Just a short piece on aftermath-ish issues. There never really was a point to my writing this, but here's to hoping it's enjoyable. Have fun!

Up The River

He watched the paling horizon and realized that there was a storm coming. Jimmy contemplated this and unconsciously, his thoughts turned to rain. Yes, rain. Not the faint drizzles that moistened skin and made eyelashes stick together, but real rain, fat water droplets, firing from the skies to plaster against cold hands and cold intentions. It was raining, he faintly remembered, when Miss Darrow had been taken. However unsettling this fact may have seemed, Jimmy was aware that there was no animosity in his heart. Not towards the natives, with their blood-stained clubs and darker than the night skin, nor the beast itself which slept below in the hold. Kong, which it was apparently worshipped as. Kong, a god, a deity, a being with the supreme power to give and to take away. And for God's sake, had it taken away from Jimmy.

Mr. Hayes' stern, yet gentle gaze was abruptly vivid within Jimmy's mind, and seeing his surrogate father's face again, forever, never again, made the boy cringe.

He swept a lock of limp hair from his eyes and shuddered. Gone. It was the only word he trusted, a word that did not over-express, but a word that did not dismiss. Gone. He clung to word, hating it, but refusing to let it go in the hopes that it would lead him into acceptance and eventually, hopefully, peace.

Gone.

It's not an adventure story, is it Mr. Hayes?

And then he was despairing, throwing his body against a wooden crate, just as hollow as he felt, pressing towards it as though it could shield him from the hard unsettling truths. Jimmy realized that he did not want acceptance. He did not want peace. He wanted control, and change, and different. He wanted life to spring back for so many, too many.

And, he realized slightly dazedly, he wanted Kong back on the island, in the wild where it had been king.

Such sudden well wishing for the beast surprised him. He turned his thoughts reluctantly, painfully, to the gargantuan creature he had just minutes ago avoided acknowledging as at all an integral factor in his present. The monster that had caused this moment, all these moments to be. For Miss Darrow to weep in her room for days until her lovely bright face was buried beneath an ocean of pain, for Mr. Driscoll to wander the deck with that awful, lost emptiness in his eyes, for Jimmy to huddle against a box of faceless cedar and choke on his sobs of terror and pain and want. And there was no explanation he could find, nothing to justify his abrupt desire for Kong's happiness, save if only for Mr. Hayes- gone – and exchanged words from a thousand years ago dancing within the far reaches of Jimmy's memory.

Why does Marlow keep going up the river?

Why doesn't he turn back?

The roaring turmoil of the world's tragedies seemed to lessen somewhat, dying down with the wind. Jimmy hesitated, then loosened his hold upon the crate, the deck, the pain, and slowly raised himself onto trembling legs. And he pretended that he was comforted.

Mr. Hayes' expression had been grim, and in his eyes was the will for his words to be called upon and remembered when need arose.

We are accustomed to look upon the shackled form of a conquered monster.

Monster, yes. As for conquered, whom could be sure?

But there-

Jimmy exhaled as quietly as he felt was possibly. His heartbeat no longer skittered within the cage of his ribs like a dying spider. Gradually, tentatively, the jerking and trembling of his muscle's ceased. As though they were growing aware that their point of view did not matter anymore. He caught his breath and declined the tilt of his head towards his feet, past his feet, through the wooden boards, into the darkness of the hold and toward the darkness of matted fur and matted dirt and matted blood-

-there you could look at a thing monstrous and free.

If only Hayes had known that there would be something that would happen after his looking.

Gone?

And then Jimmy remembered that he was supposed to be thinking about rain.

Englehorn was calling for all hands below deck, and the dizzying stench of chloroform was wafting faintly about the ship like mist. Jimmy checked his stability against the rocking deck and inched his way towards the hold. Despite the calls for anger and hatred towards Kong in some distant part of his being, Jimmy was aware of a novel, overpowering sense of pity flooding through him.

The beast, despite all it had taken, despite all that it once had, was worse off than even he now.

