(by me)

"Somebody hanged a duck!"

"A what?"

"A DUCK!"

"Don’t talk to me like that, you little whippersnapper. I was on Pearl Harbor when the Russian commie bastards nuked us. And I was sitting on the fort when the Dutch bombed Gibralter. I trained General Custer in the Revolution. I . . . "

The old man had pissed me off an hour ago when I was at the back of the line. I’d been craving ice cream for the last three weeks and I was only a half hour away from eating my precious tooth-rotting, gum-curling ice cream. I was just over halfway through the line when someone said, "Somebody hanged a duck," just as calm as anything, like they hadn’t really said it, it was just in my mind. So I ignored it. Then the old fart started up again. Damn! I had been afraid that he would start again since he stopped babbling about tank raids on underground penguins in Korea.

I turned around and looked at the geezer straight in the eye. He stopped talking and looked anxiously at me as if caught by my eyes like a raccoon in headlights.

"Listen, you sorry sack of over-wrinkled prunes," I said. "Some idiot..." I pointed generally to everybody in the store, "hanged..." I held up a fist over my head, tilted my head, crossed my eyes, stuck my tongue out in imitation, "a DUCK!" I yelled this so loud that half the people in the store dropped instantly to the ground and the rest of them looked up to see what would be hitting them.

The old man just stared at me stupidly.

Meanwhile, my ice cream had started to melt.

"Oh," he said, "why didn’t you just say so? I had a duck once. It was pink. With purple stripes. Named her Beelzebub. It’s antlers were . . ."

And I sighed and ignored him. This was when I noticed my ice cream melting. I was wondering how this could happen (since my hands had become frozen like my ice cream) when a bright flash filled the store.

Someone had taken a picture. After successfully making sure that he would not take another picture, possibly ever, I looked to see what he was taking a picture of in the window. So some frog was climbing up the window. So it had three eyes and a giant grin across its foaming mouth. Who cares? But three hundred of them across the window was what made most people freak out. But not me. Three hundred frogs was nothing compared to back home in the bayou. There, it was three hundred gators you had to worry about.

It was the other thousands of frogs that made my eyes wide. The two thousand frogs attacking the moving cars in the parking lot, the five thousand frogs crawling all over the unmoving cars in the parking lot, the other thousand or so that hung from the lights in the parking lot by their sticky pink tongues, and the two thousand that were scattered over the parking lot randomly.

Someone yelled, "They’ve ruined my Continental!"

And he was gone!

Out the door he ran, into a sea of green, as if diving into a mossy lake. They were upon him instantly, pink tongues wrapping around his ankles, his wrists, his neck, arms, torso, dragging him to the wet cement. After that, nobody saw him. Just a huge pile of green amphibian flesh and pink amphibian tongues.

Everyone in the store was staring silently at this gruesome event. Cash registers stopped beeping. Children stopped whining. Even the old fart behind me shut up. Until he started speaking again.

"This reminds me of the time in Kuwait when Napoleon dropped spinach innards on us."

And that’s when pandemonium erupted in a small town Food-N-Go. Screams split the air and sliced through my ears (or vice-versa), registers beeped and buzzed, lights flashed (the photo club was shopping), people were fighting, stealing, and having sex on the Twinkies, children swung like apes from the ceiling fans, candy bars sprouted wings and flew away, mice chased cats, the blind lead the blind, ostriches tangoed with the Queen of England, squid preferred the waltz, Pepsi and Coke called a truce, the planets aligned with a black hole in the middle of nowhere and BANG! . . . just like that, the mutant frogs were staring silently at us!

Meanwhile, the ice cream was still melting.

The lights went out. Pandemonium ceased. Terror began.

I ran to the snack section and sat on the floor next to a pile of Ho-Hoes and Doritos. I quickly decided this was not a good spot, as I was too close to the Twinkies.

I dodged skateboarding turtles through the hardware section and hid behind a pile of new tires and a big sale sign, "30% OFF" . . . Joy! I was in the middle of the store. This may not seem like a good place to hide from the mobs of panicking suburbanites, but that’s not what I was worried about. The frogs no doubt had us surrounded. I had no way to tell how many of them were in the parking lots at the sides and back of the store. Any moment now, the walls would crack and shatter and a horde of green and pink things would flood the "Food, Gas and Hardware Store of the Future." I knew I couldn’t escape if they did raid he glorified 7-11, but I was firmly hoping to be the last to go, thereby seeing all the fun around me. Maybe they wouldn’t be hungry anymore by the time they got to me. (I firmly believe that dreams are a necessary part of reality.)

