warning for very descriptive gore!
slight jalph just saying...
lmk if yall are interested in reading my chapter 14-15 as well! im in the process of continuing it so itll be more than 15 chapters lol
Chapter 13: The Ship of Beasts
The ocean air, decorated with the spray of cool water and a biting breeze that came and went, was a stark contrast to the boys, who had, just a few days ago, been on an island so humid as to leave their long, matted hair sticking to their tanned foreheads and sweat clinging to their bodies. One of the littluns was hanging over the edge of the boat, the spray leaving water to dress the contours of his face. The naval officer stood in front of Samneric, both boys’ dark hair still adorned with leaves and twigs that refused to come out.
“You kids weren’t joking? Two of you really did die?” the officer, Thomas, questioned, the hat on his head casting a dark shadow on his forehead, and his eyes that squinted against the bright white sun. Samneric were both battered, mostly as a consequence of Roger’s unideal actions. Eric had a bandage creeping up his midsection to his ribs, the color of rust bloomed across the once white ligature that had yet to be changed again, a bruise that had lost much of its color but still remained a faint hue of purple still swelled along the surface of his cheek. Sam was missing a tooth, and he still limped on one leg. They both opened their mouths at once to speak, but he spoke again instead. “How? When? And– why?”
Samneric looked between each other.
“We heard Jack’s tribe killed him.”
“We don’t know though. It was dark.”
Officer Thomas raised his eyebrows.
“Roger threw a boulder down–”
“And it hit him and he died.”
“He was trying to tell everyone in Jack’s tribe that what they were doing was wrong…”
“Roger didn’t like that apparently.”
Samneric shut their mouths, and Officer Thomas uttered something neither could hear. They stared at him, continually. He spoke once more, and they could hear him finally.
“Good lord, give me strength...”
Jack was staring at Ralph with a sort of glowering in his cold, steel eyes, a scowling in his features. In his hand was a broomstick, the wooden end sharpened to a point with bite marks along the paler wooden point. His lip was split.
“This is all your fault. If not for you we’d still be having fun on the island.” Jack’s voice was accusatory, and hostile. Ralph, in turn, furrowed his brows in part confusion and part anger.
“Why are you upset that we’ve been rescued? We can go back to England. You should be happy!” Ralph, focused partially on the broom gripped in Jack’s slender, dirtied hand like a threat, retorted, face getting hot. Then he scoffed, turning his head away from the savage. “Why am I even surprised? You were ready to kill me over– what, not wanting us to end up being no better than wild animals? You were–”
“I wasn’t anything!” Jack interjected. He had screamed it out, raw and frustrated and maybe a little scared. “I wasn’t anything on that island. Because of you! I could have been chief from the start. But because of those dumb littluns, and you, so good-looking and intellectual and tall and that stupid conch of yours–... Because of you I was just the second choice!” he might have cried, either out of his sheer pique or hurt, Ralph wasn’t sure. The fair boy swallowed down his own tears, his own fear, and turned away.
“You were the choir leader. You… Roger and Maurice and Bill and Henry and… and Simon, you were their leader,” Ralph remarked, a futile attempt at bringing forth the fact that Jack wasn’t always just a second choice. The boy with the fiery red hair scoffed and laughed, though it lacked humor. It might have been self-deprecating.
“They picked me because I could sing C sharp. It wasn’t because they actually liked me and wanted me to be their leader,” he could feel himself losing the hostility that he held moments before. In fact, he felt as if he was losing himself the longer he stared at Ralph, into his oceanic, sapphire blue eyes that did not glimmer like a young boy’s eyes should, only shone with the sun that reflected off of them and not the curious, bright innocence of any normal child. And Jack realized, with a hard swallow, that was his fault. If it weren’t for him, Ralph might be returning to England laughing and smiling and with a glimmer in his eyes befitting a twelve year old boy. A part of Jack that he so desperately wished would bury itself seven feet under and leave him alone wondered what that would look like, Ralph laughing and smiling and not looking as though the whole world, the whole universe had turned its back on him.
“Well…” the boy Jack was thinking of didn’t seem to have a response to that. He looked away, at the shiny ship floors that contradicted the filth, the dirt, mud, and sand and pig droppings they were used to on the island. Then his expression hardened into something cruel. “Well, I don’t care. Be the second choice. In fact, I hope you feel like the last choice for the rest of your life. You tried to kill me. You killed Simon and Piggy.”
Ralph crossed his arms, and took tentative steps away from Jack, who started to lift his hand in protest, but couldn’t do so in time before Ralph was making his escape from Jack Merridew.
Everyone heard the scream, but nobody acted at first.
