They Like to Watch

If you live in Florida, you get used to snakes and frogs and lizards just sort of hanging out in your yard. Sometimes they get into the house, but they're mostly about as uninterested in you as you are in them. It gets to where you don't even think about it anymore. You pick up the paper, shake off a toad, wander back in from the porch. That sort of thing.

So I didn't notice at first when the frogs gathered up at the edge of the yard. It was a little overgrown, I'll admit. (Hey, YOU go out and mow every week in a hundred percent humidity.) When I got to the end of my driveway, it finally dawned on me that something was weird. There was a semicircle of frogs, all sizes, ranging from a couple of bottlecap-sized peepers to one fat old bufo-toad. They were all sitting motionless except for the slight pulse of breath in their throats. In the center of the semicircle, there was a dead bird, or what I thought was a dead bird until I saw one wing twitch. It looked like it had been caught by a cat or something: pretty mangled up, with fresh blood on the ground.

I froze and stared at the tabeleau for a second, the odd audience and the macabre focus of their attention. The bird twitched again, then stilled forever. Something changed. It was like the moment when the central air cuts off and you realize that you'd been hearing the white noise for ages. One by one, the frogs and toads turned and hopped or lumbered off into the grass. I shook my head and told myself I was anthropomorphizing.

And that was it for a while. I forgot about the incident and went on my merry way, going to work, getting a drink, going home, hi-ho and whatever. I want to emphasize that I never drive drunk. If I'm drunk I call a cab or get a Lyft or something. So that night, I go out to my bar like usual, and as I'm leaving my house, I see something odd. There must have been a dozen of them, maybe more - I could only make out the big ones, the huge squat toads and a few slightly smaller, smooth-skinned frogs. They were lined up on the curb, just outside the grass. They weren't moving, and everything was still and quiet. Like not even bugs buzzing. The distant traffic noises were muted.

Maybe that weirdness bothered me and I drank a little more than usual, I don't know, but I wasn't drunk. A little buzzed, perhaps. And it was dark, and the streetlight at the corner was on the fritz again, and I always told them they should keep the damn thing on a leash if they're going to keep it outside, and anyway what it boils down to is I ran over my stupid neighbors' stupid dog because he got out from their stupid fence that I've told them he can jump over. It had black fur; I never saw it until it went under me. I'm not a dog person, not much of a pet person at all, even, but I will never forget until the day I die the thump-crunch of the impact. I swear I could feel it through the floorboards, through my feet and up my legs. I still feel it sometimes.

I immediately screeched to a halt and jumped out. I wasn't thinking tremendously clearly. I'm not sure what I thought I would do; I'm not a vet. I took a CPR class once but I'm pretty sure that wouldn't work on a dog. It took me a minute to find the critter - I've forgotten its name, Cody or Body or something like that - and when I did, I was pretty sure it was endsville. Among the other breaks and cuts, its neck was spun halfway around, and there was a white glint of bone in the bleeding wounds in its throat. It was still alive when I found it, making faint squeaking, gasping noises, eyes darting around like crazy. Its legs weren't moving, though, and if it was still breathing, I couldn't see it in the dark. I was mumbling and cursing to myself. I started to kneel down, but I smelled the rich stink of wet fur and blood and I veered off to throw up.

Instead, though, I saw the audience. The frogs. At first it seemed like they were looking at me, but when I stepped to the side, I saw they were staring at the dog instead. They'd been waiting there the whole time, I think, watching. Watching the road, watching the spot where it was going to happen, where the dog now lay, wheezing out its last breaths. The reminder sent my gorge rising again. The alcohol I'd had earlier probably didn't help.

When I was done puking, the dog was thoroughly dead, and the frogs had all gone away. I probably did not make a great impression on my neighbors that night, with stinking breath and babbling like a nutbag about frogs while I told them I'd killed their beloved pet.

Twice is coincidence, right? I was spooked, but what was I going to tell anyone? "I saw some frogs when I killed a dog." That is not a story that is going to earn you any free drinks. Not at my bar, anyway.

Then came Herman Whitaker. That happened on my street. Woke me up in the middle of the night, too. Not the gunshots, I don't think, but definitely all the cop sirens and the shouting and what-all. You can look it up. Probably didn't get much press other than locally, though. Drug deal gone wrong, but it didn't involve any immigrants to talk shit about, so the media doesn't care. I knew something was up when I came home, though. I was late, like usual, and as I turned in to my street my headlights swept along the lawns. That was when I saw them, the frogs. Dozens, maybe a hundred, maybe more. They were all hopping along the gutters and clambering through the grass, heading toward one particular house about two thirds of the way down the road, almost to the cul-de-sac. There were already a bunch of them lined up there. You could only really see them on the driveway; the others were hidden in the tall grass. (Herman was even worse at lawncare than I was.) But if you extrapolated from the curve of that rough line of amphibians, it would have made a wide circle around the house. Or a half-circle, like an audience. An audience of frogs, watching the house.

And a few hours later that night, bang-bang, poor Herman was dead.

Frogs have been around, you know? Amphibians were the first things to haul themselves out of the water. They've seen some shit since the Triassic. They watched the dinosaurs come. They watched the dinosaurs go. They saw the planet almost turn into a desert, and they saw it turn into a popsicle, too. You know there are frogs in parts of Africa that go years without rain? They just burrow down into the dirt and kind of stop being alive until the water comes back. They're patient, is what I'm saying.

And they like to watch. I think they like to watch us die. I don't know how they know it's coming. I don't want to know. I wish I didn't have to think about it at all.

There's a reason I'm writing this down, a reason I'm telling you at all about this half-formed idea I have. I came home a few hours ago, in the dark, and I almost stepped on a frog in my driveway.

It was looking at my house.

###

I just checked out the window. There's more of them. Sitting and waiting, silently, patiently. I don't know how many. I don't know how long they'll wait.

What have they come to watch tonight? I don't have any enemies, not like that. I don't have much worth stealing. I've broken out the bottle of Glenlivet I was saving for a special occasion. Last chance, I figure. I don't have a gun, but I got out an old baseball bat and I'm keeping it by me. Maybe I should take it out to them, splatter some frog-guts all over the lawn. See how they like watching THAT, the freaks. Can't really see straight now, though. Screw it. Got some vodka, too, if the scotch runs out.

###

Pulled the curtains. Don't want to see any more. I don't want to see them watching me. Get another drink. Can't take this much longer. I'm trapped in here, and they're out there.

I read on the internet about them. Frogs. They got teeth. I didn't know that. Little cone-shaped teeth, and they hold prey in their mouths and swallow with their eye muscles. Just push things down their gullets with their fucking eyes. Damn.

###

I can't sleep. Got some pills in the cabinet. Is that what they want? Is that what they're here to see? Just want to sleep. Need to rest, damn it. Damn, damn, damn. Damned.

I don't want them to see me any longer.