Then the ceiling cracked. I must have forgotten about the four thousand frogs that evidently decided, "To hell with the parking lots, I’m going up on the roof!"

I braced myself for falling tiles and asbestos, but it never came. I looked up and saw a beam of light lift the roof off the building and throw into the parking lot at the back of the store. A loud squish resounded through the rainy night. But I thought nothing of it . . . my eyes were directed to the tadpole-shaped object hovering above us. About a hundred two-foot-long frogs with sticky feet and three eyes and wide grins lowered themselves from the ship by their sticky pink tongues.

Once inside, the amphibious leader, noticeable by the overgrown head, three arms and red stripe down his back, sauntered over to the nearest man who was standing about five feet away from my not-so-comfortable hiding spot under a half ton of rubber.

"Graaak!" it said.

"What?" said the man.

"Oh, you’re speaking English," the frog leader croaked. We were ALL taken aback!

"You," it continued with it’s ultra-wide grin, "will all come with us to the Bayou Planet. There, we will make much whoopee and tie snails to chestnut trees for the cornstalks to palpitate!" They obviously needed work on their English.

"We’ll never submit to your evil plot!"

The frog leader’s tongue shot out and instantly the man was a pile of ashes with a fishing hat.

Meanwhile, the ice cream was still melting.

The melon-shaped head turned toward me. How could he see me under all this rubber? Was he just interested in tires for "30% OFF" for his new Amphibian Spaceship Trans-Am? I was highly doubtful. What sealed my doubt was when he grabbed me by three webbed hands and dragged me out. Tires went rolling, knocking over frogs and humans alike. I lost it!

"I just wanted my ice cream," I sobbed.

"Oh." He dropped me. He turned to the rest of the crowd. Everyone started yelling that they, too, just wanted ice cream.

"SILENCE!" he bellowed. "If no one will come with us, we will destroy you all!"

Terror ceased. Pandemonium regained control.

Everyone ran in different directions, running over frogs and each other, bulldozing aisle displays and causing a general nuisance. I made a break for it. Exactly what "it" was, I had no idea. But I ran anyway. I lateralled my ice cream to my friend, Jeff, broke a few tackles by frog soldiers, dodged icky, gooey frog tongues, and trampled half-dead middle-schoolers as Jeff broke a sack and threw me a long bomb. He got rid of it just as a frog tongue entwined itself around his throat and crushed him. Poor Jeff! Oh well, he had too many addictive problems anyway. I hurtled the counter and kept my eye on the ice cream carton. My delicious cinnamon and cajun ice cream was almost in my reach.

Then it was gone!

I looked and saw a frog soldier holding my dental-decaying delight. Damn! Interception.

"Cajun ice cream?" it croaked.

"CINNAMON and cajun," I corrected.

"Shut up! Maybe your world is more valuable than we thought."

"Hey, that’s my ice cream!"

"Not anymore, human."

"Oh, go ahead," I said. "It’s melted anyway. It’s no good."

"It’s melted?" The frog soldier paused.

"It’s melted," I said. "It’s totally rotten. I think I’m going to throw it away."

"Oh," it said, sounding quite depressed. "I guess you can keep it. The boss won’t like it if I bring him something rotten."

Now, his English was fine, which made me worried about this group’s plans for us, as mentioned a few pages ago. I yelled, "I don’t want to make whoopee with tied up palpitating chestnut snails!"

And suddenly, everyone was staring silently at me.

And I noticed a duck hanging from the neon sign.

Meanwhile, the ice cream was still melting.

Then the expired raisin spoke again. "This reminds me of the chestnut snails that attacked our village in the Atlantic."

And he was instantly vaporized.

We all then deemed them to be very good frogs and happily went with them to the planet Bayou.

On the tadpole-shaped spaceship (try saying that ten times fast) I reflected on my new home. It would be just like my old home, except that the "Food, Gas and Hardware Store of the Future" was now a "Pile of Rubble in the Past." So, I moved on. The entire journey, I practiced my snail tying and finally sat down and drank my ice cream.

THE END

written by Twitch (The Man of Many Aliases)
original digital transferring by the Sloth
Prisoner of war: Toshi Yagamanti
Dried-Up Old Raisin: Erving Goffman
Winner of Ten Golden Globes: Ren Hoek
Author of "Shoeless Joe": W.P. Kinsella
Master of the Pinhole Snail Tie: Randy P. Sanderson
Priest Vito Cornelius in "The Fifth Element": Ian Holm