It was just a cat, a cat yowling and fighting and hissing. Then when it suddenly ceased, in an all to calm quiet, Officer Thomas approached the site of the sound. He stood by a wall, just before entering the scene. There were the wet sounds of someone who would not bother to chew with a closed mouth, followed by a sharp crunch, and then the tearing you might hear when ripping a pillow apart. As he turned the corner, he had to fight the bile that rose into his throat and threatened to spill out across the shining steel underfoot. Roger, the boy who the twins Samneric seemed to fear, had blood dribbling down his lower lip, collecting in a pool under his chin. Brown fur stuck to the corner of his mouth, as well as his long fingers extending from his palms that were too rough to belong to a child. One of the ship cats, Officer Thomas recognized as Leo, lay motionless, still twitching in Roger’s hands. Its fur was mostly ripped off of its skin, muscle exposed to the cool night air as flies already gathered and scattered with every movement. Warm, crimson blood was still spilling from its stomach that was ripped apart, entrails spilt and gathered on Roger’s knees as the boy bit into the decadent flesh with golden teeth stained red. He snapped his head up with a look that spoke of being mildly irked when he heard Officer Thomas’s boots tapping against the floor in a hurried pace, the adult’s hands grabbing at Roger and attempting to pry him off the ground. The child, however, had other plans in mind, as his teeth now sank into the flesh of Officer Thomas’s hand.
“Ow–! Damn it, what in God’s name is wrong with you?” Officer Thomas hissed, drawing his hand back as though he’d been burned in a particularly belligerent fire. Roger just stared at him with the wide, animalistic glare of a beast that had been truly threatened. By chance alone, another pair of adults that were on the ship happened to walk by. They noticed the situation and immediately came over. Roger was snarling and biting and clawing with overgrown fingernails as the carcass dropped from his hands and lie limp, oozing scarlet from the stomach as the adults threw him into the cabin and shut the door just as he threw himself at it.
“We’ll keep him in here,” one of the other two adults, Peter, sighed, “just until we reach port.”
Thomas nodded, in no mood to argue, especially after that boy bit his hand hard enough to leave blood trailing in droplets from the cat’s corpse to the cabin door.
That night, the ocean became a vessel for the likeness of the night sky. The blackness swallowed the once blue sea, stars reflecting off the surface. The rippling currents were the only indicator that they sailed on water and not on empty space. The children gathered in a circle on the main deck, lanterns and torches raised up. Maurice stood in the center of the organism, eyes darting back and forth in a sort of panic. Someone jabbed a stick his way, possibly the broom Jack had sharpened that morning, or perhaps a different one. Nobody ever bothered to wonder. The most important thing was the point that struck. He flinched. Nobody knows who started the circle– but they were chanting while Maurice shielded himself from the onslaught of fake stabs and laughter.
The boys started to move, the circle around Maurice’s cowering form, shifting, how a predator taunts its prey by circling it before leaping and taking it in its jaws.
“Hey, guys– come on, we’re not on the island anymore–”
A spear caught his skin. Barely, but enough to draw forth blooming beads of red on his shoulder. He held it, swallowing down the hard lump in his throat. Just then some of the adults approached the scene, and Officer Thomas took it upon himself to break the circle apart, reprimanding the boys.
“What’re you boys doing? Get to sleep, quit tormenting each other,” he scolded. The boys, mostly littluns following the biguns’ stride, muttered and mocked Officer Thomas’ tone. The predator seemed to lose interest in its prey, perhaps from a lack of a satisfactory response or because it was just a child learning to hunt for the first time and was merely playing with its food, to its mothers’ dissatisfaction.
Ralph had stood by the railing of the ship, watching wide-eyed as the circle dispersed, shocked. How could these boys, even now, have the urge to chant that stomach-churning thing? He was struck dumb. He had been so busy questioning everything that he didn’t realize Jack had been staring at him for the past minute. When he finally caught the other boys’ gaze, he scowled.
“What’s your problem now?” he spat, caught between leaving and insulting Jack some more. Jack stared at him for just a moment longer, lips parting as though he had something to say. Then before he could stop himself, his eyes grew wet and he started crying like he was three. Ralph could barely catch the reflection of moonlight in the salty precipitation rolling down his cheek and off his chin, but it was unmistakable.
“I–” Jack choked on his own voice for a moment. “Can– can we–” he took careful steps forward, stopping right where he was the second Ralph took a cautious step back.
“Can we be friends again? Like– like before everything…” he trailed off, discouraged by the way Ralph gaped and scoffed and shook his head quickly.
“Friends? You want to be friends again? After everything you did to everyone, you— you have the gall to want to be friends again? You’re insane!” Ralph started to argue, but Jack seemed to have no intentions of arguing with him. Ralph was in the air for just a second, a second too long, and then his back hit the hard ground. Jack’s hands were on either side of his head, legs squeezing his sides. One hand rose up in a fist in the air, hovering for a second before it started to tremble where it was. Then slowly, uncertainly, it began to lower to his side, and he slumped where he sat on Ralph’s disbelieving self. He shook his head now. And then, Ralph’s eyes were blown wide as Jack fell forward and wrapped his arms around him, tight and dependent, face buried in the crook of his neck and a sob wracked him, a sob he couldn’t stop. Only one, however. Ralph didn’t move, not at first, too dumbfounded to register in his mind the current situation. Then he realized what was happening, and he shoved Jack off. Jack landed on his back as Ralph had when the former had shoved him down, but he didn’t move, just pulled his legs up and covered his face with his hands as his shoulders shook.
“Don’t ever touch me again. Or I’ll… Or I’ll… I’ll do something mean!” Ralph muttered, less threatening than the boy would have wished himself to sound as he walked backwards a few paces, then turned fully around and left, leaving Jack alone to cry, the jeering stars above reflecting off of each tear.
