Ladybug [h.s.]

17*

Delilah

~~~~~~~~

Violent orange-red lava sinks over the curve of my cheek, dripping over the rocky edge of the volcano. It slowly rolls down the side of my neck, succumbing to gravity to burn into my skin. Seared wings and piles of ash. Flames rise from the heat and escape from behind my eyes, pouring smoke into the room from a measuring cup. Precise, perfect amounts of cloudy grey to unleash the warning signals. Foggy chemical reaction. Quaking sheets of earth fragmenting and fracturing under my feet. Hazy danger. The base of the volcano shakes in anticipation, magma grumbling below the surface. Sizzling and boiling as it awaits the eruption.

It courses wildfire paths down my skin, burning down trees and igniting grass with each twist of beaten road. My feet root into the carpet, sediment hardening to trap me within the destruction. It builds up my legs until the charred dirt molds around the intrusion. Paying no mind to the living, breathing human. Mechanizing nature. I'm helpless as the volcano continues to spill over, collecting at the tips of my fingers, at the rise and fall of my chest, down the slope of my neck. Building and building until I lose sight to the rock. Reverse Medusa.

I let the silence wash over, consuming me in the emptiness. Unable to see, unable to speak, unable to hear. Renaissance sculpture. Immobilized humanity. The lapping waves of oxygen fall with the tide, backing off of the shore. Dizzying. Spinning tornado to roll through and clear out the destruction. Wash bare the evidence of the explosions. Successive ruin. Pompeii in my hands.

With the last of the energy I can muster, I take a breath. As my lungs expand, the rock cracks, flaking away in miniscule bits. Turning back into ash and dust. Floating away in the breeze of an exhale. I try again, taking a breath and allowing the rush of sound to invade through my ears again. Echoing caves of pumping blood. Another breath and the rock chips away from my eyes, blinding spotlight color gleaming into my retinas. Hot light. Painful light. Heat enough to reignite the flames. Residual warmth from the lava drying up against my skin. With each breath, the sediment falls away - whisked away as if it never existed at all - until I am fully, undeniably human again.

Destructive, loud, angry human.

The phone rattles in its base as I slam down the receiver, Nor's words replaying through my mind. "Dels, did you hear Stan's guys got beat up by some greasers last night? Heard some gals talking in the nonfiction aisle."

I'd responded as gently as possible, despite the immediate seizing of my lungs in my chest. "Oh, really?"

She'd started off on some explanation - how another worker caught her eavesdropping and shooed her back to work before she could hear more. I didn't need to hear more to know exactly which greasers were fighting. After letting Eleanor continue for a while, I managed some excuse about Dad calling me to help in the garden, feeling my stomach wring angrily. The kind of anger that threatens to set flames to light. The kind of anger that erupts volcanoes, and meteor showers, and typhoons.

Without thinking, I shove my feet into a pair of shoes and march downstairs, mind fixed on one sole destination. My parents voices float in from out back, and I don't bother to call out a lie, too focused on the rumbling threats in the pit of my stomach.

Slamming the car door shut, I let muscle memory carry me to the newly-familiar house. To the happily innocent ducks on the front porch. To the rickety screen door that smacks in the storm wind. To the moss siding, green growing up the cement onto the house. I rip my key from the ignition before stomping to the front, feeling each heavy drop of rain as it splatters off of my skin. The screen flings open on its own, as if welcoming me for destruction. Detonating bomb.