Archive of Our Own

It was really small but I caught it today and killed it with my bare hands but hadn’t any fire to roast it. I asked for a stick, there were no sticks here because here was a small treeless forest and treeless forests didn’t have sticks but i asked for a stick so I had a stick. The stick was sharp but not sharp enough. I produced the head with my hands because savages ought to be able to do that with small small pigs but I couldn’t so my teeth helped too. The pig oozed warpaint and I knew what to do with warpaint because I saw ████ did it too. 

I hadn’t a puddle or anything to look at myself so I prayed that I did it right and looked proper. I put the pig’s head on the stick and prayed to the beast because savages prayed to the beast and now I am █████ the savage and God could finally save me.

The serpent nearly got him.

At least that was what they told Wilmer. He certainly didn’t look the type to fall, but one could never be sure. 

When they admitted him, he was halfway out of his mind, mumbling things and flailing in his restraints. He looked dangerous and pitiful. No one knew how he managed both of those, but he did, though once he got his own room, no one thought of him anymore. At least except for the staff, and even they made sure to only stay long enough to feed him medication. Someone sent in money every month or so to keep him alive, and he was alive still, but no one was there for him.

Wilmer didn’t even think he realized that he had no one. God save the poor soul. 

Be saved. Be salvaged. Be savages. 

The ship is salvation and God is salvation so the ship is God but salvage sounds like savage so God is a savage but the ship is God so the ship is a savage but it can’t be because savage is bad and God is not bad so the ship can’t be bad and the ship can’t be a savage but it is because God salvages the savages and the ship salvages the savages but then I won’t be salvaged because I’m not a savage but I am on the ship so I must not be salvaged so I must be on the island but I don’t want to be on the island but the ship only salvages the savages so I must be a savage because I want to be saved.

Be saved. Be salvaged. Be savages.

Well, he’s done it.

Ansel saw it coming miles away, though it isn’t as if anyone’s behavior here is sane— his included, which is just a pleasant, pleasant bonus when you’re almost always around nutty people (so much for romance). Everything that occurs in this tiny crawlspace  of a facility really takes tolls on everyone’s psyches, and perhaps that is why a grand total of zero person bothered to be at least alarmed by the state they found that boy in. 

(Well, except for dear old Nora, but she just had too much compassion and it sometimes made Ansel question why she even chose to be here.)

There were virtually no surprises. They all just shared one knowing look at each other, “The day came, finally," then proceeded to neutralize the boy and secure him back into his restraints, still screaming and growling, barring his red-tinted teeth, tacky blood dripping from both his arms like a wounded animal. Only after they put him to sleep was his room quiet again. 

It wasn’t humane, in any respect, but this boy didn’t seem any more human than a wild hog.

On his way out, Ansel saw the ripped-out head of a rat hanging upon the tip of a butter knife, its innards spilling on the tray all the way to the empty carcass, lifeless underneath the dangling spine. It looked like a sacrifice. 

Gross.

Ansel gagged a bit, then made a note to call the exterminator. 

There went his appetite. 

It’s a pig’s head on a stick. 

It’s a pig’s head on a stick. 

The stick is sharpened at both ends.

It’s a boy’s head on a stick.

Nora always felt bad for the poor boy.

It wasn’t like she could do anything though. She was only a nurse. The facility was consistently understaffed, so she couldn’t take care of him exclusively. She had other patients to tend to as well. And when he asked for a butter knife, she thought nothing of it. Maybe he was finally coming to his senses and regaining a bit of civility. 

Oh, but she was wrong, so, so wrong, and she carried that wrong with her like the dog tag of her deceased husband and the death of her nephew. The bile rose to her throat every time she walked past his room. They cleaned everything, but it was too clean now and she always smelled the scent of putrid entrails and felt the need to walk in and check on him and clean everything all over again. If she wasn’t so busy her mind was kept out of it, she would follow her compulsions. She did, sometimes, even when her body was so tired she might drop dead. Cleaned and cleaned and cleaned and cleaned. Until everything was spotless and she smelled the rotting and cleaned again. 

