Pollen drifts, sticks to her face leaving tiny yellow caterpillars above her eyes, ants on her lashes. There is mud dried and flaky on each knee; it disintegrates from her left elbow.
There’s a broken table on the edge of the pond, snapped in half and projected skyward by a felled oak. Thick two-by-fours leap from the green water too angular to stand upon, yet comfortable to lay upon. She lies, belly down, chin to the table’s edge staring at the water. A beetle lopsidedly roams underwater, reeds Lincoln-logged on his back. Clodded mass of tadpoles ready. The algae hangs slow and slippery. Brown film slides though the beetle’s path.
In the distance upon the wooded is a structure, two stories of plywood elevated above ground and childishly spray painted to match the surrounding environment. Pine limbs are broken to silhouette the precariously stacked fort. She lifts her chest from the platform, wipes palms, waits.
Hands are wiped on brown corduroys. Want. Astounding...want.
You need to be a part of this. This.
A walk. Seven minute walk to the structure. Remnants of a childhood teepee to its right. A slouched zipline extends from the highest peak of the elevated fort to a retired wooden electric cable spool. Beyond the treehouse is a clearing. There is a consistent ringing humming, a screeching. The forest noise has cut. She walks to the edge, ears blaring, deafened to anyone remotely near her.
A rock is within view, exposed above the wet soil. She drops to her knees, wipes it with a wet palm. A large pine branch is located to her right. She pulls it from the clearing’s edge and begins to strip the bark. Small wooden coils litter the earth. Approaches towards the rock, a preternatural force awakened – seven rings are dug the coiling circumference of the rock. Until something is struck.
A wet gray mound is hit with the pine branch. This buried bumpy, soggy lump. A body? Please not a body.
The soil is cleared from the edges of the object. Darkness swiftly descends. The body of a fat toad is exposed. Eyes blue and heavy with death, body limp and cold.
She walks 40 minutes to retrieve a pickle jar in the dwindling light. She lines the container with moss and small ferns. His amphibian body is placed within the jar. Gentle and respectful, as though asleep. The jar is carried to the house.
“Satan, if you can hear me, can you please bring this innocent toad back to life?”
The jar is placed atop a white bed shelf her father bought her as a baby when he was only a menial worker at a grocery store.
“Goodnight, little baby. Sleep well.”
In the morning, only his incessant slamming against the glass jar woke her.
