Dead

The man looked at the photo of his family before putting on his white coat and running out. He was late. They were supposed to be starting a new project today at 9. He had been on this island for many months now and he missed his wife and two daughters. He looked around, the sky was clear, the shrubs were impossibly green, the water blue and transparent. The ground felt nice and cool, the air smelled burnt. But it was nice. Like warm cookies. 

He rushed through the greens to the laboratory near the base of the mountain. There, he would take a small train that would trudge all the way to the top. That was where the fun would begin.

He wished he could say that he had always been interested in rocks and geology. No, as a kid he had not been. Very uninterested, in fact. His passion involved action figures and creating wild fantastical stories with them. The ground trembled as if at the thought of some of his stories. The train took him up over bumpy terrain, mostly untouched, and he looked around. This was a beautiful island.

No, he had not been interested in his current profession during childhood. Nor had some great professor introduced him to it during one of his college classes. No, it was not that either. The train went up, he was only a quarter of the way up the mountain so far, it was a big one. In the distance, he saw a flock of birds take flight, cawing and screeching.

He had been a good student, however. And so, he had had the privilege to receive a good amount of offers from many places. The best ones were remote. They paid really well. But he had fallen in love. And his wife, she was something. So he picked one near home. A decade later, when he had established a family life, he had decided to go back, with his wife’s blessing. But only one offer remained. It wasn’t a bad one. Research on this laboratory. And so he came.

The train snaked up, brushing through some shrubbery. It was halfway up the mountain. In the distance, he could see the forest that surrounded the island. Native monkeys swinging away from him. He missed them, goddammit. His two daughters had grown up to be lovely women. And his wife was elegance personified. He sighed and looked up.

The train seemed to be getting slower, it always did, this close to the top. His research involved studying the mountain, dormant and dead, as it had been for over two hundred years. And figuring out what made it tick. 

The train snaked up.

He finally reached the top, and right before he got off, he saw the sparkling sea surrounding the island. He heard a low pitched whistle. He shook his head. He heard it no more.

He walked into the laboratory, the two people that had been his best friends and only human companions over the last six months were already there. They smiled at him, he smiled back. The lights flickered. The screeching returned. A bomb dropped. The volcano erupted.