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It was an unbearably muggy morning for the boys that were marooned on the island. Humidity and sweat littered on their bodies, even if they were hardly wearing any attire anymore. They were gathered up and congregated by the tribal camp at Castle Rock—everyone including the littluns sitting around and painted like abstract art pieces while talk of how they were going to further survive on the island and of the beast strikes fear into the littluns, being young minds without any sense of figurative language or lies.
It was settled that the irredeemable murder of Simon has been the beast, that it could change and shift its form as it pleases. But deep down at each boy's atrocious core, they knew far different. That was no beast with slimy tentacles and viscous fangs, but rather a batty little boy.
Since Maurice was so extroverted and had such a strong sense of humor, loving to hear the fun giggles and smiles of the littluns, he decided to hop around them and act like a pig in order to force them to laugh and distract them. Maurice grinned, snorting dramatically and hopping on his heels like a clumsy piglet near the edge of the assembly circle, making a few littluns giggle despite the tension and fear that spread like wildfire and propaganda among the boys.
But the comical humiliation did nothing to ease the fear and guilt that settled in Samneric. They squirmed around as they sat next to the bonfire, as if they were claustrophobic or in a group that was not their own. Jack hated the unsettled and vulnerable atmosphere—all these boys staring at him with shame and remorse instead of admiring their leader. He wanted to skin those contradicting looks off their faces, make their eyes stop prodding at him. So he busied them with endless amounts of hunting and gathering; a dreadful distraction and punishment.
But while Samneric were forced to chase and capture pigs like lunatics, they instead were met with a bundle of luggages rowing their way down the river stream—likely the remains of the plane crash. And without fault, Roger took his role as Jack's lieutenant quite seriously; deriving some sick sadistic pleasure or masculine competitiveness from it and making Samneric bury themselves knees deep in the river to fetch and dig through it.
The luggages flew open as soon as the twins’ grasping hands reached them, the entire baggage was in disarray. The personal belongings from inside them were scattered around and landed in the water in a frenzy; soaking clothes and trinkets.
“Are… Are you sure about this, Roger?” Samneric asked their question in sync at the same time, like one singular unit.
Roger didn’t even look at them when they spoke, stepping inside the river and actively stopping some of the luggages from floating down the stream with the sharpened end of his spear. He poked one violently towards Samneric, watching them scramble to catch it. He heard Samneric’s voices overlap, their stupid twin harmony getting to the point no boy could tell them apart. But it just infuriated him, like nails on chalk.
“You doubt my authority? It’s what Jack would have said to do. Dig through it all, don’t ask questions,” Roger snarked lowly, the tribal paint on his face cracked under the heat, river water splashing onto him a bit and worsening it; but he made no effort to fix his barbaric appearance.
The luggage Roger pushed hit Eric straight in the shin with a slight thump, where he winced and stumbled back clumsily with a whimper. Sam reached out for him, feeling his pain through that twin-telepathic way. The twins nod their heads in unison, seeing more force than anything. But after figuring out the torment that Roger was capable of, they had learned to stay quiet.
They moved in sync as they dug through the baggage like hoarders, trying to scavenge anything that could be useful; clothes for bags, food for rations, anything of the sorts. “I don’t really like this—“ Sam starts nervously, looking at Eric. “—Me too…” Eric mumbles nervously, finishing his sentence. They were protesting quietly but peacefully, the deep roots of being civilized and well-mannered were simply too enforced upon them to descend into savagery like the others had. Chivalry between the identical twins was no surprise.
“I wish we could go back to Ralph,” Samneric whispered together, feeling Roger’s sinister stare on them like daggers—making them shudder and giving them endless amounts of goosebumps. It was true, they desired nothing more than to go back to the democratic and compassionate way Ralph ran things. Roger heard every whispered word; his gloom-and-doom only enlightening at it.
He didn’t move, facial expression furtive as he just stood there like a statue carved from all of humanity’s cruelty and darkest sins, the animal pelt draped over his shoulders shifting slightly due to the ripples of the stream moving Roger’s body subtly.
Ralph. That pathetic lamb among packs of wolves.
His name alone curled something ugly and ruthless in Roger’s stomach, like pure bile threatening to make itself up his throat. It wasn’t just anger or hatred, not his usual sinister persona, but perhaps a twisted feeling of jealousy that he refused to name. He’d gladly prefer it when the twins shrieked back in horror at him, calling him a terror instead of even mentioning that olive-toned boy.
Without a sound or any form of warning, Roger dunked his hand down into the river and picked up a wet stone, smooth and rounded to perfection. He stared down at it for a moment before back at Samneric, chucking it over with satisfaction. The rock came flying out of nowhere and struck the hard case of the luggage by Sam when he bent down to rummage through the suitcase.
