It was a late hot summer afternoon
in Western Massachusetts. Two of my neighborhood friends and I were shooting the breeze down at a common hangout: the hill at the end of our dead end street. In our younger years, the hill - a sledding hotspot in the winter, main entrance to a forest kingdom, and home to many large, canopying evergreen trees - was a kind of nature’s playground. Now in our teens it was still a place of respite, but more a catalyst for getting high and talking about people behind their backs. Over the years the hill had transformed from a smooth, even-sloped, green-grassy carpet to a steep, jagged, grey-brown rock face. Many would have said the hill was dying, but we soon found out that it was starting life anew.
Sitting on top of the hill we had known and since become unfamiliar with, I noticed that my bottom side and my hands felt warm against the ground. Suddenly the warmth grew so drastically that I had to lift my hands as if they had been placed on a frying pan. My friends and I quickly got up, extinguished our joint, and began to search for the source of this new heat. Where we had been sitting I noticed tiny vents that were emitting tiny plumes of smoke. The ground beneath us soon was too hot to bear even through the rubbers of our shoes, so we began to descend the sharp cliffs of the hill. Jumping down to a platform lower in elevation, my friend noticed a hole in the side of the cliffs, and we joined him to look in awe at the hill’s insides. A deep red glow came from within; an unbearable heat and chemical smell emerged. A viscous red liquid slowly rose from the depths of the cave that we examined, and we soon realized the reality of the neighborhood volcano.
Quickly, we scampered home to warn whomever we could of our impending doom, as the lava inside was rising at a rapid pace. At first no one believed us, but when I pointed out the front door in the direction of the bubbling and glowing formation at the end of the street my parents realized my prophecy was the truth. The thick, red liquid inched its way down the street. Though it moved slowly, my family and I knew we had little time to prepare for our end. Our neighbor’s house - the one house between ours and the hill - suddenly burst into flames, and we knew we were next. Lava slowly crept into the kitchen. My dog whimpered from the fumes and clicked his tiny paws around the linoleum floors trying to escape the heat. When I saw that the dog’s only option was to retreat into his kennel in the corner of the room, it became apparent that any rescue effort was impossible. The dog growled at the approaching magma as he squeezed into the corner of his kennel. We ran out the back door into the forest kingdom for higher ground. As I took one look back, the kennel went up in flames, and soon the entire kitchen was afire. We crossed a stream - a barrier which would stop the flow of lava from entering the forest - and I watched the house explode. The last thing I heard was a dog’s squeal.
