Things before the explosion.

Coal becomes an ember, black cold to fiery red. Smoke becomes fireball. A key becomes a puzzle. The smallest things are everything in this unknown world. Half-imagined clues and glimpses of madness under beds and in back sheds. Years in the making, layer over layered hurt, silence met out with hardness, this is the recipe for this feast of darkness. The insulting ordinariness of another sunny day taunts and pushes us on to the next. There is no quenching this snakespark racing towards the keg. Relentlessly and admirably efficient, I see it only when I hear it, sensing the man fade and fade, a transparency ebbing in. Slowly the hollow grows, combusting on itself, turning red to black, a spark to dust. What comes next is already here, just louder, engulfing, scorching.