Bards and Sages Quarterly (October 2018)

The Floor Is Lava

By Doug Lane

CAMILLA AWOKE TO DISCOVER the floor was lava.

Or looked like lava. There was no heat or smell, only a molten shimmer of red and gold in a lazy river rolling across the room. The furniture stood on the glowing surface like Superman, unaffected. It should have been in flames. She should have been.

It had none of the hallmarks of a dream. Light, sound, the ambient smell of the apartment—all rang true. Real. She felt awake.

She watched the floor. It still resembled lava.

She grabbed a tissue from the box on the nightstand, crumpled it, tossed it in the middle of the room. It burst into flame and was gone. She chased it with the pink plastic hairbrush from the nightstand drawer. It took a little longer, but it also smoked and hissed as it dissolved with a burst of warmth and an essence of sulfur.

Camilla decided she wasn't testing it further by dipping a toe.

Her heart thudded harder as she considered Abigail, sent to bed without supper. While Camilla was double-shifting at the store, Abi snuck to Monica Dolan's house all the way over on Hanover Street, instead of the library on the next block she'd said she was visiting.

What were you doing over there?

Nothing.

Must have been something for you to lie to me and then go all the way there.

We were talking.

Your cell phone minutes run out?

We were talking about how parents are always acting high and mighty.

If the lie got her grounded, the backtalk earned her bed without supper. Try sassing me with a hungry mouth.

It hadn't been easy since Abi's father put on his coward clothes and slinked off to God knew where. Abi adored the man. She was growing more lukewarm on Camilla, blamed her for Larry's departure. Camilla was doing her best, but the reality was long hours and a need to balance Abi's self-sufficiency with rules and trust. How else could Camilla protect her while keeping a roof over their heads?

Camilla wondered how long the floor had been molten. What if Abi got up in the middle of the night to raid the kitchen? Or to pee? She might already be one with the red-golden flow, a pop of heat and—

Camilla forced herself to focus. Abi, honey? Stay in your bed. Don't get out of it, even for a second. The floor— the words caught, sounded more absurd aloud than in her head. The floor is lava. Abi, can you hear me?

The hiss from the floor was the only answer.

She needed to get out of the bedroom, down the hall. The window was no good for either. It opened onto a ledge in the old building's air shaft: five stories of space, straight down. That left navigating through the apartment from her bed without touching the floor. But the building hallway floor might be the same. Or the elevator. There was no way to navigate the length of the hall or the stairs beyond. She needed the fire escape. Open steel bars and grated steps. No floor.

She tried to remember the game. It had been years, but she recalled rainy days scrabbling over furniture and tabletops at her grandmother's house—her, Maya and Cindy, her brother Marvin, his friends Jerry and Stitch. She could see the room, could almost feel the scratchy fabric of the plaid couch, the cool tile in the bay window that was 'Home' and the way Grandpa Jack's recliner opened if you hit it wrong, tossing you to the floor if you weren't ready.

What were the rules? Furniture surfaces, window sills, anything that kept you off the floor afforded safe passage around the room. You couldn't move furniture. That made it out of bounds. She had a vague recollection about pillows or cushions; when they played in Jimmy's house on Lexington Street with its broad, sunken living room, didn't they throw such items on the floor to use as stepping stones?

The notion flared and died as quickly as the feather pillow with which Camilla tested it.

She scanned the room, figured the safest route to the door: bed to highboy dresser to mirrored lowboy to chair. Simplicity ended at the doorway. The door swung inward. Camilla could open it, but there was no way around the corner to the bookcase in the hallway. Even then, it was too far with no landing pad to Abi's doorway, more empty space beyond to the living room. If Camilla reached the living room, ample furniture led to the fire escape. Only if.

She heard a scream. Not Abi. Outside, echoing through the air shaft. Then another. Then silence.

She needed to leave the bedroom. She stared at the doorway. The walls. The cracks where bad prior patch jobs were showing new defects, the building shifting from age and time and—

She studied the tools available to her. She settled on the lamp. The base was metal, weighted. Weren't the walls just cross-connections of studs and crossbeams? Ladders hiding behind the sheetrock?

Worth a try, she thought. She was never getting her security deposit back. The damned floor was lava.

SHE WAS SURPRISED AT how easy the game became when you had no qualms about busting holes in the walls. Sheetrock cracked, and hardware popped. The mess cleaned itself up, broken and dusty fragments of wall vanishing into the glowing floor with a white-noise hiss. The hardest part proved to be the weight of the lamp, repetitive swings wearing on one arm while Camilla gripped for dear life with the other. Twice, the lamp slipped, only the cord wrapped around her wrist saving it from the floor.

Once she got the hang of it, developed a rhythm and a feel for the underlying wall structure, it was like cutting an aisle through high grass.

When she reached Abi's room, Camilla didn't fool with getting through the doorway. She kicked at the exposed back of the sheetrock wall of Abi's room, knocked it out from behind. Screw heads hung onto paper and gypsum like souvenirs as the board fell, flared, and was gone.

Bed, desk, beanbag chair like a purple island. Abi was nowhere to be seen.

