Now

A din, a roar, an indescribable hubbub and tumult seemed to fill the Heavens and shake the earth beneath their feet…Some feared that the Day of Judgement was at hand, and that these unearthly sounds were but the prelude to the Trump of Doom.” – Ellen D. Larned, History of Windham Country, Connecticut, Vol. 1, on “The Great Frog Fight” of Windham, CT.

It was a cool yet unusually hot midnight in the dead center of Connecticut. Bog weather. It was in 1754, or 1756, or 1758. The Frog God’s towering form roared across dry fields, blocking out whole acres of moonlight over Windham. Its sole devotion was water. Water, the only prayer offered to and received by its divine composite consciousness. It roared in thirst, toppling waist-high stone walls and felling elms like twigs under a million webbed feet. It searched in vain before locating a pond suitable for apotheosis. The one pond that remained in the otherwise parched patch of countryside. 

The Frog God had not called for Dyer or Elderman, the names of a pair of local colonial politicians. The Frog God had no tympanum, as such, for politics–it was merely an accident that the pair of politicians were invoked, how when one hears murmuring under the rain and becomes convinced it must be muffled conversation. Out of the constant croaking din the townsfolk had simply plucked out what they needed to hear from a sea of sounds, like fishermen. They demanded the politicians investigate. What devil had called their names at night? So the pair went out in nightshirts with toothpick muskets, seeking the source of the strange and horrible noises. They rang bells. They rallied townspeople. They lit torches and hoisted pitchforks.

The Frog God heard them coming from afar. It saw the fire from their lit sticks reflected in their eyewet before they even arrived at the pond. But, by that time–by then, the typically still waters had begun to simmer. The God’s last resort. By then, fish and other aquatic life had already assented to their Lord’s sacrifice. By then, that is, by the time the townsfolk arrived, not a single one of the Frog God had survived. Every component part had perished.

The townsfolk cried in relief! It was no devil had come in the night, only millions of frogs gathered together to die! Out of joy the townsfolk cried and cried. They cried so much, the pond turned brackish and brown. Brackish and back then, still only simmering. The townsfolk have always drawn their water from that pond. Yet even today, they seem not to notice how their tap water only comes out piping hot; how they can’t leave their children too long in the bath, lest the water start to boil, ever so slowly.

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Adrian Dallas Frandle is an amphibious poet/flash fiction writer. They have served as Poetry Editor for several small presses, both online & in print. Book of Extraction: Poems with Teeth was published in 2023 by Kith Books. Recent work featured in hex literary, Poet Lore, Honey Literary, & Hooligan Magazine. Read more at adriandallas.com.