Fire on the Mountain, a lord of the flies fanfic

A/N: I wrote this for an English project on Golding's Lord of the Flies. It's an amazing novel, and I thought the lyrics to this song fit perfectly with how I imagine Ralph must feel both throughout the story and after it's events. I hope you like it!

Fire on the Mountain
Rob Thomas

Fire on the mountain
Through the freeze
Save yourself
There's evil
In the garden
But you don't see it
I can tell

Ralph sometimes wondered if he was the only one who understood the reality of their situation. They were only a group of boys, stranded on this deserted island with no adults to guide their actions. He knew they had one hope of rescue, one hope of being saved. They had to keep the fire going at all costs. The fire on the mountain could never stop burning, or they would lose their one chance at survival. But he could see that the boys were losing sight of this one, vital task.

Something was rising within them: something was tainting the mystical paradise the island had once seemed. Like in the biblical Garden of Eden, a snake of savagery was slowly twining its way around the boys' hearts, poisoning their civilized minds with the lure of forbidden, primal urges. They were losing themselves to the jungle and Ralph was starting to feel as though he was the only one who could still see what was happening…

How do you sleep while the city's burning
Where do you go when you can't go home
How do you drink when there's blood in the water
Where do you turn when the world moves on
When the world moves on, on

Ralph tossed and turned at night in their flimsily constructed shelters, dreaming of home. He told himself over and over that his father would come; his father, the brave naval officer, would see their smoke and arrive at the island to rescue him. The nightmare would be over and he could go home at last.

But deep inside Ralph knew the truth. Home didn't exist anymore. The outside world was being destroyed by war as surely as their own little civilization was soon to be. His father was probably gone, and all these little lost boys were almost certainly forgotten by a world too concerned with their bloody battles to remember the small plane of children lost at sea.

They were stuck here on this island, he knew, and sometimes that far-off dream of escape seemed too distant of an idea to worry about. He was starting to forget the importance of the fire, could feel a curtain flicker over his eyes when he tried to recall what was so vital about it. Rescue? The idea now seemed almost insignificant at times.

Fire on the mountain
You can feel it
Against your skin
You're standing
By the river
Let the river
Take you in

Ralph crouched in the thicket, dizzy and out of breath with fear, panic coursing through him. Smoke was filling his lungs and he could nearly feel the heat of the flames at his back, trying to drive him into the open. Sparks stung his skin as he started to run, run through the forest ablaze with fire. He felt like a hunted pig, cornered in by the wild, savage ululation of the hunters that surrounded him from every direction.

He hid for a moment, trying to catch his breath, searching desperately for an idea. There was one option that dangled tantalizingly in front of him – couldn't he just give up, let himself be swept away by the river of savagery? Couldn't he just let this all go, couldn't the nightmare be over?

How do you sleep while the city's burning
Where do you go when you can't go home
How do you drink when there's blood in the water
Where do you turn when the world moves on
When the world moves on
When the world moves on, on, yeah

The entire island was alight, clouds of smoke obscuring the sun and the wild crackling of vicious flames nearly drowning out the feral calls of the boys. Ralph had nowhere to go, nowhere to run, no way to escape. He hit the beach and fell to the sand; desperation could only carry him so far. Spent with exhaustion, Ralph imagined he was seeing something. Slowly, he looked up and saw the one sight that could end this horror.

The boys gathered and words were exchanged, and Ralph felt something break within him. Raw agony exploded from him in deep, wracking sobs as his vision clouded red. Red with memories of the ocean bubbling crimson with Piggy's blood, with Simon's torn and shredded corpse. Red with the knowledge of all that was dark within the human soul, the burden that would never leave him.

Hell, I see smoke out on the horizon
Mama, get your baby, take her down to the water
I view the wind like a promise broken
I see the future but it's getting farther

It'd been twenty years and Ralph had never forgotten. He stood at the bow of his fine naval vessel, captain's insignia borne proudly upon his uniform. Ever restless, he scanned the horizon line for anything out the ordinary. His eyes fell for a moment upon a distant disturbance – smoke, he wondered? But his eyes had played tricks on him before, and he knew what he was seeing was merely a phantom of his past. He was always scanning the open sea, searching for a sign, any sign. Of what, he didn't know. Perhaps it was the ghost of what had happened so long ago, driving him on relentlessly to rescue any lost boys that he could, to prevent something of the sort from ever occurring again. Wind off the ocean buffeted him, barely rustling the hair that he always kept cropped very close to his head. He turned away from the bow for a moment, attempting to envision the future. But all he could see when he tried to look ahead was the past.

So Ralph roamed restlessly, aboard his ship, never staying in one place for very long. He was still plagued by incessant nightmares; nightmares of the way civilization had burned to ash so easily on that island all those years ago. Little boys turned to savages, the ocean bubbling with the blood of innocence lost. He had blood on his hands that would never wash away; deep, permanent scarring that would never heal. The world had moved on long ago: stories of lost little boys recovered had been splashed across the news, never to be thought of again. The world had forgotten what had happened, perhaps had never really understood in the first place. But Ralph understood. And Ralph would never move on.

A/N: I hope you enjoyed it, and I'd love it if you left a review telling me what you thought, either way. Thanks so much! Also, this is a great song and everyone should definitely check it out!