Sam yelped and fell back with a flinch while the stone bounced off into the shallow water. Eric spun around frantically toward him, seeing Roger standing where he’d been and already feeling around at the bottom of the river for another stone—the message was clear in that monotone tone of Roger’s: “Yer talking about Ralph again… shut it.”
After getting a wave of stones and ridged rocks hurled at them due to Roger’s torture and secretive jealousy, Samneric got the implication to stay silent despite how much they yearned to talk to each other. They get back to work like they were part of an assembly line, not wanting any more bruises left on them.
Samneric zipped open another suitcase, lifting up a pair of folded khakis to find an intricate DVD player tucked away underneath—a fascinating invention of technology during their time period that was a total trendy fad! Sam ravenously digs around to find plastic cases that hold DVD discs hidden in the flaps and pockets, bundling up a bunch of them in his arms. Meanwhile, Eric held the small portable dvd player in his good arm, considering it wasn’t very bulky or heavy and wouldn’t need strength from both of his arms.
“Woah!—” Sam starts excitedly, the twins getting cheerful again despite the grim situation they were trapped in with Jack’s tribe. Their voices got high-pitched and crackly once more, as if the beginning of puberty inside them completely dissolved. “—it’s a dvd player!” Eric exclaims, wincing at his broken arm slightly from the sudden elation. “I wonder if it still works!—”
But their little moment of happiness and childishness was disrupted by Roger’s gloomy presence like an iceberg spearing a flamboyant cruise. But even Roger seemed a bit curious; the littluns wanted the biguns to build a television or computer very hour of the day, so the intrigue must have been infectious.
Roger froze when he saw the small black rectangle in Eric’s arm, all shiny and technological. Clean metal and plastic with buttons and wires poking out, completely fascinating that it hadn’t been completely tarnished by the water. For once, Roger didn't immediately sneer or gloom miserably like he was at a funeral.
He stepped closer slowly—trudging through the stream pushing back against his legs. He stared at Eric’s chubby face before down at the device without touching it yet, having seen it get popularized back in England with the technology being revolutionary. His dark eyes flickered over the buttons: play… pause… stop… the flap that lifted up for the disc to be inserted inside.
The boys on the island had begged for months to have television, moving frames and pictures for entertainment. And conveniently, the twins had miraculously found this. Without asking permission or looking for any type of consent, Roger snatched the DVD player right out of Eric's hand. “Give me that,” he murmurs in a flat tone, grazing the buttons and feeling them under his fingertips.
Seeing the way Roger’s eyes twinkled gaily for something other than methods of torture or sadism, Samneric were slightly stunned by it. It wasn’t often that he showed such an interest. Sam placed the handful of DVD cases he had back inside the floating luggage, setting them nicely on the fine cushion and letting the interior work as a boat to hold them. The fear the twins felt from Roger was immeasurable, but in some nervous way they wanted to please him. “You know… I can try to fix it,” Sam starts, staring down at the DVD player before pausing. “From any water damage, I mean,” he adds on, nudging his chin at it.
Roger narrows his eyes, like some antagonistic sly hyena. He glares at Sam, pondering about it for a moment before giving a silent, dismal nod towards him. The dvd player was slightly dented and waterlogged, a little scratched and beat up, but surely whole and fixable.
*
For the rest of the time daylight hours were shining and at their prime; the sun still beaming down on the tropical island, Sam spent his time opening the casing and dismembering the DVD player. He wasn’t a technical engineer or master, just inferring what he thought would help and carefully wiping away the excess moisture trapped inside with spare clothes from the luggages they had bombarded earlier, letting it air-dry under the sun for a bit afterwards.
The sun was dipped low and hid behind the horizon by the time Sam was finished, painting the sky in bruised colors that the boys had all become dully accustomed to. As if by a miracle, the DVD player was structured enough to work, minus the occasional skipping or sound damage to the audio. Roger had been on a hunt with Jack and Maurice, finding a wild pig that he’d stabbed mercilessly.
But Roger’s mind hadn’t been on the spill of blood and guts this time, instead it had been on the machine and those little coded disks that held hours of films. When he saw Sam sitting cross-legged beside the cover of Castle Rock with the DVD player now reassembled and humming quietly as he dusted away grains of sand that the wind might’ve blown onto it, he stopped and left the other hunters with that same remorseless gloominess to approach Sam instead.
Sam looked up nervously as Roger appeared before him, gulping down a bit of saliva and slowing down his wiping of the fragile DVD player. He was bracing for anger—for being punished for not guarding properly, not participating in the tribal acts of hunting, or slacking off—but instead…
“Did you fix it?” Sam froze up for a moment before nodding timidly, pushing strands of his short fair hair out of his eyes in order to see Roger better. “Yeah, I did,” he replied meekly, voice even a replica of his identical twin. The orange and pink shades bathed off Sam in comparison to Roger, who looked like a tone screen was over him.