Sometimes, she stopped to touch his hair, pet the fair locks and remembered that whatever happened on that island depraved him of his senses, then she would smell the the corpse like it had been there the whole time like it was the boy like the boy had been dead but he was sleeping but what if he was

dead

so she screamed for everyone and woke the boy.

The stick is sharpened at both ends but there are no pigs here so what what what

who?

“Due to your family having no previous history of mental illness, we can only perform diagnosis based on his current symptoms, which involve severe delusions, thought broadcasting, and episodes of erratic motor behavior. There could be more underlying symptoms that we don’t know of yet, but after much discussion, we have come to the conclusion that your son suffers from psychosis symptoms linked to schizophrenia, most likely triggered by the events that occurred during the time that he was on the island.”

“So he is hopeless, then?”

“No, sir, I would not say that he is hopeless, howe—“

“Are you telling me that my son, my son, is the same as those insane scums of society?”

“Sir, please—“

“This is obviously a fraud. Come on, █████, we’re going back.”

“…”

“Hurry along now, we’re going to be late for the train.” 

“…”

“█████?”

I never had a thing for language but I was never bad at words either. Daddy was a man of many and loud words. Mummy wasn’t, she was empty and silent and only did housework. People told me I took after Daddy. I was am proud to take after Daddy.

But my words have been going missing lately. I could hardly speak to the captain to tell him what I saw and who was missing without without without losing my words. I remembered that I could form better sentences than this way back when I was still at home and had my books and my daddy and my dog Saphie but Saphie is dead now because we left her when we got on the plane when the enemy started bombing us. But now all I could say was that it was bad and then they would ask me how bad it was and I would say that they didn’t, wouldn't know how bad it was because they weren’t there so they told me, “Boy, if you knew how bad it was you should tell us” and so I told them that a boulder fell on Piggy and he died but I could say nothing else even though I remembered everything. I couldn’t tell them anything because I remembered everything and I remembered that I murdered Simon and I couldn’t tell them that. I didn’t want to go to jail. Jail was bad. Everyone told me jail was bad.

If anyone asked him, he did not have a son, or his son died in a plane crash, or his son was missing in a foreign country, or his son died on that Godforsaken island. His son was not alive. His son was not a live. His son was not alive. 

By God, he did not have a son.

He thought it was the mother. Surely it had to be the boy’s mother. After all, something like that could not have originated from his side of the family. 

Surely, it had to be the mother. She was constantly sullen and withdrawn, never quite fitting in with the wives of his friends or any of the people on their street. Even before they got married, she was a tough one to crack, lacking Faith and unconvinced of the Christian God's divine powers. She did, once, say that her Gods were the likes of Shakespeare and Mary Shelley, but what kind of good would Gods like them do? Offer her poetry, and that would be it. He told her that she only spewed nonsense, and that there was only one true God, whose Goodness would rule over their household as long as there was Faith.

Apparently, there was not enough True Faith in their family. It was God’s punishment that he no longer had a son. Surely, the mother’s atheism must have something to do with it, as before he had no son, he had taught his son to worship the one and only Christian God. Perhaps the boy’s mother had fiddled with it somehow.

Maybe if he got rid of her, he would have a son again.

Sometimes, I forget to pray.

I know Daddy will be mad, but I think I’m losing my Faith. I prayed on the island every night but nothing worked and the hunters continued to be savages and everyone continued to die and burnt out of existence like the signal fire because no one was watching it. So I thought maybe God wasn’t listening and prayed louder each time. And then I got too busy hiding from the savages that I forgot to pray but when I forgot to pray the ship appeared. 

So now I’m on the ship and the ship is moving back and sometimes I forget to pray. I ought to start doing it again soon because Daddy will be mad at me for it. But if my prayers did not work on the island, why should it work here? 

