Ashes and Daydreams

Chapter 3: Ashes, Ashes, We All Fall Down

The only color I saw was blazing orange, the color of fire. Or was it magma? I couldn't tell. But then the ground began to rumble, and I realize that it wasn't fire...it was a pyroclastic flow. We had learned about these in science. After a volcanic eruption, the flows of lava could reach for miles.

In this case, a thousand miles.

I shrieked. I heard screaming and shrieking around me, and I struggled to get back in the building. As I turned, something caught my eye.

A skeleton. Their skin had been burned off of their body by the hot ash, before it cooled. They couldn't make it back in the building in time.

What if that had been Aunt Lindsey? Or Anna?

Or me?

And then I thought of Mom and Dad. Ash filling the sky. The plane loosing control in the thick plume, and falling out of the sky. Shattering into a million pieces.

Or maybe they had made it to Wyoming before the eruption. Maybe the world had exploded around them.

Maybe they were buried under a pyroclastic flow.

I couldn't think of that now. I had to save myself. Finally, I opened the door and collapsed in the bed of ash, gasping for air.

But now, air was nonexistent. There was only ash.

I began to cough and choke and sputter. I couldn't breathe. I couldn't scream for help. The ground rumbled, and then everything went black. Again.

And just as I lost conciousness, I remembered that silly little rhyme. Ring around the rosy, pocket full of posy, ashes, ashes, we all fall down.

I wondered if they'd known about the Yellowstone Supervolcano. The ticking bomb right under their feet. I wondered if they'd known it would bury entire cities in ash and wipe out entire populations. I wondered if they'd known it would fill the air with poisonouse gasses.

I woke up and heard silence. Only silence.

At least before, there was a rumble. But now there was only quiet.

And it wasn't the ash that scared me. Or the smoke. Or the poisonous gasses. Or the fact that there wasn't any color left in the world.

No, it was the silence. The sound of all the dead.