The Bed and Breakfast man: Writing

Vulcanalia. The festival of the Roman God of fire. Those who heed not the voices of the Gods deserve to be their sacrifices. He watched them. Soft. No warriors these people. Merchants, fat from the produce of the volcanic soil surrounding the area. These people had no fire in them at all, but they reaped from his domain and grew fat and lazy. Spending their money on painted walls and golden trinkets. It amused him to dry up the wells. It amused him to shake the ground and hear them scream. But each time they ignored him and went back to their daily lives, he grew more angry.

I watched him breathe from the same vantage point across the water as Pliny the Younger, who's Uncle Pliny the Elder was at this moment on his way to his death, brought on by his curiosity of natural phenomena. The cloud formation described by Pliny the Younger in his letter to Tacitus was the final exhalation, Vulcan contained himself no longer. The pyroclastic flow from Vesuvius enveloped Pompeii and Herculaneum sealing the fate of thousands, and providing a time capsule that would not be opened for 1600 years.

It was surprisingly gentle. The slightest of shudders as if she had found something mildly distasteful. I almost believed that with her lineage she would shrug it off and move away; stately and unhurried, showing the stiff upper lip that was prevalent amongst aristocracy at the time. Not that she was unaware of the lower classes. She knew many people from that walk of life intimately, deep down within herself. But her greatest show was always for those of wealth and breeding. Who amongst them could guess that the shudder was belying the reality of her hurt? She was struggling to cope. Those who thought they knew her thought nothing of it. She was considered the greatest of her time and more than capable of coping with the situation at hand. But there were those who knew her best, and saw her hurt, saw the mighty wounds she bore and knew that the situation was more dire than could be imagined.

When they finally realised, rich and poor alike fled. Class and money had no bearing in the attempts to disassociate themselves from her. She grew angry. She had carried them gallantly and now they would desert her in her time of need. She knew the end was near, and she swore her revenge. She would take as many with her as she could. In her final throws of life, within two minutes, from 2.18 am to 2.20 am she took 1523 souls as companions.

When the Carpathia steamed into the area some hours later, she was gone.

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