A piece of Simon.

This is actually a piece of a project I am doing for my English class. In it we had to write a character journal about someone from Lord of the Flies. I choose the character Simon since it seemed like he mystified me the most. After writing the journal I realized I am a lot like him. To this day he remains my favorite character in literature.

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After I saw the faux beast that stood up with his parachute on the mountainside, I realized what the real beast was talking about. My throat lusted for drips of water and my body was trying to fall into the black abyss of sleep to regain energy, which it had been stripped of during the last couple of hours. But I couldn't listen to my body. I had to get down the mountain. I had to save the rest of the boys. Save them from themselves.

I made my way down the mountainside and felt my senses flash on and off. My body wasn't telling me to go but something else was. Something much deeper that seemed to lead my limp body towards the direction I needed to go. Each step I took my senses continued to flash on and off. I was living in an alternative world when they were off. A world that allowed me to see things in people that otherwise would not be seen. Not their faces or their bodies but things that made them tick. What made Piggy, Ralph, Jack, and even me go and continue to survive. This view of the world flickered on and off trading with the world that my senses gave me.

In the alternative world I felt the boys all together. I shuffled through some bushes and made my way to where they were. They were overrun by rampant fear and it reached down into all of them slowly chocking the ethics and reason out of their soul. What they feared was me, the bearer of what really was happening. The most afraid was the snake, Jack. I felt them surrounded me and my senses flopped back into working. Their chanting was rhythmically loud and along with the heat of their bodies it caved me into their inner workings. Workings of savagery, would cause them to harm me. My body felt beats and stabs from blunt spears. Skin tore and I tried to speak, tried to warn them. But my voice was lost within their ritualistic rendezvous with fear. They kept on repeating, "Kill the beast! Cut his throat! Spill his blood! Do him in!"

While my body was being twisted with pain my senses switched off and I was there during the first day of the island. Standing in the middle I had Jack to my right and Ralph to my left. All the boys stood behind Ralph and the conch. Jack's face was twisted and blood was on his hands. Red blood, that glimmered in the sunlight. Its metallic smell and taste seemed to reach my mouth and nose. I knew it reached the others boy’s mouth's and nose's too. Drawing them ever so slowly the blood made boys switch sides. Each boy that left Ralph to join Jack made the blood spread a little on Jack's arms. It turned the skin that it covered with its sticky texture to scales.

Jack became something else with the blood covering him. He was a red snake with green eyes and a flickering tongue that tasted what made the boys fear. Slithering and hissing, he made his way around Ralph, coaxing more and more boys. Promising them, luring them, blinding them. Ralph blew the conch and the boys on Jack's side looked at him. They listened for a while leaving Jack powerless. For the boys he manipulated gave him power. He stood fixed on Ralph, the snake charmer and waited.

Soon Ralph's breath ran out and the conch’s trumpet sound ended. Ralph's charm ended on Jack. Jack's boys looked back lustfully at him; the boy, no the snake, who would bring them meat. The boy covered in the pigs and soon my own. The boys on Ralph's side continued to fall to Jack until the only one was left on Ralph's side. It was Piggy. The conch was cracking and Ralph could not charm Jack again. Jack towered above them all. Jack, now covered fully in blood, started to do just the opposite. He enticed the snake charmer. Now Ralph and Piggy went to stand behind Jack and I felt the snake's eyes look at me.

My senses flashed on again and I felt pain. I saw all the boys, even Ralph, my hero in the circle around me. I stumbled through their circle and made my way towards the edge of a cliff. They followed and all jumped on me. I felt them bite, scratch, stab, and worst of all the rhythmic pound of fists that matched their chanting. Through each pound of a fist or savage tear at my skin I heard the laughing of the beast. "I told you, you were going to have fun." He said it mockingly. "These boys think you're batty. Too bad you are or maybe they would have listened to you." His laugh pierced into me trying to break apart who I was. My heart was wrapped in the laugh and I felt tears come to my eyes.

"Break down little Simon. Why don't you fight back little Simon?" I didn't want to listen to his words. I wanted to say something to him but this time my tongue wasn't the only thing that swelled. My body swelled from the beatings and I couldn't move it. Once my body had enough of the beating the pain went to my soul. The beast's laughs turned more sinister and then they ended. The boys scattered as rain started to fall. I knew I was dead on the sand. I’m now in a place out of the beast’s grasp. Elevated above it all I watched my body leak blood as the sand around it hungrily slurped it up. I had won against the beast. It may have destroyed my body but my soul did not break. My soul withstood the beast’s hate, anger, savagery, and even that mocking laugh. That mocking laugh, the only thing I think I truly ever despised.