Overachiever

        When I look at the aftermath through the lens of my camera, the tableau resembles an enormous, soot-stained sundae that is melting into the Yang-tse River.

        Lava has already metamorphosized from glistening sabers of fire that erupted into the stratosphere to stagnating tunnels of sludge that ooze Jurassically over the lip of the riverbank and teeter, like expensive hot fudge, on its hapless edge.

        Trees, once lush with almond-shaped leaves in variegated shades of emerald and sage, now lean, naked and stark, at hideous, arthritic angles to the horizon.

        A blood-red pool forms a moat beneath a charred pagoda, while a miasma of blue-gray smoke and pink-tinged embers rise from the mire and suffocate the building's once-magnificent design.

        When time was running out on our assignment to film a natural disaster, I panicked and used my substantial resources to manifest one of my own. How could I have known that inseminating a makeshift bomb into a supposedly inactive volcano would create a result of such magnitude.

        On the bright side, there is, without question, an A-plus in my academic future!