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Backwoods Boys

 “Doesn’t look like any kinda frog I ever saw…” 


Jonah peered into the water, squinting. Held his stick like how Jameson imagined cavemen did back when they hunted mammoths and fought sabertooth lions off their prized kills. Jameson snatched the stick, leaning closer over the creek. 


The thing didn’t stir. A long, strange shadow in the water. Broad, spade shaped head almost as big as man’s trunk and a lengthy body with sprawling limbs. It was a dazzlingly vivid orange-black-white, blending in between dappled shadows across glassy water. Jameson had spotted it purely by accident when searching for crawdads his keen eyes had picked out something odd. It had taken a moment to realize he was looking into the glossy eyes of an animal he’d never seen before. 


There was a hiss and Jameson whirled, almost leaping from his skin. When he saw one of Jonah’s fat paws strangling a beer the older brother nearly battered him to a pulp. He turned slowly back to the critter in the creek. It was still. Breathing gently in and out. The startling eyes peered up at him from the water. 


Something felt off. Jameson had always been the keener of the two, tall and lean and dark-eyed, quick to pause in the woodlands for any sign of game. It had fed them more than once, even saved them from the lumbering bears that traipsed through prickly western underbrush. This thing— he’d never seen anything like it. It felt wrong. He was so absorbed that when he heard a long hiss close by, Jameson merely assumed it was his idiot brother, slurping down another brew. That’s all Jonah was good for, that twit, drinking and smoking up, maybe sometimes carrying the goddamn bucket..


Another hiss. Longer. Louder. Closer. 


“You fuckin beer-swirling sombitch!”, and Jameson turned hard, ready to knock some sense into the person he unfortunately shared DNA with. 


But Jonah wasn’t there. In his place were a pair of talons attached to long, muscular legs. Jameson registered hanging claws, sensed a powerful set of jaws just above him out of sight. 


He didn’t even have time to scream when the jaws closed down on him.

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