Her boy was in a mental institution and she couldn’t do anything about it.

If it came down to her, if she knew what would happen, she wouldn’t have let him on that plane at all. Maybe they all would have died within the rubble of their bombarded house, but maybe that would have been better. Her son was alive, but was a husk of a boy, something that took up space but was empty. He reminded her of herself after marriage, the only differences being that marrying the naval officer had been her choice. At least she still could function. 

When they ripped her son away from her, she had demanded to know why despite already knowing the answer herself. That island took something out of him. She didn’t have the heart to want to know what. 

His father, though, blamed it on her side of the family, perhaps even her. She never could place herself among overzealous followers of religion, so he considered her silence demented behavior, even though maybe he, too, had gone insane with the sudden disappearance and reappearance of his only son. She supposed he was a good man, only blinded too much by his Faith that he let his own mind delude him into thinking that his son’s disorder was due to the will of God.

Forgive me Father, for I have sinned.

Sometimes, I pray, though I don’t pray as much as I did before because I found out that praying didn’t really work. I pray in the empty chambers and deliver my confessions to the pipelines. If the ship saves us, the ship must be God and maybe if I pray to the ship I will be forgiven. I confess that I let █████ die and lost myself to savagery and killed █████. I pray and confess and ask for forgiveness so maybe my words will return again and I will be saved from seeing the island every time I look out to the sea. 

I saw something that one night on the ship, too. Something I shouldn’t see but I couldn’t help it because it was dark and I wanted a glass of water. It was something the savages did and the savages looked like they had fun and like they were free from guilt and like they were saved from the view of a burning island. 

So i thought maybe God just salvaged the savages. Maybe I need to be a savage to be saved because God is the ship and the ship saved the savages from their own island.

What happened on the ship stayed on the ship. Merridew told him that, but Merridew was Merridew and he was himself and he couldn’t help but bring what happened on that ship back to the land. Merridew, bloody him, of course, knew this, so they spent the following years pawing each other’s pants like there were no tomorrow. They were free when they finally removed their restrictions, liberated from all society and expectations, Merridew and him, engulfed by the heat of desire. 

Pleasure was all what they meant to each other. 

Sometimes, he would ask Merridew, “Why bother?” They both knew Merridew could get pleasure anywhere else. They both knew Merridew could easily dump him to the streets. So why bother? 

But instead of an answer, Merridew would ask him back, “Do you not want this?” He would shake his head and they would return to the previous fervency of their rendezvous. Merridew’s skin was cold as ice and his was, as well. There wasn’t supposed to be heat, but there was. He reveled in the heat, in the strength with which Merridew held his body up like it weighed nothing. At times, Merridew would whisper to him that they all had lust, that they all were animals, but that he was the only one to whom Merridew could reveal the Beast which society didn’t, couldn’t accept. He didn’t need to be told to believe Merridew. After all, he had witnessed the Beast first-hand, had experienced the Beast first-hand. The Beast was an animal. He was the Beast. Merridew was the Beast. Merridew and him, they were both animals because they were Beasts. 

And it felt good, being an animal.

It felt good to lose yourself, or rather, the self that society constructed for you, and give in to your desires, your innermost cravings, to chase after pleasure and immerse in it until one suffocated. 

To him, that pleasure is sex and the pain of others. He runs after both, but can only attain one. He is contented with one as long as he keeps receiving it. Merridew is good at giving it to him, and in return, he is good at whatever Merridew wants him to do. 

“I wonder how that one’s been, Roger.” In the dark, Merridew’s voice still has the rawness from when he was younger and wilder. He speaks with the hushed tone of someone who is out of breath. And out of breath, they both are. 

“Who?”

“Ralph. The blond one from the island, remember?”

“The one you wanted to get rid of?”

“Want. Not wanted. Though it would have been nice gifting his head to the Beast.” 

“I sharpened that stick real nice, too.”

Merridew laughs. The sound gravelly. 