“Where are the disks?” Roger asked bluntly, getting straight to the point. He wasn’t one to water it down, the grimness of his entire character was clear. “I-I stored them behind—“ Sam scrambled to get up on his own two legs and act like the biped he is, feet bucking out beneath him. But before he could even fix his posture; Roger’s intimidating glare sat him back down rather abruptly.
“I want to watch them with you. Alone…” Roger mutters, face full of furtiveness despite the unusual dalliance in his words; his sentence sounded more like a threat than anything. Sam turns immediately bashful, mouth slightly agape as if he were drooling. A slight pinkness coated his cheeks, helping his complexion. Despite the natural foreboding undertone of Roger’s words, he forced himself to reply. “I—I mean, sure,” he whispers with a meek voice, nothing more than a peep from a mouse.
Then Roger sat beside him, arse making an imprint in the grainy sand and sitting far too close to Sam. Their shoulders bumped, fat of thighs touching against each other as Sam adjusted the DVD player in front of them—but not touching beyond that single point of contact. Roger could ironically feel his heart pulse like a knocking fist under that animal pelt draped over his shoulders. He balled his hand into a fist at his side, malevolent expression trying to act like Sam didn’t seep through his figurative armor.
They sifted through the DVD cases, the disks being completely unlabeled and providing a mystery as to what they were. But it wasn’t hard to decide on one, considering all the disks looked the same reflective color. The DVD player sputtered to life with a soft beep—Sam adjusting it so the sunset shade would land directly on the screen. The screen flickered… then played.
A childish and cartoonish movie played; all drawn and animated but with enough movement and color to entertain the both of them. The approaching night allowed them to see the film better on the screen due to the lack of glare, but also allowed them to blend in with the dark cover of Castle Rock, which worked in their favor. Sam’s eyes were locked onto the movie, but Roger was preoccupied with something instead.
Before any type of action or climax could even happen among the flashing pictures on the DVD player, Roger slouches back against Sam and loops his arm into his. He tugged him harshly without much consideration, but leaned in to rest his head against Sam’s shoulders. Roger’s palm softly grasped the flesh of Sam’s forearm, eyes traveling down to where they were interlocked before back at the movie.
Sam stiffens instinctively, before becoming clammy and flustered with embarrassment. He almost debates fanning himself at the realization that Roger was clinging onto his arm—leaning on him like a post and staring over him with that intimidating glare. “Pay attention,” Roger mutters cruelly, the bloody-red and white paint from his cheeks daubing onto Sam’s shoulder. The patterns seemed almost sphacelated in appearance, being a burden when it smeared everywhere, but Sam didn’t see any bother.
“Right, sorry…” Sam mumbles, Roger’s golden hair tickling against his skin from the sheer closeness. Although the color was closer to moldy, dry pasta by now. Sam hesitates, sliding his arm down Roger’s back to place his hand on his side under the fur boa and lightly pull him closer. Roger’s face and body suddenly seemed acres closer, hot breath across Sam’s scraped up shoulder that hitched when the DVD screen froze.
He clenched himself around Sam, almost possessive or charmed with some unrecognizable hunger in his eyes—but everything remains quiet. They don’t know how to have a proper, romantic date; but this was far beyond the closest thing to it.
*
The boys were scattered around, all distracted and occupied with different things that Jack commanded them to do like some dictator. Eric shuffled around Castle Rock quietly, caressing his broken arm with gentle fingers and adjusting the makeshift sling with careful gestures. His sharpened spear was stuck aside in a hole he had made in the sand; left there like a flag claiming native land. But considering Ralph was in hiding like a fugitive and made no effort to sneak over like Jack deluded himself into thinking, Eric had no use for it.
Roger loused around as well despite his usual brutal enforcement, standing at the top of Castle Rock and leaning against the jagged rock wall; letting it dig into his bare back. He held a small paper booklet in his calloused, ochre-soaked hands while staring down at it in total concentration. His own spear—sharpened to fine points at both ends—laid across his shoulder without problem. The booklet had prints of grids full of scrambled letters; each soaked page a word search.
Eric hesitated, not knowing whether to try something that would be considered courageous or pitifully stupid; to attempt to converse and express chumminess with Roger. Slowly… Eric approached Roger at the top base of Castle Rock. His searing arm bounced lightly with each step in the makeshift sling, throbbing in that sharp way in which he had to keep himself from screeching in agony.
Roger didn’t look up, the look on his face dark and intense even while he was doing a hobby that seemed so civilized—the complete opposite of the usual chaos and torture Roger caused. It surprised Eric, which earned him a low frown from the sadist.