-Looks like the ape's waking up again, a familiar voice drawled, and Jimmy grimaced, unwilling to look into Carl Denham's eyes for fear of what he might be driven to do. –He'll be doing that on and off during the trip back to the states, I reckon. Good thing your crew has the right medicine. Denham guffawed in a way that sounded particularly strangled. The man looked rather alien and foreign to Jimmy with his camera. Who was he, how was he to be characterized without the window behind which he viewed and was safe from the pains and troubles of life?

-Down, the abrupt voice of the captain commanded, a hand falling heavily upon Jimmy's shoulder as the skipper ascended from the hold. Jimmy turned to face Englehorn's blue eyes, which were stern, yet belied his perpetual lingering shock, at what Jimmy was not completely sure. All that had happened perhaps? All that was to come? Or all that could have been. -Unless you would like a mad-as-hell monster tearing up the Venture.

Jimmy contemplated this. The concept seemed somewhat alluring to him for reasons unclear, but he pushed the notion aside. Hastily. –I'm on it now, Skipper. Jimmy extracted himself from between the two older men and rushed away, stopping only when he rounded the corner to listen to what Denham was then giving voice to. A pinprick of guilt struck him, as he remembered Mr. Hayes' stand on his eavesdropping habits, yet Jimmy felt an underlying need to hear anything, everything the film-maker had to say. It was teaching him to hate, which, he decided finitely, was a rather nice thing actually. It was a good way of letting go of everything else.

-You'll share the profits you know, Denham was assuring the captain. A gull twittered somewhere in the distance and Jimmy brushed a beetle absently from his sleeve. –Just as soon as I cash this sonofabitch in. Believe me, Kong will be a hit. His name will be up in lights on Broadway. We'll-

-Denham, constantly repeating the same words with each passing day proves that you are only slightly mad, Englehorn interrupted nonchalantly. Jimmy heard the faint crinkle of rough fabric as the captain fished in his pocket for his tobacco. He was also fairly certain that he heard an only half-heartedly disguised tone of cold rage behind the captain's words. –And I myself am still unsure of why I have decided to aid you in your wishes. Perhaps it is that I pity you. But I do not share your views, Denham. I even feel that you are completely, depressingly wrong. Keep your damned profits. I wish to have no further part in anything concerning…

Kong and Hayes and death and bones and gone, gone, gone. Jimmy understood without really knowing what it was he understood. He blinked rapidly several times (there was something in his eye, he told himself firmly. Only something in his eye.) Denham was silent, he noticed, and he subtly craned his gaze to peek at the pair without being noticed in turn. It seemed to Jimmy that the tension between the two figures was more clearly visible than they themselves.

The scent of chloroform was fainter now. He liked to imagine that it was putting itself to sleep.

A muscle in Denham's jaw twitched, and there was surprise evident in his eyes. But not anger, Jimmy noted. The man did not find any insult in Englehorn's words. Of course. Carl Denham only ever saw what he wanted to see. And with his cameras and his film, he would ensure that the rest of the world was subject to his crazed perspectives.

- Damned shame. But hey, I understand completely. It's your call, Skipper. You're the fucking captain! Denham's grin was wide, eerie in its sincerity. This was only a benevolent situation in his viewpoint, an exchanging of pleasantries, which was what he wanted and what he got. The film-maker nodded a final time and turned to leave, thankfully in the direction opposite of where Jimmy was situated. He watched Denham's retreating figure and was struck by a sudden notion.

-a thing monstrous and free.

And he began to question whether the caged creature below him was indeed the real monster.

Jimmy puzzled over the words that had entered his consciousness. He did not understand them, ultimately chose not to understand them, and dismissed them without further thought.

Englehorn stood motionless where Denham had left him, a limp cigarette hanging between his fingers. The captain sighed deeply, an exhale that spoke indirectly to Jimmy of weary eyes and lined faces, and the boy suddenly became very aware of the chill of the still approaching storm. He turned his face upwards to scrutinize the graying clouds and noted with sinking heart that they greatly resembled stretched bodies of dying men lying in a vast landscape of blue.

And then the rains started.

-Godspeed, Englehorn spoke to the world of water surrounding them, tossing the sputtering cigarette overboard, and Jimmy sealed his lips, his thoughts, and was silent.

Thanks for reading!