Spontaneous Human Combustion

January, 2022

My school friend William exploded on his 11th birthday in front of a new Playstation 2.

Spontaneous human combustion. 

Tearing off the brown paper wrapping and opening the box to see the special edition silver console filled his little cup, but it was the Gran Turismo steering wheel controller that really did it. It was a replica racing wheel with fake leather grips,  actual blinkers and a horn that played ‘get fucked’ when you pressed it. 

William was sitting there in his boxing shorts and hit that thing as it came out of the box and it was ‘get fucked’ and the sound of a big balloon popping, if that balloon was full of tomato sauce and joy. 

They picked him off the walls and his sister got all of his games, but her cup would tip over when the pub overcooked her steak, so she was ok and is still not exploded, today. 

Just the next day our school principal became the second explosion in town; her heart so full it erupted right out of her chest in front of her. 

She’d played cricket with her dad when she was little, had a good eye and she caught it in her hands like a sitter to first slip. 

She was in love with the art teacher and he would write her poems about the moody sky and play with the back of her neck and she’d purr like a cat. 

He was a tall, wiry big spider and he had long skinny fingers that he’d rat a tat tat on his desk while he was looking at your painting: blue house and your family with big square heads and your dad holding the remote because that’s mostly what he did. 

Tap tap tap and he’d look at you and back at your painting like he was reading Steinbeck. He saw everything and he felt everything and was a genuine risk of explosion also, I see now.

He told the principal she had pretty on her face and that was it; she mini-exploded right there in the middle of the soccer oval holding a juice popper in her big orange dress and fluffy golden hair.

William and the principal made the local newspaper that week.

A man came out with a big camera and took a photo of the principal holding her big heart out in front of her, smirking with her red cheeks, in a small respite from her vortex of love. William’s mum stood next to her in her best dress and her hair done, holding the special edition silver Playstation out in front of her like it might explain something.

LOVE HURTS or HEARTS ON FIRE was the newspaper headline, I can’t remember exactly.

They eventually put the principal all back together, getting that heart back in after she took some time off school to mark maths tests and it wasn’t so full. 

Ms Curry almost gone in a hurry, we’d sing when she got back.

William’s mother took to walking around the streets all day, and they said she played Gran Turismo at night with that steering wheel. One of our friends was playing it online and was badly beaten and heckled by a player called mUma3Xplosions and still reckons it was her.

A lot more stories came out after that.

Hearts were full and exploding everywhere, apparently.

A skinny man left the house for the first time in 15 years just as a mariachi band was walking by his house playing Eminem in Mariachi style. Their Mexican restaurant had closed for the night after a guest tried the homemade tortilla chips and exploded into her spicy margarita. They say the skinny man’s heart just wasn’t ready after so long alone – tightened up and dry like if you leave your shoes in the sun and they get a bit smaller or you fall asleep on your arm and you can’t move it. Mom’s Spaghetti got him.

A woman exploded in the middle of reading 1984 when Winston and Julia are laying in the shed and Winston wonders if it was ever normal to just lay and feel like that. She never got to finish it, but the ending is actually quite sad.

There were reports of multiple explosions at a Bowie concert when he took off his black, tattered overcoat during Rebel Rebel and was wearing exactly the same thing underneath in white.

An old man with a hunchback and oversized trousers ordered honey cake and kissed his wife’s hand at a coffee shop and basically everyone exploded.

Swimming holes and cheap Asian restaurants with free prawn chips became popular explosion sites.

It was a disappointment to new couples if there were no explosions at their wedding. 

I had a dream that I was ballroom dancing in a big dark room, turning around and around with a girl in a cat mask and I think I might have exploded in the dream, but I’m not sure because would you explode in real life, too?

No one was quite sure about these things, or if they wanted to explode or not. 

Were you doing enough if you didn’t explode?

What if your partner exploded and you didn’t?

Were you more or less likely to explode if you kept your heart full or locked it up and kept it away from puppies and hugs and songs?

A small hysteria set in on the topic of explosions. Some people tried to drain their hearts by reading the back of shampoo bottles and lining up at the Roads and Traffic Authority, but it was found that you couldn’t really avoid explosion.

There were more near-fatalities like Ms Curry, the principal – hearts that spilled out and landed on unexpected engagement rings or popped out to beep the horn at perfect parking spots right outside the video shop. 

Lovers’ hearts broke ribs to burst out and shadowbox. 

The film Magnolia was banned for causing Near-Explosion Syndrome; a condition associated with chest pain, a feeling of weightlessness in the limbs, and messaging old friends on Facebook. 

Ms Curry eventually came back to school and we did a welcome back assembly where three kids got to stand up and say a short something, censored for any adjectives deemed too likely to cause re-explosion  (a scenario believed to be highly possible at that point, but not yet experienced) because she wanted to keep being a principal and the art teacher’s lover.

She wasn’t missed but her absence recognised; not loved but appreciated; not welcome back but acknowledged as being back.

We got to ask her questions – did she miss us? Did she have a big scar? Was she going to get married? Why was she called Ms Curry, did she like curry?

William’s mum stood up and cleared her throat. The room turned and gasped to see her standing there.

She asked what it felt like to explode. 

Heads ripped back to the front of the room. Teachers onstage moved aside in case the principal exploded again, but the kids leaned in and listened with their mouths open; some ignorant and some running at the risk of explosion or getting explosion on their faces; desperate to feel and be a part of it.

She thought a moment and looked at the art teacher, who waved back by curling his fingers in and out like he was scrunching up the air, and her eyebrows tipped in and danced up and back and she giggled and then straightened herself and pulled her shoulders back and stepped in and took a big breath and said:

It’s like being opened up inside out but in a good way like you just opened the oven and your best friend has baked hot bread and you’ve woken up to your favourite song and tea and bodies that fit together and your nan’s lamb stew and cricket in the afternoons and you hit it over the neighbour’s fence and you climb up your best tree to get over there and you’re swimming in the rain and looking at someone and know that they know what you’re thinking even if it’s good or bad or you’re just wondering what colour you’d be if you were a colour, or why people wear t-shirts at the beach, and they have just half their face out of the water with their hair all gone dark and their big eyes and no one could ever have been so beautiful, they just couldn’t have, but you hope that everyone’s felt that about someone before. It’s a flight attendant tying a blind man’s shoelace; like patting all the dogs and finding a fiver in the surf and seeing a fox in the city and it definitely winks at you and when someone rubs the inside of your wrist and you wonder if that’s what electricity feels like because your body glows and you know you’re lighting up a room even though it’s still dark and it just hurts, hurts, hurts because it feels so good. 

I didn’t explode then but I wanted to. 

by Sparrokei