Another brilliant piece from a GUNNAS WRITING MASTERCLASS writer
Dee was shrieking at him again and he watched her face with a detached fascination at the rapid draining of beauty, followed by the suffusion of red fury and resentful wrinkles. He stood, square-on, facing her vitriolic outpouring, and wondered at his own calmness. Where was the smiling, vivacious, laughing woman he had met two years ago? Where was his own angry response?
He tilted his head a little to the side, like a curious bird. He realised that he had become more focussed on his own mental wonderings than on any of the accusations being spat at him through hard lips. Then, he registered vaguely that an extraordinary thing was occurring. She was getting smaller, smaller. Fading into the distance, her words becoming merely a series of sounds, high pitched, clanging, but fading. And she was receding further and further away…away. He reached up his arms, or at least tried to hold his hands out to her, but they seemed not to obey his wishes. He was falling, falling backwards…and a dimming darkness was closing in…He was dimly aware of a sudden silence and the perfect, silent O of her mouth. The back of his head hit the floor with a crack.
A floating, and a wonderful, welcome warmth spread through his limbs. So he felt no concern that he could not move. He drifted to another place and time. Was it real or imagined? He could no longer tell. Where was he? Dee was with him. He had his arm around her slim shoulders. He had his earphones on and was listening to This American Life. He was laughing quietly to himself. Dee shifted a little and snuggled her face into his shoulder. He felt happy, warm and proud.
Sumatra…they were in a taxi in Sumatra. A momentary confusion caused his prone body to twitch violently, but he surrendered to his injury and once more he departed the reality of the cold kitchen floor, his bleeding head, and his panicking wife. They were back in the taxi, on the way from the volcanoes to Lake Toba. They had climbed one of the steaming mountains that morning. They had taken some hilarious photos up the mountains at the steaming vents. He had bent forward, bum out, arms spread like aeroplane wings, while Dee positioned herself with the camera so it looked, for all the world as if he was about to take off..driven by the power of his own steaming fart! They laughed. They loved each other and the world. He laughed at the memory and his eyes flickered open a fraction at the sound of a sob. His or hers? Impossible to tell. Eyes rolling backwards behind lids.
They had, since that day, imploded and exploded. Mount Sinabung had erupted, blowing out the side of the mountain in an enormous, destructive blast of fire and ash. And tonight, an eruption of his own, smaller, but just as destructive and full of burning, searing power as the volcano.