"Volcanoville" by Heather Pegas

Monday’s moon shone full and bright over the mountain, illuminating diffuse and unusual white wisps in the sky above. Shari Feinstrom, town ombudsperson, headed out for City Hall, determined to wrangle the town council (five individuals with the acumen and decorum of half-drugged feral cats) into finally prioritizing Volcanoville’s critical action items, including the $3.7M operating deficit.

Her heart sank as she approached the entrance. Councilmembers Vondela Crassus and Corky Dupree stood there with at least thirty congregants from VV Baptist, waiting to ambush her about taking down the rainbow flag that marked the start of Pride week. They’d been through this a million times, and the other three council members insisted it fly. There would be blood tonight.

Shari drove home later, dejected, for among the issues tabled till the following month were the deficit, the looming garbage strike, cuts to the library budget, and the mysterious steam rising from the sidewalk in front of Pipe Down! (the local tobacconist’s on Ash Street).

Tuesday morning, Mindy Zamora, just sweet sixteen, was with her grandmother, heading to the clinic for an abortion. There had been some question of being able to afford it, but at the last minute, right after the government shutdown ended, her off-again boyfriend, Army Specialist Manny Diaz (stationed overseas to intervene in the latest sectarian skirmish), had received his salary, and been able to wire her grandmother the money, getting around Mindy’s evangelical parents. 

Grandma Rita insisted on driving, and in the course of entering the parking lot, managed to graze a shrieking protester with the front bumper (or had they intentionally run out in front of her?). There resulted in a battle between protesters and counter-protesters as to who had been responsible, causing Mindy to break down and miss her appointment altogether. As the crowd lunged upon each other, nobody noticed the series of small tremors rolling under their busy feet. 

Down the road at VVU, Professor Ted Tiddlebury was in trouble. He’d risen in the wee hours of Wednesday morning, and gone to his office in the Sociology department to read, for the nineteenth time, threatening emails from sophomore hacker Brendan Bean, who’d somehow retrieved a decade-old, deleted, private Facebook post (in which Tiddlebury had praised the behinds of several coeds), and who was demanding $100,000 in untraceable cryptocurrency to keep it quiet. 

Together with his recent X (formerly Twitter) post expressing relief at the lifting of the mask mandate: Now I can see your beautiful mouths! (have you ever?), Tiddlebury sensed the ice was thin beneath him. Careers had ended for less. And as he entered the shady website, typing, with shaky hands, the account number provided by his blackmailer, he entirely missed the muffled blasts splitting the mountain air some miles away. 

Early Friday morning in the faculty lounge at VV Middle School, they were processing a micro-aggression. Mr. McDougall, music and band, had been called a leprechaun by Coach Johnson, and was outraged. First, he was a Scot who had jack-all to do with leprechauns. And second, he was sick of being put down for his height! The powerfully built Johnson countered that no Scotsman could be subject to a micro-aggression because they had never suffered, setting McDougall off on a rant involving British Parliament, William Wallace and Rob Roy. When are we getting the other non-binary staff bathroom?! someone cried, and soon the lounge roiled with the question of who was properly oppressed, with much talk of triggering, and ensuring safe spaces, generally. 

Kay Stanchion, seventh grade science, was the first to turn away from the melee, desperate for the Advil in her purse. In so doing, she looked out the window and saw dark smoke pouring from the top of the mountain. Without saying a word to the others, she swallowed her pills and stole outside, joining Albert Bellagamba, head custodian of thirty-six years, who was smoking and staring at the flames. She accepted a cigarette from him and they stood companionably, puffing away. I think it’s going pyroclastic, he said. (Thinking back to her November unit on volcanism, Kay could only agree.) Within moments, the fiery flow confirmed this fear. Why does everyone have to be so stupid? was among her final thoughts. 

And just as the varied and aggrieved voices of Volcanoville went silent for good, there was a searing cry of pity (or was it triumph?) from some high-flying bird. Below, the lava buried it all: the clinic, the university, and Shari’s house. The school, the tobacconist’s, even City Hall was gone (the Pride flag striking a jaunty note, flying high above the destruction).

But even before that, Prudence Yu had smelled rotting egg in the air of her garden and she’d had a sense, a sinking feeling. She’d tried to tell her husband, Steve, but he (embroiled in a standing Thursday night Zoom battle with his sisters over their late mother’s estate) had brusquely shooed her away. She’d lifted Baby Grace out of her bassinet, exiting the house through the kitchen to the attached garage. She strapped Grace into her car seat, unplugged the cable from the wall, and drove away, as far as the charge would carry them.

When Prudence heard, the following day, what the volcano had done, she was sorry but also felt…vindicated maybe? There’d been some longstanding but unspoken agreement, she thought, to ignore the mountain in favor of smaller, shiny things, things that were easier to comprehend. She would miss her husband, but what else, ultimately, could a mother have done? Was Grace to suffer and stay through something that had nothing to do with her? 

Steve’s sisters would feel bad about this, Prudence believed, and might finally cough up his full inheritance for the baby. Of course, the insurance company had canceled their homeowners policy years ago, but Steve did have full life. She was already making plans. With Grace, she could go away and start over again…someplace else where it was safe. 

Heather Pegas lives in Los Angeles, where she writes exceedingly compelling grant proposals for a living. Her essays and creative nonfiction are featured in journals such as Tahoma Literary Review, Tiny Molecules, Longridge Review, Slag Glass City, and Fatal Flaw Literary Magazine. She has extreme climate anxiety.