A/N: Lord of the Flies was the best book I have ever had the pleasure of reading for school in many, many years (though nothing can top The Sword in the Stone back in middle school). This fanfic was originally written as part of a school project to write what happened after the boys were rescued from the island, centering around one character specifically. I had overlooked it as a fanfic until I went through my school files and read it. I figured I might as well post it in case anyone might find it interesting.
The fic may be a bit hard to understand, as Ralph is constantly switching from his current musings to his memories. The "..." represents a change between these two situations.
Please, send me all of your constructive criticism~!
Moving On
The boy with fair hair sat, silently hunched over, perched quite precariously on the edge of an old stone wall. His eyelids were hovering over his eyes, as if he were about to fall asleep. The dark circles under his eyes also seemed to support that theory. However, that was not the case.
Ralph was thinking.
As he thought, he rubbed his thumb over the one good lens of the glasses that he held in his right hand. The frame was bent and warped, despite his numerous attempts to straighten it out. Ralph was performing this action semiconsciously, as it was the glasses that he was thinking about. Remembering, really.
...
On the long ride home in the navy boat, the boys had been completely silent other than a whimper here or there from the littluns. They only spoke when spoken to by one of the seamen who watched over them with pity and in some cases disdain in their eyes.
For the boys, the sudden arrival of adults on the island had seemed surreal after such a long period of isolation; all hope of rescue had long ago been abandoned. Illuminated by the low light provided by the ship's lower decks, some of the boys could actually be seen lightly pinching their arms, trying to convince themselves that they were really awake and that this abrupt return to civilization was actually happening.
Ralph had done his best to stay away from the boys, huddling alone in a corner of the room, and the others returned the favor. In fact, all of the biguns had sat far apart, their eyes hardly straying from fixed spots on the floor, whilst the littleuns huddled together, trembling.
The seamen, before bringing the boys aboard, had scrubbed the paint off of them, cut their hair, and supplied them with outfits so many sizes too large that some of the littluns were hardly recognizable as anything other than a pile of starchy clothes.
Upon arriving back in England after the long, quiet voyage, the boys had filed out of the boat at port and proceeded to sit on benches in front of an official-looking building. Inside, attempts to identify them were being made. Many of the littluns, like Percival, weren't even able to supply the men with a name, so there were many exasperated sighs and hushed conversations among the ranks of the adults.
Though they were finally back home where they belonged, there was a dark cloud that loomed over the group of boys. With the paint and the freedom of the island gone, guilt was trickling into the minds of the boys who had been nothing short of savages only a few short months ago. The feeling of unity that the situation on the island had created was also gone, leaving the boys feeling utterly detached from one another. Even Samneric seemed affected.
Ralph, however, was unsure of what to think or how to feel. His whish had come true; here they were, back in civilization, far away from that accursed island where two good friends had met their tragic ends. Still, something wasn't right. The sky looked as if it were bruised, heavy with ominous, dark clouds that seemed unnatural and unwelcome. All of the adults that he had seen wore grave looks on their faces, and no one had welcomed them back, not even once. The idealistic view of adults that Ralph had expressed back on the island seemed to hold no merit now that he was back among them.
What had happened?
He was jolted out of his reverie by a body appearing directly in front of him. Ralph lifted his chin up out of the hand that it had been cupped in, casting his eyes upward, and found himself looking into the freckled face of Jack Merridew.
Though he tried to fight it, Ralph couldn't stop the little jolt of fear that shot up his spine at the sight of the red-headed boy and the memory of the last time he had been this close to him.
"Here." Jack's hand shot forward and he pressed something cold into Ralph's hands. Jack was looking anywhere but Ralph's face. He opened his mouth as if he was about to say something else, but in the end he merely ran a hand through his tousled hair, turned on his heel, and shuffled back over to the bench he had been seated on. Roger scooted over to accommodate him, making sure that they were seated as far apart as possible. He no longer felt any camaraderie towards the former chief.
Ralph watched Jack's hasty retreat unblinkingly, somewhat stunned, but he quickly looked downwards as Jack sat back down. He instead turned his attention to whatever it was that Jack had given him.
Cradled in his hands were the remnants of Piggy's glasses. The broken lens was almost completely gone now, and the metal of the frame was horribly distorted from all that it had been put through.
Ralph felt a familiar prickling in his eyes, so he turned his head towards the wall behind him, not wanting anyone to see him cry. Again.
...
Now, Ralph's eyes opened wide as he heard the sound of a pig. He shuddered, stopping his methodical rubbing and instead gripping the glasses tightly as if they could ward off danger.
Ralph's heartbeat began to slow as his brain caught up with his body, and a trickle of sweat rolled down the side of his face. His tongue darted out of his mouth to catch it.
He was in the English countryside, not the island, he reminded himself. That pig wasn't dying; it was simply calling to its comrades. The fear that he had just felt wasn't true fear, not like he had felt back then.
Ralph looked behind him, searching for some form of comfort, his gaze traveling up to the house that he now lived in.
...
When Ralph's father had come to get him from the port city, he had done what any parent would do after seeing the child who they previously thought to be dead: he told Ralph that he loved him, and that he was so glad his only son was alive and okay. Ralph returned to living with his father, and things had seemed to be settling down. The only problem was that his father's residence had been on a beach.
Ralph had hardly been able to eat or sleep, and when his father tried to cheer him up with a beautiful conch shell that he had found on the beach, it had been too much for Ralph to handle.
Now they lived in the country. This was certainly an improvement from the beach, but there were farms all around them. Pigs lived on farms.
It seemed that no matter where Ralph went, he could not escape the memory of the island. Sometimes it would be something as simple as a hearing something that made an eerily familiar trumpeting sound or the loud sounds of the boys who lived down the road playing roughly with each other that would make Ralph jump as some sort of unnamed terror shot though him. Ralph's father was worried at the way Ralph sometimes twitched for what seemed like no reason, and he wondered if his son had developed a nervous tic.
After numerous therapy sessions, Ralph had run finally in to another one of his therapist's customers. Seeing Roger walk by, his posture perfect, clad in a stiff-collared shirt, suit, and dress pants, his dark hair slicked back, had given Ralph worse nightmares than usual. All he could think of was Roger, dressed like a proper young English gentleman, endlessly throwing rocks.
...
Looking up at the sky now, Ralph let a great sigh escape his body. He bit his lip and glanced down at the glasses still clenched in his hand. He loosened his grip and saw that the wire frame had left marks in his hand. He stared blankly at his hand for a good minute, motionless.
Suddenly feeling very giddy, Ralph affectionately stroked the good lens of the glasses one last time before squeezing his eyes shut and throwing the glasses as hard as he could in the direction of the fields below.
Then he hopped down off the wall and ran in the opposite direction, towards his father's house.
It was a start.