“Want me to find out more about him?”

“Please."

Pills pillspills pills pillspillspillspillspillspillspillspills.

If I drink pills I will be normal again and my words will return again and I won’t be a savage again after all I needn't be a savage I have already been salvaged and if I drink pills God will take me out of here and I will be saved again. 

And I will finally be normal again.

What is in a name? He doesn’t like his name and wants a different one, though if he chooses another one he will hate it again once it ceases to suit his tastes. He tells people to refer to him with his given name. The children of his cousin call him “Jack”. To Roger, he is “just Merridew”. And to himself, he is █████. 

(He used to want to be hailed as chief, but the glory of the title passed just like any other, and he soon wished to be of a greater, more prominent title. The military offered him that, though grandeur remained its temporary self. He quit the Royal Navy at twenty-five, once he became bored with titles, and returned for the inheritance from his dead Father. There, he decided that titles were useless little concepts. There, he decided that he wanted the world wrapped around his finger.

He used to want to be named Ralph, too. Ralph. Rafe. Raphael, much more adult-like than ████. The desire came then went. He was glad he never went through with it.)

He knows he owes everything he has now to that island, his haven. It was the soil that fueled his metamorphosis, the putrid smoke of the burnt jungle that formed the very core of his philosophies. He misses the feeling of a spear and his old hunting knife in his hands as much as he feels the euphoria each time he wields his authority like it were a blade. 

The hunting knife now lays in a velvet-lined box in his study, ritualistically cleaned and polished every other day. Sometimes, he fishes it out and uses it to sharpen his pencils. Sometimes, he takes it out, after which Roger’s skin will be marred with cuts. The latter says he doesn’t mind. He knows Roger doesn’t mind. They are both accustomed to each other’s darkness, have both peered into the eyes of each other’s Beasts, and have both settled on a symbiotic relationship in which Roger submits to him for the sexual pleasure only he can give. 

Along with their symbiotic relationship is Roger’s lack of emotional commitment and willingness to comply and submit to his orders. They are both things he appreciate. They assure him that he can get whatever he wants as long as he keeps giving Roger pleasure. It is why he often asks favors of Roger once the latter is satiated, deliriously basking in the afterglow of their sexual endeavors. 

And it is now, when the rise and fall of Roger’s chest are rapid and uneven, when the red flush on Roger’s skin finally colors a more vibrant shade than the moonlight, that he reaps his sows.

“That Ralph that you wanted to know more about, he’s in a mental institution now. Has been for the last fifteen years, or so I’ve heard.” 

“So he’s the one who turned up insane.” What irony.

“His father murdered his own wife and committed suicide. Out of disgrace, I presume. His last words were that he did not have a son.”

“What shame, I would’ve loved to stop by on my next business trip and have a chat with him. Tell him I was the one who caused his son to spiral into insanity. Witness the look on his face.”

Roger snickers. The sound vibrates through the bed’s mattress to his skin. 

“Only you would think of that, Merridew.”

“Where’s this mental institute that you spoke of, Roger?”

“Quite near our old school before the island, actually. Paying someone a visit?”

“Would be a shame if I didn’t, after all these years, don’t you think? And find the twins for me, too, won’t you? I wish to have a little reunion trip.”

Roger laughs again, prompting him to lift the corner of his lips. 

“Maybe if you burnt that island to a crisp, you wouldn’t have to make the trip at all.”

According to the Bible, humans are creations of God. Humans whose natures are more diabolical than divine, as they had inherited the original sin from Adam, the very first creature after God’s own image. 

And God, God is an emerging alcoholic.

But you can’t possibly know that, right? After all, He is omnipotent and you’re not, and it makes complete sense because of course He wouldn’t want you to know what he truly is. He wants you to believe in Him, masking His Darkness in the form of another character, the Devil, but what would become of your Faith if you knew? 

Though, perhaps Faith is nonexistent ever since the Beginning.