Apologies (Chapter I - Life is a Mess)
Story - Apologies
Chapter - I. Life is a Mess
Word Count - 900+
Based On Lord of the Flies by William Golding
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Ralph was a complete mess.
His hands gripped into the bedsheets that cluttered and clumped beneath him. Sweat dripped from his forehead and soaked into the pillow as his head jerked from side to side.
As an alarm rang out from the bedstand to his right, his eyes shot open and seemingly instantaneously he sat up and hit the alarm off.
Though the incessant ringing the alarm usually let out was apparently annoying to all but him, there was a certain comfort it gave him. A reminder first thing as he’s pulled out of the nightmarescape he once lived through that civilization is there for him. A comfort he once pleaded for and it seemed to now be so… Surreal.
It had been a near decade since the island and, now in his twenties, he found himself still constantly reminded of it.
He was sent to therapy when he first came back but it was all too much, the feeling of being reminded of it seemed to not assist him in alleviating the pain of it all in the slightest.
He found himself instinctively avoiding things, small things, but it was hard to stay away from when subtle and miniature reminders seemed to lay everywhere.
He refused to see any of the boys again, and hasn’t spoken to any of them since.
Nightmares of Simon and his partaking in it still plaguing his mind, the memory of Piggy cursing his dreams. He remembered everything, though he tried not to, and his life revolved around avoidance.
He couldn’t take it anymore. Nearly 10 entire years since it all and he hadn’t done anything. Everything in his being told him to get up, to find Piggy’s Auntie and ask for his name, to find Jack and express all he could think in his mind, to find them all.
But alas, thoughts meant nothing when counteracted by the body. And so, he lied there. Through the early morning hours, watching his alarm relentlessly change time while he seemed stuck, locked down and defeated, in one split moment.
Jack was a different mess of his own.
A foot and then another. Pushing back the dirt beneath his toes and panting heavily as he raced for his life.
Weaving between trees, ducking and diving, running to safety from a thought that was chasing him.
Though a human seemed no where around, the forest neverending, something in him possessed him to run. Not to escape tangibly but to escape mentally. He never forgave himself.
The sweat ran down and off his face intermingling with the tears that slowly and unnoticeably fell from his eyes.
As the forest thinned his eyes closed and he felt the breeze on his cheeks, cooling the tears and sweat.
For a moment he felt free again but as he fell back into the prying nightmare, his eyes shot open and he came to a screeching halt, his heels digging into the dirt, a cliff lying directly in front of him threatening to drag him down. As with his problems he had stopped just in time to avoid a seemingly inevitable plumet.
Rather than stepping back he stood, teetering on the edge, his mind racing and his breathing fast and shallow.
His eyes drifted shut and his mind eased and he lifted a foot to hang it over the edge, unsure of his next move but sure of his actions.
A rustle in the bushes snapped him out of his dreamland and into reality and on instinct he called out to find a response, “Who’s there?”
Another rustle and he leapt forward towards it aiming to grab, not allowing his aim to switch to injuring.
His hands wrapped around two extended arms of what he now saw to be a small boy and let go, terrified of himself again for a second, stepped back and then raced off towards the “civilized” world. What a mirage.
But they could never compare their messes.
Jack had extended a small regretful greeting to Ralph, in hopes of apologizing for what he had became but as the letter was sent back without a response he realized what a mistake meeting up would’ve been.
He could envision it brilliantly and with such detail.
Their roles had almost reversed. A rather apologetic Jack stumbling and muttering a line of apologies to the air coming face to face with a ruthless Ralph who would only have eyes out to kill him.
He could barely even mutter the word itself.
Jack wasn’t the apologetic type and he knew it, but disliking giving sincere apologies didn’t make it impossible for him to own up to his actions and apologize for things he was responsible for entirely.
Though he “should’ve grown out of it by now”, or at least that’s what they tell him, it haunts his every day and boils something inside of him that wants to be forgiven and wants to beat and berate at the same time.
And Ralph wanted to think that Jack couldn’t forgive himself, seeing as he resulted in such terrifying things, even though he knew it was wrong to think that it was at the same time merely human. A revengeful twinge in him.
But sometimes the things we try hardest to avoid are inevitable.
