#9 - The Frog

Today’s words: Correspondent, Frog, Assault, Hospital
Today’s genre: Drama/Mystery
Word count: 475

“For the past few weeks, several people have been assaulted by people in a manic state asking variations of the same question: “Where is the frog?” However, this is no fairy tale. The people who are on this mission to speak to ‘the frog’ have turned violent once their victims deny knowledge or the whereabouts of said frog. This strange phenomenon is spreading, not just in the UK, but worldwide. Doctors are stumped, as are other health professionals. So, the question on everyone’s lips is...who or what is ‘the frog’?”

It felt like the world had undergone some 28 Days Later  spin-off, but in a really lame way. I turned off the television, watching as the correspondent’s face faded away on my TV screen. Why was it that every reporter, no matter what the news story was, rarely smiled? If I had my cock in her, she would smile.

I picked up a bottle of vodka to wash down the ridiculous imagery and bit down on my bottom lip, hard.

The girl on her knees looked up at me, tears clouding her eyes. She looked...what was the word, ‘sad’? “I love you.”

“I love you too, but it’s rude to talk with your mouth full.”

“It isn’t--"

I pushed her head down. “It is, now.”

The bars on Saturday nights were like a pic ‘n’ mix bowl in a supermarket: soft ones, sour ones...sweet ones that made your tongue wet and your dick hard. I’m talking candy, you dig? I’d go shopping for candy nearly every week and that night was no different. There was a lot of candy, I remember that much.

I had decided to buy a new drink that had been released the month before: Spawn. The adverts always showed people swallowing this drink, close-ups on their throats, various moans of pleasure drifting from their nostrils before dark green lettering floated onto the screen: ‘Spawn – It Goes Down a Treat.’ As a fan of my liquor, I gave it a shot. It went down better than a slut in heat. From that point onwards, recall was impossible.

“Did you find the frog?”

My eyes opened and all I could see was whiteness. This wasn’t my bedroom, I thought. I turned my groggy head in the direction of the foreign voice. “Where am I?”

“You’re in hospital.”

I looked around: white curtains, steady sounds of beeping, an anti-bacterial smell wafting through the air. What the fuck had happened?

“The frog, did you find it?”

I narrowed my eyes. Was this dude fucking with me?

“You came in a week ago shouting about needing to speak to a frog, you don’t remember?” he laughed slightly. “You had about six guys trying to retrain you on the floor over there,” he nodded to somewhere past my head. “Well...did you find it? Your precious frog?”

#4 - The Simple Life

Today’s words: Forecasting, Food, Radar, Breakfast
Today’s genre: Fantasy/Mystery/Historical
Word count: 415

The weather outside the small stone building was very sunny, and it would be for a few days more; at that time however, I was forecasting a dull, dreary day with constant showers and low temperatures – I was right. I am not referring to the weather when I mention an unfavourable outlook, rather I am talking about the family inside that building of stone – a family of five with barely enough food to sustain a singleton. Each and every day they’d make their way to the dining area for breakfast, wooden bowls and spoons held out ready for the broth from mother’s ladle; the children would be dressed in oversized rags and slacks, father would be donning the same dirty shirt and braced trousers that he had worn to the factory every day, and mother would be wearing a very worn dress with a grey-white apron that frayed at all edges. Unclean faces, sunken cheeks, bony limbs...

One awful morning, the wind ravaged and roared through the building, bursting through their uncovered windows and making the overhead cutlery rattle and clang nervously, and something was very different about the broth. Once all of the family’s portions had been rationed out, mother turned around to look into the empty black pot – it was as full as it had been before the first serving. The same thing happened each and every morning after.

The broth had an unusual texture and was the definition of ‘bland’, but they could sustain themselves on it while they afforded other commodities: another set of clothes for the children, some shoes with proper soles, and even a little bracelet for the eldest daughter.

No-one knew how the unending broth was conjured up or why it had decided to happen at the time that it did, but they were extremely thankful. Mother concluded that it was God taking mercy on them; the scuffs on her knees from praying night and day grew, as did her children (into handsome young men and women, let me bear witness).

That family had been on my radar for a long time before I decided that I wanted to intervene – they were very modest, kind, and never complained about their situation, even though they suffered more than most. Using up the only magic that I could exert until the next century, I made it so that they would never run out of food.

No thanks is necessary, it’s what any decent person – or witch – would do if they could.