Note: This fiction is just my little muse which eventually evolved into a story. In no way should you take it into serious consideration of how I violated, destroyed, or completely ignored any symbols or themes in the original piece of writing. And the 'Naval Officer' doesn't come to save the boys. He never comes.
Something for the Pain
-My Comfort; My Insanity-
(Six months after the previous events)
He was bleeding and he didn't care. The warm flow was trickling down his cheek and he didn't mind. The only thought he gave to it was to rub the source with his hand, disrupting the broken blood vessel's healing process.
He licked his hand clean. He ran his tongue through his fingers, savoring every drop of the crimson liquid. He had to fight the urge to bite down onto his hand. Blood tasted good in his mouth, but his own tasted exceptional. But he had no time for this. Ralph had bigger problems to deal with then some stupid cut.
They were out there. Waiting for him. Waiting for him to screw up so they could roast his corpse over the flame. Laugh as his body burned, maybe alive, maybe dead; Ralph wasn't sure how they would go about. Probably alive.
That would suit Jack; hell the bastard would probably 'play' with Ralph's body afterward. Jack would do it. Yeah, fuck his charred corpse. Jack would definitely do it; for pleasure, for pain, Ralph didn't know, but he knew that Jack could and would.
And fire. They would taunt him with it. Fire was what they had. Fire was what he didn't have. It was psychology at its roots that they were messing with. But they didn't know that, they were simply boys. Simple delusional boys playing with fire.
Ralph ate his meals raw - thank you very much. Decaying meat left behind by some careless Hunter, insects, plants and berries – he knew which were safe by experiment of course. But at least he ate. Not like before...
"Hell."
At the moment, he was hidden in his secret place. The Cave. He lived in the Cave. The Hunters wouldn't dare go anywhere near it, for, when Ralph was still living with the tribe, it had been rumored that a horrible monster, A Beast, dwelled within. A boy had been lost to the Beast. Nobody, not even His Heinous, would go near it.
Now, the same was still applied, a monster still was living in the Cave, but the identity had switched. Ralph was the Beast. His Heinous still wouldn't come.
His Heinous was the boy Ralph once knew as Jack. It was a little thing he had going; heinous for highness. But Jack was no true ruler. He was a coward. Ralph had challenged him too. He had challenged him right and proper.
In the dark of night for that was his time now, he had went out and killed a pig all on his own. Ralph had liked it. He enjoyed feeling the blood seep over his hands as its pulse slowed down under his palms. Ralph had strangled the poor piglet for all he was worth.
But it was for a good cause. He kept telling himself that, it was for a good cause. The pig hadn't agreed with Ralph when he told it what he was going to do. Ralph remembered the dead pig talking to him; saying something about 'morals' and 'integrity'; something Ralph had lost and need to find.
He had decapitated the pig with a makeshift knife/sharpened rock and placed its head on a pike – sharpen a stick this. He stuck it in the ground near the Hunter's camp. Ralph waited in his cave for three days, hoping for an answer, but none came. Nothing. Jack didn't even bother, in the very least, to send a messenger with a reply, be it a letter or knife to gut. Ralph wouldn't have minded the knife. But he got nothing instead.
So Ralph had sat in his cave, fuming, thinking about the horrible pain and torture he was going to inflict on the other boy. The ass didn't have the decency to answer! He would show him. Yeah, he would. That was where he was now, deep in the cave, thinking evil thoughts. Deep in his mind, too.
In the dark, Ralph absently picked off a louse that had been crawling around his ankle. His entire body was covered with these little mites, but frankly, he didn't care. The buggers didn't bother him, the only true 'pest' he had was Jack and the Hunters.
But then, when was the last time he had seen one of them? Seven, eight days ago? He didn't know. Maybe they were killing off one another like Simon had prophesized in one of his saner moments. Or maybe someone had come and rescued the others.
"But why wouldn't they come get me then?"
Ralph nearly bashed his skull in with that last comment. They were evil. Evil couldn't coexist with good. It was common sense. He'd seen it on the films before he left.
He was good. He thought. Ralph couldn't remember if it was that, or the other way around. Was he evil? Evil people lived by themselves and couldn't stand to be near good. That was pretty much his situation. Ralph, ostracized by the rest of the boys, living out in his dank littlecave. He knew good was good. Should he go join the others, then?
-No, Ralph knew they were going to hurt him if they ever did get him. At this point though, Ralph didn't know if he would particularly hate dying. It would be so easy...
