Although it was raining outside, the sun was still shining. A bright rainbow stretched from one side of the island to the other, however the island was still overcast with shadows. As Ralph stepped outside he pulled his t-shirt up over his head and looked to either side of his shelter. He found that the weaker of the two shelters had been blown across the beach and the littluns who had been inside, sat under the trees in the forest, soaked and shivering. Ralph rushed to the platform and shouted to everyone. As people began to awake from their shelters, he proclaimed that there would be a meeting at dusk and in the meantime everyone was to go to the forest and collect supplies to build a new shelter; the children set out.
The littluns went, but only came back with a stick or a large branch at the most. As Ralph tried to start rebuilding the shelter, jack shouted to his group of hunters.
‘This is a waste of time’ he yelled ‘I’m going hunting, and if any of you hunters want to join me, you’re welcome.’
‘Wacco’
‘Wizard’
The hunters dropped their supplies and began to follow Jack who walked off egocentrically, grinning and laughing.
As the sun dissolved into a festoon of black sky, a gathering of children began to collect around the platform. The rain had stopped and the air was rather humid now. The shelter stood isolated and fragmented among a containment of irate boys. All the small children rushed to the log at the front while the rest stood noisily in the back. Ralph scrambled on to the platform but could not attract the attention of the crowd. He began to shout but no one showed any interest to the fact the meeting had began. He stood perplexed and still on the platform overlooking a montage of savagery, in which the children had morphed into over the time they had been on the island. He descended from his post and reached into the bush where the conch lay. He felt a shallow pit full of confusion and fear. The solitude in which a symbol of society and power lay was now filled with a black emptiness of shadows.
Immediately he turned and engaged in a repeated chant reminding the boys that he was leader, to which they paid no attention. Disregarding the insignificance, he continued, hoping that eventually he would suffice. He deliberately avoided eye contact with Jack, aware that he had taken the conch. Eventually he refined from the shouting and plunged to the ground sinking his head into the sand. He contemplated quarrelling with Jack, but the conch was a mere pigment in the bedlam that had now fixated itself among the boys. He picked himself up from the sand and assembled on a rock. His foot was wedged in a tangling creeper, which seemed to be coming from the direction of the boys. He paused for a moment and removed his foot from the snake like vine. As he looked around again he saw Piggy who was standing secluded from the group and seemed to be tying his shoelaces. He then pulled his socks up and sat cross-legged in the sand gazing out to sea.
Anthony Saladas