Roger didn’t lift his head up, not even glancing at Eric as he approached him. He noticed Eric’s feet out of his peripheral vision, but instead only flipped one of the drenched pages in the booklet. “…Go back to your post,” Roger muttered lowly and flatly, ignoring the fair-haired twin's presence.
Eric looked down at his sling, massaging it softly as he bit his lip and thought. He was torn between obedience and fear—the phantom pain and screams that Roger erupted from him with means of torture lingering on his mind—and an awkward amount of curiosity and fascination. The booklet amazed Eric, not because of the words or the fun of searching and playing, but because Roger looked so normal that it almost gave Eric whiplash. So peaceful, content, and at ease for something that wasn’t body horror and pure evilness.
Eric spoke up after a moment: “…What are you doing?” While looking directly down at the grids, Roger already had circled a few themed words with a standard black pen; the ink being slightly smudged from the wetness of the paper. Roger finally looked up to face Eric through his lashes, expression unreadable for a moment. He could see the perked interest in his eyes. “…’Tis a word search. I found it in a suitcase from earlier,” Roger muttered blankly, as if done slyly and secretively.
Eric stood with quiet disbelief, and for a second, neither boy spoke. Then he slowly lifted his good arm, cautiously pointing to the booklet with his good hand. "Can I... see it?" Eric’s voice was barely above audible, the kind he used when comforting littluns or talking to Sam in their hut late at night.
Roger blinked slowly, straight face unchanging even under all the fearsome paint that layered it. The pen in his hand hovered above a half-finished print, as if deep in decision despite the fact it was a rather simple question and not a philosophical theory. Roger held the pen out, offering the pen out to Eric like fish bait from a predator; just slightly and reluctantly, an inch or two, while turning the booklet out to face Eric as well.
The bible-thin pages were damp and curling at the edges, ink bleeding in places where river water had seeped through the suitcase it came from a day ago. But there was care in how Roger held it, like he sincerely enjoyed the isolated hobby. Eric stood beside him, making sure his tarnished arm faced away from Roger and gave him his good side instead. But the twin gave enough room to allow Roger to evenly distribute the booklet between them, sharing it fairly.
As they progress through the word searches, Eric and Roger slowly turn the wrinkled pages together in a shared, silent exchange. And due to the highly intimate and pivotal closeness, the two are caught looking at each other more than searching for any hidden words. It was almost cozy and sensual despite the bloodshed spilled between them. “I’m sorry, I didn't mean to stare—“ Eric starts, watching a bit of color flutter itself over Roger’s cheeks as he turns his head away to retract back to its usual gloominess.
“…it’s fine,” Roger responds in a quiet manner, eventually turning back one Eric focuses back on the printed grids in embarrassment. Due to Eric’s fractured condition, he could only hold the pen and circle with his non-dominant hand—which made it difficult and gave small tremors in his hand. When he found words and attempted to bubble them using the pen, it turned out sloppily and lousy.
This irritated Roger, eyes narrowing as he looked down at Eric’s feeble attempts at fixing his circling. But technically, it had been Roger’s own fault for inflicting such a wound upon him. So without much thought, but yet ever so slowly and reclusively, Roger reached out and placed his hand atop Eric’s. “Let me help,” he murmured, pausing for a moment before considerably adjusting the one in Eric’s hand and leading him more accurately.
The two boys avoided any more unnecessary eye contact, but the heat of their hands touching; flesh on flesh, was quite dear. Eric’s fingers twitch, struggling for a moment before purposefully dropping the pen into the sand below and interlocking his hand with Rogers instead. Softly, delicately, like petals on a blossoming flower. “This is better… no?” The identical twin asks, to which Roger couldn’t form any type of response other than staring down at the forgotten pen as if to avoid addressing the affection.
Their held hands felt the light scratch of the paper of the booklet beneath them—which was soon closed and put aside in favor of gripping each other’s hands. Roger gives a nod, squeezing Eric’s hand gently and digging small circles with his nail into the back of his hand.
*
“A little birdie told me that you two have been getting rather chummy with Roger!” Maurice exclaims cheerfully, a wide grin accompanying his face with bright cheeks. Samneric nearly jump out of their skins at the voice, flinching at the exact same time in that twinly manner like replicas.
Maurice flattened his bandana, easing any wrinkles as he watched the twins put their hands up in defensive surrender and quickly scramble to excuse their behavior; for once not being in perfect unison. “We weren’t—“ Sam shakes his head quickly, getting cut off before he could even finish his sentence. “—it’s not like that!” Eric follows, voices overlapping each other to the point it was obnoxious. “We didn’t!—”
Maurice giggled after watching them make fools of themselves—not being the clown for once and enjoying teasing the twins. But really he meant no malice by it.