Beware the Lava Men, for Their Love Only Brings Heartache and Burning (The Least Likely Apocalypse Pilot)

Love Hurts - Nazareth

One day, without warning, the great earthquake California has been waiting for hits. Fortunately, we are well prepared, and casualties are limited. Though Hollywood Boulevard now has a large rift down the center of the street, most of the important buildings along the way remain intact. In fact, if it weren't for the giant rift down the center of the iconic road, the lasting damage would be almost easily ignored. However, for the next 6 months nothing but the sounds of sobbing and moaning and occasional screams will be audible. Finally, on a warm summer day the Lava Men will rise from depths in a mass migration of a brand new race of people from the earth's core.

The Lava Men, who (surprisingly) speak English, explain that they've been all alone inside of the Earth's core for thousands of years. They are desperately seeking human contact because, if a Lava Man were to touch another Lava Man, they would simply combine into a larger being-without resolving their need for contact with another. As they descend onto Hollywood Boulevard, they reach out to the human tourists desperately for contact.

The first human fatality comes when a young woman responds to the blubbering of one of these igneous creatures. He (though at this time we have not determined if they do in fact have genders) screams "I just want to be loved! Is that so wrong? Why can't someone embrace me as I embrace the world? I have so much love to give."

As the young woman steps forward with her arms outstretched, she exclaims, "I see you!" The Lava Man's grimace forms into a smile as he oozes his way over to embrace the person who is obviously too enamored with the film Avatar. And as she is consumed inside of the Lava Man's molten frame, he begins to sob tears of ember that ignite Mann's Chinese Theater, leaving Tinsel Town to become nothing more than a pile of smoldering ash. He protests, "Why must everything I love die? I'd kill myself if I could, but everything I try to use melts..."  The Lava Man, just like the rest of his brethren would eventually, heads out from Los Angeles across the rest of the country.

Being that our Constitution affords rights to any citizen born in America, and technically the Lava Men were birthed on American soil, there was no choice but to give the Lava Men citizenship. Eventually it was determined that the entire race suffered from manic-depression, that only worsened as they consumed and destroyed everything across the country. Unwilling to accept that they could not live amongst the human race, the Lava Men attempt a mass suicide by jumping en masse off cliffs into the ocean hoping that they would finally be free from what they describe as the, "tortuous prison of life." They soon discover that they were too hot to be cooled off by the ocean below, and wander across the ocean floor until they had spread across the globe bringing their plagues of terrible poetry and fiery death across Eurasia and Australia as well.

Bullets would prove ineffective as the many citizens of the try to mercifully end the lives of the Lava Men who desire nothing more than to be held. However, eventually the human population will die out as the massive amount of carbon dioxide brought to the earth's surface by the Lava Men would lead to the dissolution of the atmosphere. Only when all of the oxygen had left the earth, would the flames of the Lava Men finally be extinguished bringing them at last to the restful peace they so desperately sought.

Only one transcription of Lava Men poetry had been saved, as most of the poems were so pitiful that they would make 13-year-old Goth girls' entries into their DeadJournals seem like masterpieces rivaled only by the great Italian bards of the 14th century.

A Molten Heartbreak

Though I yearn for the embrace of another

I am forever denied

Like the wilting of a flower

That I also cannot touch

Because if I were to touch a flower

It would burn

My heart wishes that it were frozen

Like the Arctic Circle to the north

But I can't tell you how that is

Because If I were to visit the North Pole

I'd melt through the ice sheet

And sink into the depths below