Together he and Jack managed to hold Roger still.
Panting, Ralph spoke in his ear. "Look, you think you've got problems? Piggy was probably my only friend, at the end. All the time I feel like he's following me. He always seems to be looking over my shoulder. And Simon—" he was interrupted by sobs, not coming form Roger, but from Jack..
"I'm sorry, Eric. I should have done something. I should have stopped them. I'm sorry. I'm sorry." Eric shifted uncomfortably.
"Yeah, well. That doesn't stop my dreams," he muttered. Most of the boys looked at him in surprise.
"You? What do you dream about? You and Sam get the most sleep of any of us."
"I-I keep dreaming that something happens to Sam." he mumbled, looking embarrassed. "Like- not even real things. That he's just gone. Lat night I dreamt that-that Roger killed him and put him on a spit over the fire." This last part was added with an accusing look at Roger. Roger, however, was not listening. He was rocking back and forth whimpering.
The dam broke when a smallish boy asked one simple yet profound question: why?
When Perks entered the cabin to tell the children the news, he was greeted by the sound of weeping and apologies. Some of the cries were to each other, but most were to people missing from the room. Piggy, Simon, and the boy with the mulberry birthmark were being commemorated.
After the boys' hysterics had ended, Perks told them what had gone on in the conference room. Some had wanted to go to the news right away, before some snoopy reporter found and broke the story. Others had wanted to keep it as quiet as possible, to the point of not giving any information to the families. Another group thought the boys should be taken to court for Justice to be Served. Finally, most people thought that the boys should be quietly returned to their families and be provided with therapy.
By the end of the trip, the island boys had become comrades of a sort. They had lived and seen the same terrors, and remembered those who did not make it. Most would probably be attending the same school and would be seen by child psychologists. In a terrible sort of way, they had gained the most lasting friendships of their whole lives. They never fit perfectly back into society, but they did their best. Once a year, they got together again to remember those lost, and the terrible inferno which brought rescue, if not salvation.
This was, no surprise, an English assignment. (The classic 'thirteenth chapter' assignment) I was wondering what other people would think of it, so I decided to post it. I think if's okay, but a little angst-filled. Still, I'd expect anyone to be a little off after all those killings. Roger and Jack came out a lot more normal than in the real book, but eh.
Review and tell me what you thought.