Sparks Shower
Copyright 2012 by Lundy Burge
Cover image “Purple Fireworks” by Petr Kratochvil courtesy of https://www.publicdomainpictures.net/view-image.php?image=10455&picture=purple-fireworks">Purple Fireworks by Petr Kratochvil
“Come on, now where’s your patriotism?”
Joann could be annoying at times, particularly when she was trying to be persuasive. Riley thought that it was why she usually got what she wanted around the office.
This was one of those times.
“It’s right here,” Riley pointed a finger at her heart, “and I don’t have to prove it by going.”
“But it’ll be so fun,” Joann whined, “All our friends will be there—“
“Drunk,” Riley cut in. Joann followed her as she made a hasty retreat back to her desk.
“No they won’t be, and just think, the fireworks will be so beautiful this year.”
“That’s the problem,” Riley said, “You know I hate fireworks.”
“But why?” Joann’s voice rose to a painful pitch, “They’re so beautiful.”
“They’re noisy and bright, like bombs. And do you know what’s raining down on you? What all those pretty like strands of color are that everybody just loves? Ash. Burning bits of cardboard. That’s what.”
Riley side-stepped into her cubicle and sat down in an office chair that was beginning to lose its cushion from over-use. She began to pick at her computer, half hoping that it would push Joann away.
It didn’t.
“Look, I’ll get you a pair of earplugs if the noise bothers you that much.”
“It’s not just the noise,” Riley’s hands were now lying at the sides of the keyboard like two shot animals, “It’s everything. The lights, the glitter, the colors, the sounds, the vibrations...everything.”
And ordinary person would have been stupefied, silent, but Joann said, “What?”
“I’m afraid of fireworks,” Riley replied.
“Come on, you’ve seen two shows when you were six and seven.”
“And I hated every minute of both, and I will now.”
“B—“
“Joann,” her hands were back at the keyboard, “please leave. Now.”
Joann left. She’d been in sales enough to know when she was defeated.
Later, she was at the water jug/watering hole talking to Bertha. Bertha was a quiet, wide-eyed woman, and she knew everything about everyone.
“Riley’s nice, you know,” Joann began casually enough, “Sometimes a little strange though. You know she doesn’t like fireworks? I mean absolutely hates them. Now, if it was the noise I’d understand, but it’s not. She’s afraid just because they’re fireworks. Like they were spiders. Isn’t that weird? I mean, why should someone hate fireworks like that? No reason...”
Bertha, knowing already what Joann wanted and unable to stand her voice any longer, told Joann the whole story. It made Joann make the first real show of surprise and sympathy in her entire life.
Later that evening, Riley answered her cell phone, and immediately regretted it.
“Oh my God,” Joann said, her voice sincerely concerned, for once, “I am so sorry, Riley. I had no idea.”
“What are you talking about?” Riley asked.
“The fireworks!” Joann exclaimed, her voice so high that the sentence was laced with static, “I just found out today.”
Oh boy, Riley thought, not this again.
When she was about eight months old, Riley’s father died in an on-the-job explosion. That was all she knew for the first coherent years of her life. It wasn’t until she was seven that she had learned that it involved fireworks. That was all she knew and all she wanted to know. Every time some one had the audacity of giving her another detail, then she would immediately do her best to erase it from her head like an eye of a pencil-made doodle, and she did, eventually. Still, people kept hearing about it, usually from slip-ups from supposedly well-meaning friends and relatives, and people kept wanting to talk about it. All the adults she ever knew couldn’t shut up about it, and neither a lot of the kids who also knew those adults. Her little fear didn’t help much, either. She didn’t know how to tell them that she didn’t remember anything without sounding rude or, worse, in denial. She faced the same problem when she wanted to say the accident had nothing to do with her loathing, that she had always hated fireworks for the same reasons that some feared mice and spiders and snakes. They were simply repulsive.
“Actually, I was just about to call you,” Riley lied, “to tell you that I decided to come.”
“Are you sure?” Joann said, “I mean, with what happened to your father and everything...”
She was still talking when Riley said, “I’ll be fine,” so Riley could only hear the phrase, “—and to think, you were actually there.”
Riley barely managed to control herself long enough to say, “Good-bye, Joann,” before hanging up.
She had just found out more of the accident. And worse, she realized that she already knew it, but had just been reminded of it. That made her realize, with even greater disgust, that she had already known everything about the accident.
My father worked on professional shows. At an amusement park. Or was it just for a fair? One day, something went wrong and....
She shook her head, erasing all of the accident like her mind was an Etch-a-Sketch.
She wanted to call Joann back and tell her that she had changed her mind, or that something had popped up, but she knew it would only make things worse. Joann would want to console her, make everything feel better. It would mean months (with Joann, maybe years) of apologies and sickening sympathy. Everyday, she would be looked at like an abandoned shelter puppy. She would be exactly that, never loved, only pitied. Worse, she would think it was helping Riley.
They say that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. They’ve never said who the road was for.
She wondered why she had agreed to come for a moment. Then she reminded herself that it was so that maybe people would stop giving her therapy she didn’t need.
Maybe I’ve grown out of it some. Maybe I’ll even have fun....Yeah, right.
Riley sat in the lawn chair planted in the muddy ground. The night was properly dark except for a few children attempting to burn themselves with their sparklers. Through her earplugs, she could still clearly hear the country music blaring out the speakers, people talking all around her, and Joann’s incessant yapping, which she concentrated on tuning out the most. The smell of cigarette smoke stabbed the air with almost as much penetration as the alcohol, which Riley was partially contributing to herself with the beer in her hand.
The only way I’m getting through this is passed out drunk.
The announcer on the radio came on, announcing that the show would start in ten minutes, folks, ten minutes, before turning the mike over to a Toby Keith hit.
Riley inhaled very deeply and took another swig of the beer. She didn’t notice that her hand was shaking.
A comet lurched upward. It’s tail trailed sporadically behind it, the end of it continuously breaking off in a fray of dust. It soared so high that everyone had to nearly bend over backwards to see it. It disappeared, leaving a few bits of glitter behind, and then it came back in a grand, explosive death. A final cry for help, and the rocket was ripped to green bloody shreds. They were bright pieces of confetti, lingering in the air for a moment before lightly drifting down as their light faded.
No sooner had that rocket’s remains had begun to fall that another shot up, this one screaming as it flew. As that one was torn apart in red and white, two more shot up, one purple, the other all sparkling glitter, and then more and more and more came up, rounds of a birthday machine gun.
All the wh
ile, Riley had her hands clamped tight over her ears to try to keep those hideous cries out of her head, and her eyes glued to the ground to keep from seeing that flaming shrapnel that fell downward towards them. But the whistles cut through her fingers and she could feel the vibrations of the rockets’ last, mournful screams.
Her breathing became more frantic, as well as her pulse. Tears welled up in her eyes like they had been exposed to the full blast of a solar flare. She wanted to close them tight, to keep the dying bomb lights out, but they stayed stapled open. She didn’t know if it was because the lights paralyzed them or because, like a train derailed, she just had to see what was happening.
She remembered her last show, when she was seven. How she was huddled in her mother’s lap, bury her face in her stomach, trying to keep herself from full out sobbing, and her mother lightly stroking her hair and cooing her into thinking that it was alright. Her mother had tear stains all over her shirt by the time it was over.
This is different, Riley thought. It’s worse, and I don’t know