Froschschenkel

The mud is alive with tens, maybe hundreds of bodies. It looks like the pebbles are breathing. They squeeze up each other's backs along the edge of the pond, stretching and flopping for the cover of the grass. Their urgency is disgusting.

'Jesus, is it like this every year?' Nora wonders. That morning, nests of tadpoles woke up in the bodies of frogs—fresh legs and lungs. Nora ashes her cigarette beside a heaving lump. She is supposed to be 'walking it off', but she's squatting in the grass, smoking and watching the exodus. The frogs keep shoving their flippery hands on to the heads of their neighbours and eyes of their siblings.

What do you have to be so anxious about?

Nora works up the hill from the pond, between the highway and the Starbucks. Her boss says it's better to work out there—in the industrial complex—because of the commute. Everyone is heading the opposite direction on the highway, he told her as he swung himself into his Land Rover.

Nora takes the bus with the construction workers. She wedges herself between them, cement dust on her skirt, and takes in the metallic smell of their sweat. Sometimes she considers swiping items from their tool belts.

There's still room for development out there.

Nora's building is part of a ring of buildings surrounding the field. They all have glass walls. The good offices look out over the field. The less-good offices look out over the highway. Nora's desk is in the gap between two offices, so she finds herself walking in the field more than seems natural. Once she walked by a man sleeping under a bush with his jacket rolled up under his head like a pillow.

...

Nora's done one cigarette and lit a second before the first frog makes it up to her feet. Her legs are cramping from squatting, but anyone in the boardroom would be able to spot her if she stood up. There's a conference call at 3 p.m. She blows a funnel of smoke into the air in case she is being observed through binoculars.

The frog pushes off her shoe, leaping away to become a land-mine in the grass. She remembers her father describing how, as little boys, they'd taken straws and blown-up the necks of toads into overstretched balloons. The toads couldn't do much but wait there on the road. The internet hadn't been invented yet. There were worse things the kids could have been doing.

Her father doesn't always remember her when she calls. Sometimes he asks her how she got his number. He tells her he's at a hotel in the tropics and her mother is just on the beach. His care home is called the Caribbean, but it's in Calgary.

Something brushes against Nora's fingers—another frog. She snatches her hand away and inspects her nails, then the creature. It's deformed. One of its legs is smaller than the other and it still has part of its tail. Nora wonders how it made it past the mud.

At work, her boss tells her she needs to think of ideas 'with legs'. He likes to says things like 'push the envelope', and 'think outside the box.'

"You won't get very far, mermaid" Nora tells the frog as she sweeps it into her palm. It's not as warm as she imagined. She puts out her cigarette and stands up. She's been paying off her student loan for eight years. She doesn't remember how much more is left.

From the pond to the office, Nora finds two gooey steps in the grass. Two dead.

The one in her pocket seems to be waiting.