Don’s Volcano
by Lincoln Michel
It might sound funny, but it really wasn’t, at least not to Don the dermatologist. A small volcano appeared in Don’s backyard. It was about the size of a garden gnome. It looked like a greasy pimple on the green cheek of the yard. Don would know because he was, as previously stated, a dermatologist.
The small volcano killed Don’s cat.
Don found Tom—that was the cat’s name—and fell to his knees, weeping, right next to the sprinkler. He’d gotten Tom from a neighbor whose own cat had been impregnated by a stray tomcat. That’s why he’d named him Tom. Don had raised Tom since he was small enough to fit in his hand. Little kitty Tom would curl up in his palm and purr to the beat of Don’s pulse.
Don cradled the charred body of his cat. He felt bile erupt in his throat. He wept for a good long time, and when he wiped away his tears, his hands left streaks of ash on his cheeks.
Not so funny now, right?
Anyway, Don buried Tom and called the mayor’s office, demanding to know what the hell they were going to do about it. He was hysterical with grief. “Tom was the only thing I cared about in the whole wide world!” he shouted.
The mayor’s office hung up on Don.
In the yard, the volcano gurgled, belched, and spat a wad of lava that singed the grass with a not unsatisfying hiss.
The local news was more receptive to Don’s call. The small volcano fit into a disturbing pattern that they were investigating. The earth had been doing lots of weird things lately. Floods and fires, tornados and quakes. Scientists had been warning about it for years, telling everyone to stop being so careless with the way they treated the planet. But no one listened, and now it was like the earth was a gigantic cat that realized it had fleas and was desperately trying to shake them off.
You couldn’t blame the earth. Not after what people had pulled!
So, the news trucks pulled up. A crowd gathered. The cameras rolled. Ratings were strong. Still, the mayor shrugged. “I can’t control the earth,” he said. “However, I’m sending Don the dermatologist my thoughts and prayers.”
Then everyone except Don kind of forgot about the small volcano for a while.
A month later, a second volcano appeared outside of the mall. They had to shut down the main parking lot, causing a significant reduction in consumer spending. The business leaders were furious. They told the mayor he had a major problem here. The news vans sped to the scene. A group of scientists published a list of activities the city would need to stop doing in order to halt the spread of the tiny volcanos. This made the business leaders even angrier.
Don led a protest outside the mayor’s office and many people showed up dressed as burning cats. Don’t worry, the flames were just colored construction paper. The protest made the mayor as angry as the businessmen. The mayor had another election coming up (god those never stopped happening) and he couldn’t have Don and his dead cat mucking things up.
The mayor called his golfing partner, Father John, and asked him to deal with Don. Father John led his congregation to Don’s house and said they had come to pray for Don’s soul. Don’s myriad sins—which ones weren’t specified, but who among us is free of sin?—had caused God to summon this burning punishment. Don scratched a rash on his neck and told them to get the hell off his property. Father John preached that the volcano was “spewing the fires of hell itself.”
The volcano did spew fire, right then and there. It burned one of the congregation members, whose name was Fawn. Fawn lost an arm and had burns covering a third of her body. She had to have expensive surgeries and treatments that weren’t covered by her medical insurance. Fawn sued Don for all he was worth. She said Don hadn’t taken the proper precautions and after all it was his property she’d been injured on.
Don went to jail.
The mayor was reelected by a narrow margin in a low-turnout election.
Father John went on a lucrative tour, visiting new volcanos and cursing them with the wrath of God.
The scientists and their list of suggestions were ignored.
Across the city, county, nation, and world, more volcanos kept popping up where you least expected them. A miniature golf course, maybe, or the middle of a baseball field. Lots of people died. It wasn’t funny at all. They died hurting and they died screaming. They died just walking around trying to live their lives.
Still, the volcanos soon became a part of the way things were, and no one could figure out what to do about them anyway, not that it wouldn’t take a whole lot of effort, more effort than anyone could really handle in these trying times, so—and stop me if you’ve heard this one before—everyone just kept doing what they’d been doing and hoped things would get better on their own. Which they didn’t. Haha.
Lincoln Michel is the author of the story collection Upright Beasts and the forthcoming novel The Body Scout. His short stories appear in The Paris Review, Granta, NOON, the Pushcart Prize anthology, and elsewhere. He teaches in the MFA programs at Sarah Lawrence College and Columbia University. You can find him online at @thelincoln and lincolnmichel.com.
