Chapter Text
The hasty sprint through the irregular surface of the sand made his naked feet hurt, as well as the scratches all over his legs, stabbed with thorns and splinters. But he still kept this race-like chase.
The red boy stopped abruptly, but his panting still ballooned his painted chest. Peacefully, he walked enough to stand in front of that horrifying picture he admired.
There, impaled in a stick, was the head of his victory and the beginning of his leadership as a king. As the Chief. The blonde hair strikes shone under the right light as if they were golden threads, and the once bright eyes stood opaque and without blinking, letting several flies dance on them and even start their feast.
" Why do you hate me?" The head's gargling voice asked, and Jack could only smile while admiring the dark blood dripping down the head's mouth.
Jack opened his mouth with a smile of satisfaction but shut it almost instantly. He craved to answer the question but could only feel his guts writhing with fear and disgust. He became pale as he saw the fire around him as the other hunters appeared, grasping sticks with two pointy sides.
He tried to recover himself and stand straight in front of his people, but before even pronouncing another word, the sour substances threatened to escape from his mouth. The head kept asking more and more as the flies devoured the tender eyeballs, and the hunters started running towards him, shouting, burning, and thirsting.
The wailings of the choir of heads made him buzz in pain.
He opened his eyes, feeling like a routine starting all over again, but there were no hunters, no sticks and no blond's head. No flies and no fire. Nothing but a dim light unveiled the dimensions of the pale room around him.
Still, that growing feeling of twisting and stinging his throat was there, so he had no other option but to run to the toilet. That awful substance left his body, soaking his auburn locks in that disgusting sourness and inevitably sticking to his face. Jack's disgusted face met itself when he looked at the mirror and sank his head in soapy freezing water. He scrubbed every inch of skin and hair he had.
He realised he had grown millions of freckles again, behind the usual paint and blood that wore like a mask. His pale skin was now a little more tanned, and the reddish locks fell from the sides of his face to his shoulders without any form. He looked at himself with disgust.
The longer he saw himself in the mirror, the more he wanted to vomit again. He tried to reach out the cabinet behind the mirror, only for him to find some supplies, a pair of scissors, for example. He admired that shiny metal on his hands, how... How was that there? He explicitly remembered no survivors were allowed to have these things in their rooms.
But then, he remembered he was Jack Merridew. Not an ordinary kid: He was the son of two of the most exceptional attorneys in the country and consequently, the heir of that heavy surname he was born with. He closed his eyes whilst missing and resenting both of his parents.
They've only called once during this crazy week back at society. Just once.
" Mum...? Dad...?" He whispered, feeling his throat closing with pain and tears dropping.
" Is good to hear your voice, Jack." An almost robotic female voice answered, but Jack was too happy to care, "Now you listen to me, alright? Cut your hair as before, and cut both your fingernails and toenails, you hear me? Jack? You must understand..."
He smiled proudly at her mother's harsh tone, thinking she was mortified about his health and sanity.
" Do not forget to have a bath, scrub every inch of you 'till it gleams, okay?" His dad appeared whilst the ginger was falling apart with all the love he heard from the other side of the line.
" Jack, we need you to answer. Do you understand?" She repeated, lifeless and cold. " You have to be as clean as a newborn, Jack. The bodies, they discovered them, you hear me?"
The moved and naive smile faded away once he understood his parents' orders, feeling his heart fall and break in pieces on the ground.
" If somebody has the nerve to accuse you, authorities will have no choice but to interrogate you. You must be as clean as possible." He started sobbing, trying his hardest not to be heard, but it was gruelling.
After all this time of being alone away from home and his family, after all this time, the first thing he heard from his parents was an order, an icy and calculated response without an ounce of love for their very own son.
" Jack, oh bloody hell, are you crying? Listen to me!" Her mother yelled. He instantly held his breath, trembling at that tone " You have to be clean, Jack. We can't let a Merridew be in prison, you hear me? Some connections are helping, you'll find some scissors in your bathroom cabinet, and you'll bathe yourself three times a day, do you understand? Answer me!"
" Yes, ma'am." He said almost instantly. That old custom that hibernated in his subconscious appeared again as an automatic response, and he felt weird by that.
"Mum..."
"What?"
" What if... What happens if I am- If I am guilty after all?" He asked, his heart beating at the base of his throat, almost asphyxiating him with blood and unaccessible air to breathe.
" We don't care about that," An odd laugh reverberated on the other side of the line. It was hers, but still, it wasn't genuine, "You could keep on killing as many kids as you want to. We couldn't care less, honey. But one thing for sure, you have to clean your mess, hmm?"
His chest shrank in pain while he pressed his teeth against each other. The sudden anguish took him by surprise, just as if something deep sleeping inside of him was wide awake now.
" I didn't do it, Mum!" He raged, completely red and explosive at the idea of his parents thinking he could be a savage, that he could kill.
But the longer he stared at the mirror, the more he felt they were right. He observed how his curls fell into the white sink while the scissors whispered that cutting and relaxing sound near his ears. He felt strange, just as if he was burying a part of himself by doing that.
" I didn't kill no one." He muttered, frowning and feeling the rage invading his body. He became as red as his fiery curls, some on the floor and some still on his hair but in a shorter length.
He was no killer. He did not recall being one at all. Simon, Piggy? Yeah, he knew they were dead but... But why were they?
Jack scowled, trying to remember while looking straight at his icy-cold eyes. He knew Simon was part of the choir, but suddenly he forgot the bloke's height; if he was a tenor or a bass; if the boy was shorter or taller than him, or if he had green or brown eyes. Jack didn't remember a single thing about Simon. And neither about that so-called kid named Piggy. He had glasses, but what shape were they? What did he remind Jack about? Why did he hate him so much?
But he was sure about those ugly feelings he felt for the deceased. A weird sense of peacefulness and satisfaction that soonly compensated with extreme anxiety and sheer horror. Why was that? He knew for sure he couldn't be a killer. There was no way in hell he was a savage. Then why did he feel guilty for something he did not even remember?
But still, the accusing glance he received from the mirror was sullen and unsettling, as if the nightmare kept going. That savage from across the reflecting glass looked at Jack with those horrifying icy marbles, with the thirst of a killer. The painted face from the other side was oddly familiar. But those eyes, those horrible orbs yelled at him. He looked malnourished and abandoned by his peers, without any parents to talk to him on the phone.
Jack could only feel sorry for that poor thing as he kept on cutting the orange-ish mat short enough for him to look like a normal human being. But still, the rejected and cold eyes met again.