Thirteen Ways of Looking at Twilight—6
More from Harold Johnson.
The first time scared the bejesus out of him, and after he started breathing again, he was relieved nobody was there to hear the sound he had made.
He had been reading, around midnight, and maybe had paused, as his grandmother would have said, to rest his eyes, when something slammed into the window by his chair, rattling the glass.
Aieeegrrh! He bolted up in his chair, wide-eyed and wheezing.
Could it have been a dream? No! said his outraged nerves.
Too frightened to get up and go outside to investigate, he stared at the dark glass for some answer, but couldn’t see anything—except—maybe a smear of slime on the windowpane? He scrutinized it, but it was hard to tell. Several minutes crawled by, and nothing else happened, so he resorted to logical explanation. Some kind of confused nightbird, no doubt, or a bat that needed a tune-up, attracted to the light of his window. Or just the wind.
Only this and nothing more.
He settled back in his chair. Then—
Crash! Another collision against the window, this time shattering the glass, and a softball-sized greenish brown projectile shot across the room and hit the floor with a squishy thud.
He was really relieved no one heard the sound he made this time as he jacked his legs up under him in the chair and found himself face to face with a large unexpected frog.
Very odd, the feeling the impassive creature gave him. Not malevolent, not threatening, but, take it all around, not good.
“What do you want?” asked Harold, maybe out loud.
The frog, as is typical with the genus, didn’t answer. Harold was actually relieved at that, because the damn thing looked like it just might, and Harold was simply not ready for that. Not ready at all.
Cool night air seeped through the broken window, and just as Harold was turning his attention to doing something about that, envisioning cardboard from a cut-up cereal box, scissors, tape—crash!—another uninvited visitor hurtled through the broken glass and landed about two feet from the first, with whom he shared a family resemblance, and like his cousin sat facing Harold and staring.
Thump! A projectile rattled the window across the room—a pause—then a second try—then a third that succeeded in busting the glass, violently admitting yet another of the creatures.
As the shock wore off, Harold, pinned to his chair, began to think about what he was going to do. Shovel? Maybe they would hop onto it, and he could give them a lift back outside. But what would stop them from just coming back? Whap! Whap! Two more leapt through the newly-made openings—and they all just sat there, throats undulating, staring at Harold.
Kill them? But that could get messy—with said shovel, for example. And if he shot them, wouldn’t he end up with bullet holes in the floor, the walls? Plus the neighbors hearing the shots—so out of character for Harold—and calling the police. Yes! The police. Let them handle it. Except he knew they wouldn’t—they would just say, how about not bothering us with your personal problems, buddy, call an exterminator. Actually not a bad idea, but probably expensive. Plus, something told Harold there was an endless supply of the audacious creatures—and indeed, just as he thought that, he heard a mad pattering and he looked in horror to see a legion of tiny frogs pelting what was left of the glass in the windows like hail. The ones that made it through ended up on the floor, on furniture, shelves, one even on the face of his grandfather clock.
The bigger ones kept their eyes on him, and though he couldn’t put his finger on it, he knew they meant business, and he felt their reproof like toxic gas.
* * *
In subsequent days, in spite of his efforts—boarded-up windows, duct-taped holes, towels crammed into cracks and under doors—they kept coming, and had taken up residence all over the house. They shared his most private moments—in the john, the shower—they sat on shelves like objets d’art, sprang out of drawers he opened. One good thing you could say—there were no flies in the house. Even if that wasn’t enough to offset the relentless bane of their staring.
To Harold, prone to self-loathing, it felt like they had been in pursuit all his life and had finally caught up with him. Maybe that was his imagination, but he had reached the territory in life where something being imagination was a moot point. Real, dream, imagination, memory—it was all the same from where he was standing.
He had made a few half-hearted efforts at first to remove the unwelcome guests, and had concocted some other schemes—like moving to another state, but the concept was just too intimidating and what would he do if he got there and, along with himself, the frogs came too? In his heart he knew there was no getting rid of them. So he tried constructing a narrative of himself as undeserving victim, but he didn’t get anywhere with that either because at the end of the day he knew he himself was to blame.
And on the night of a thousand eyes when he was reading again and was jolted by a loud thump on the door, he felt a sad throb of resignation. He sat and waited. Maybe just the wind—for God’s sake why did they always say just the wind even if it was a Mack truck? Sure enough, another thump, shaking the door in its frame. Then the third, which busted out a hole, admitting Big Daddy, the size of a Welsh Corgi, who took three hops to a point directly across from Harold and parked himself with his never-closing eyes and a demeanor that said he was here to stay.
So, thought Harold, you’ve found me.
April 12, 2022