"No. Gotta do something. This isn't working." He whispered forcefully to the cave wall. It answered with a feint echo. The cave was the only one on this bleeding island that would talk to him besides the pig! But the pig was dead, killed by his hand.
Ralph started laughing. His throat closed up from lack of water and regular use of the vocal cords, among other things. He ended with a deep convulsive cough.
"Why do I have to whisper?" Ralph hollered, setting himself into another fit of coughs. Once he had recovered: "They all know I am here! Why do I have to be quite?" He stood up, brushing off the bugs and dirt that had collected on top of him. His legs had become stiff from sitting in the same position for hours. As he flexed his aching joints: "Come and get me Jack, you filthy dog! I don't fuckin' care about being the fuckin' leader!"
He half-limped towards the cave exit. The early morning light was just started to shine through the opening. "You know what Jack," he said, still shouting angrily. "I never cared about being the fuckin' leader! It was always you!"
At one time, he would have been stunned he had the gall to use the 'f-word'. Before the island, he would have shunned himself. He had no right; he wasn't an 'adult'. But that was before the island. Before the bleeding insanity had set in.
Ralph emerged from the underground cavern, getting a strong whiff of the salty sea-air. The cave had been musty and damp and had clogged his lungs. It had smelled like wet dog. No, like wet dog and blood. His blood. His wonderful tasty blood.
"Yeah Jack!" Ralph shouted, plopping himself down on a large rock; the short-lived adrenalin rush ending. He crossed his legs, Indian-style, and leaned forward. "You can go eat a stick! The hell with ya', the hell with your tribe, the beast, an'all of it."
Ralph picked up a stick and started to furiously scratch patterns into the dirt around his feet. Lowering his voice to a 'conversational voice' he ho-humidly sung,
"I have nothing better to do,
why not go and fuck with you?
Here's a knife, here's a gun,
let's have fun with everyone.
You think you can treat me like shit?
Well guess what, Jack, suck my dick!
Fuck you and your 'crew',
Like I said, I have nothing better to do!
I'm gonna slaughter ya', I'm gonna rape ya'
I'm gonna decapitate you like I did that pig and wear your head as a hat and fuckin' fuck with your dick and fuckin' eat you liver and fuckin' shit on your corpse and—"
Ralph stopped. The last part had been more of a sentence, but that wasn't the reason he had stopped his chanting. He had heard a noise. Looking up, he saw the forest and nothing else. The same old trees, bushes, and bones. He continued with his drawing.Ralph shrugged it off. "Probably some Piggy come to kill me. Ha; Piggy." He grinned. "I wonder what the ol' dunderhead is up to now? Probably moaning and bitching. I should go find him; maybe he knows where that ol' conch is." Ralph looked down at his drawings.
Scratched in to the dirt, they depicted horrible, bloody scenes of people being tortured and dying. Ralph continued to grin. He rubbed his hands on his thighs, getting today's grime and filth all over himself.
"Maybe if I find the conch, everything will go back to normal."
Ralph hadn't bathed since he had first gone into hiding. He couldn't risk it, he didn't have the time; what, with Jack and the Hunters out for his tasty blood. His chin-length blonde hair was entangled with leaves, twigs, and lice; the nits burrowed in deep.
"Jack will be my friend again, the Hunters will be sane, I can play with the littleuns', Piggy and Simon will come back..."
His clothing was gone; Ralph didn't bother with the standard garments anymore. The months of going without shoes had blackened and toughened the bottoms of his feet to the point of being able to walk across sharp rocks. And his hands and face... were stained red. Red from the blood. The blood of animals, the blood of himself. But hell, he had to eat, so why not like an animal? It was what he was.The boy was a nude, greasy, dirty, bloody mess.
"I gotta get the conch. I gotta make things right."
Ralph stood up, smearing his dirt drawings beyond recognition. He sighed. He knew he would probably just go back and sit in the cave. He hadn't done anything for the cause. His first cause, getting back at Jack, had fallen flat. Ralph just couldn't muster up any determination to just go out and do something. He HAD killed that pig, but that was only one thing. And besides, he was going to anyway for food.
"Yep, that's me; Ralph: the boy with one hundred ideas but never the will to carry them out." Ralph spat on the ground. "I got better things to do then mope about all day, why the hell aren't I doing them then? Like get clean. I think I'll go take a bath. Screw Jack. It's what I've been saying for months, why don't I just go DO it. Yeah, I'll screw Jack." Ralph giggled. "But not like that." He used his wrist to wipe at the snot hanging from his nose. "And after I take a bath."
More to come.