Skip to main content

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.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Something Growing In My Basement

Something is growing in my basement.  Plump and bold red mushrooms coat the stairs like little crimson forests, and through what little light remains I can see their spores drifting. It’s damp, humid.  When it sighs the whole house shakes, my windows rattling by a wind not from outside but *below*.  I dream of horns, black and curving and many, like bony branches thrust up out of the dirt. Crisscrossed by red roots.  The mailman throws my packages, hurls my newspaper. My neighbors eye me and my home like it’s something mad, something hungry, and when I finally sit at the table to read I can’t help but feel that the floor is sinking under my feet. Listing into swallowing earth.  I know soon I’ll wake up, stiff, entombed by so many blood-colored caps. Tenacious roots spilling over me. The thing in my basement will speak instead of sigh and all that rotting wormwood will come down, down, down. And it will be free.
Post a Comment
Read more

Lepidopterophobia

You are dying.  Doesn’t matter how.  Feels so far away now— doesn’t it?  That’s it. Take it easy. Let that last breath slip away, like the warmth that comes in a killing cold. Gentle into a silent night. No more looking up at those crowding, concerned faces; a herd of pale, pained moons.  - - - - - ___________ A dark tunnel. Familiar, but not. You’re welcome all the same. Hands groping, grasping against glassy coolness, stumbling—  Light.  The most perfect, pure sunlight. Every idealized summer, every perfect candlelight and warming fire, all that condescend sun-sure dances across a lifetime of days. It’s mere existence is the most pristine invitation. In illumination alone it says come closer . If you had a heartbeat it would be racing.  Up. Up. Forward. Scuffing, almost tripping. Surging forward, hands outstretched.  You’re here.  The Light. The Light   It’s so— wrong . It’s purity vanished, replaced with an organic and oily sheen. Like firefly glows made rotten, morphed in the shape
Post a Comment
Read more

Betty and the Storm

 Betty takes a mercifully long drag on her All-American Stag , feeling the Kansas breeze. It’s a beautiful summer day with big sky country blueness everywhere and only faint, grey-streaked clouds far off on the horizon. Betty loves prairie storms, how they turn her world into blues and blacks cut ragged by hungry lightning. That familiar, lovely earthy smell that lingers even after the clouds have gone southward, down to the more welcomingly humid gulf.  A bit of incoming stormy wind snaps at the clothes on the line and Betty stands sighing and a halfway laconic smile, feeling long hours of chore caused aches lessening with each puff of the Stag . Reaching out a hand to fix one of Teddy’s work shirts, Betty unclips it, hoping to smooth the wrinkles with an absent hand as she turns again to watch the storm roll in.  When Betty sees it, it’s almost slippery in her vision. Like she’s got something in her jade green eyes, something that makes focus hard and dizzying. Betty squints. Scrunch
Post a Comment
Read more