Lava

The floor tasted like lava. This was aspirational, of course. Who hasn’t wanted to eat lava? That’s the rub—you couldn’t taste it if you tried.

But you could imagine—the perfect viscosity, which means lava of a certain temperature—not too hot to be runny like an undercooked egg yolk, but not sludgy and stodgy, wading through half-baked bread. The gooeyness of a gusher recently taken from the freezer, laid out on a plate for no more than a minute and cut open with a very sharp knife.

And the taste—it wouldn’t be spicy, would it, because it’s too smooth—but it does taste hot. A warmth that percolates slowly, that slides across the tongue and then is so hot it tastes almost like ice after drinking tea.

That’s the flavor. Ice after tea. There’s something of sensual bright herbaceousness to it. Something clean like lemon. Something that clears the sinuses, steams them from the inside out, goes astringent and chalky as it cools.

Then it becomes gritty, and you feel it in the corners of your mouth. Or maybe that is just the sand that coats the floor—you’ve grown far too invested in this game of The Floor is Lava, at this beachside rented cabin where no one fucking rinses their feet before they step in from the dunes. Especially not the kids, who got you into this in the first place. They set up the chairs, and this one was set upon a child’s jumper, and it has slipped and now you are tasting the floor.

There’s another flavor here that might very well be in lava, and that is the taste of iron. It fills your mouth and mixes with the grit. You are seeing bright lights, which you thought was the brightness of freshly-broken lava crust. The sound of sirens breaks through the ringing in your ears, coming closer.