Simon's Dead

Jack's feast started that night. The thought of meat––real food––down my throat was inevitable, tempting, delicious. I couldn’t help it and neither could Ralph, we had to go to the feast. 

The rest of the tribe was already there when we got there. It was shocking––a horrific sight––Jack being treated as a chief, the king, nothing more than a filthy, power-hungry, dictator. He has boys at his feet feeding him; what has become of civilization and democracy? Is what I recall asking myself in that moment; the moment when I fell utterly powerless and without a voice in this new government. What's the use of having smart ideas and intelligence when you'll never be heard; what's the use of thinking outside the box when in the end you'll do what the chief says; what's the use in being human, different, unique, when conformity is the only way Jack allows us to live?

When he is confronted with the real question: what is he going to do when it rains if he has no shelters? He avoids it––avidly––starting a chant: a wild savage dance. 

I’m afraid of it though, the wild, strange bodies dancing and chanting in a group where everyone does the same thing––quickly, I get consumed, consumed in an endless circle of anarchy and recklessness, a circle that I realized once I'm in it, it keeps getting harder and harder to break away from. I didn't even notice when the body came in the middle of the circle when i realize its dead. The body––helpless, lifeless, and human. It's a mix of emotions that evoke inside of me then: afraid, shame, and guilty. Simon is dead and I don’t know––for the first time––how it happened. I keep telling Ralph that we weren’t there. We were outside the circle, outside the dance. We are not savages––we aren’t––but I’m not so sure anymore. I’m not sure about anything anymore.