Fear crept close again, terror Abi had swung her feet to the floor, stood and was reduced to cinders. Camilla scanned the room for a sign, something to suggest an alternate fate. Nothing suggested a pleasant answer.

Camilla heard another scream.

No. This was something else. Different. Other voices joined in. The sounds of children outside.

She glanced down the hall at the living room window. It was raised to the fire escape, the playground noise rolling in from beyond. Camilla didn't recall leaving a window open, especially where someone could simply climb inside. Had Abi figured a way out and escaped?

She crossed Abi's room and broke through the common wall with the living room for her final push. She stepped through the hole she made and onto the table against the wall, crossed the short gap to the sofa, climbed over a furniture bridge until she was perched on the side table in front of the open window.

She climbed into the fresh morning air, giddy. The steel was cold on the soles of her feet. She glanced five stories down at the children. They filled the playground, the sidewalks, running and shouting, some of the parents with them.

Except Camilla realized as she watched the parents weren't with the children. Instead, the adults seemed bent on escaping them. Camilla called to Mr. Higgins, one the building's single dads, but he was focused on avoiding the grip of the kids at his heels. A girl in front of him dove across his path and tagged him on the shoulder.

Mister Higgins' skin turned an icy white and he jerked to a stop. As quickly as he stilled, another child came from a different direction and swung an aluminum baseball bat at the man's midsection. Mister Higgins broke in half, collapsed into a pile of crushed, rusty ice.

Camilla noticed similar piles melting in the sun. She opened her mouth to scream but found none. She scanned for a way down.

A shout from across the courtyard interrupted her. No! No, Jesus, please no!

Two boys were closing in on Miss Janey, a woman who lived in the other tower, one floor lower. She'd found similar refuge on her own fire escape. But now she was trapped, one boy coming from above, the other from below. She kicked a slippered foot at the boy ascending, a fourteen-year-old Camilla knew on sight if not by name. She struck two glancing blows before the boy from above leaped upon her. She struggled, outmatched by them, and Camilla was powerless as they shoved the woman back through her window. She vanished with a flash on her own lava floor.

Camilla stared. Shouted. What are you doing!?

The boys turned wild eyes on her, glanced at the ground. She did as well. The fire escape ended on the first-floor patio, which was also now lava. There was no direct route from them to her. They seemed frustrated by this, paced like they'd been caged, staring at her with a weird hunger, grinning.

If the other children heard Camilla's shout, they paid no heed, continuing to chase adults, flocking to the tree in the center of the courtyard playground. Kids swung from the branches of the beautiful climber, worked their way deep inside its summer foliage.

Camilla cupped her hands, screamed towards the playground. Abi! Where are you?

A dozen children turned, none of them Abi.

Abigail Tommette Carter, if you're out here, you show your face this instant!

For a moment, the playground in the center of the courtyard was graveyard still. A small girl lowered herself from one of the branches of the climbing tree to another, then swung to the ground. Abi glanced up at the landing. Relief washed Camilla like a wave, tempered by the girl's expression. She seemed embarrassed. You made it. Great.

You watch your tone, young lady.

Or what? Even more sass than the night before. What are you gonna do from up there? Even if you got down here, there's fifty of us. One, maybe two of you left.

What is this? What are you kids doing?

We're doing things our way, Mrs. Carter. Monica Dolan called from the other side of the tree. We all decided. Last night.

Decided? What does that mean?

No more homework, or curfews, or being grounded for nonsense reasons! Abi shouted. No more making me go hungry because you get your fat ass bent out of joint!

We've rewritten the world by our rules. Monica was a calm that Camilla didn't like. Confident. Even smug. Words and faith are powerful magic. A few of us figured out what to say. Old rhymes made new. The rest of us came up with the games.

The floor as lava. Literal freeze tag. Camilla could only wonder what else they'd concocted. She found she didn't care. Instinct guided her hand to her pocket, but the cell phone was back on her nightstand, lost behind the cloud of worry for her daughter, forgotten on her trek from the apartment.

I don't give a wet towel about any of all y'all, she shouted down. But I'm going to have words with my daughter.

Abi gave Monica an uncertain glance. Camilla saw an opportunity. Her daughter was angry, yes, but maybe not fully onboard with wholesale slaughter. Maybe Abi could still be reasoned with. Won back.

Monica and Abi exchanged whispers. Both seemed satisfied when they parted. You're welcome to come down and talk to her, Monica called up. None of us will interfere.

Camilla watched the two boys across the way studying her, waiting to see what she might do. She scanned for routes down. There was a long, narrow ledge along the third-floor windows, outside the building's rec room, accessible from the fire escape. The patio at ground level also sported a lava floor, but Camilla could get to the drainpipe at the end of the building, work its brackets like a ladder to the grass. She noted the shovel propped against the wall near the spot she'd land. Firm ground and a weapon. Mama Carter hadn't raised a fool.

All right. You stay right there.

She descended to the third floor, crossed the fire escape, and climbed over the rail onto the narrow ledge.

As she shuffled with