Tuesday Writing Prompt, Amphibian Edition
Lucy’s father had called her a ‘tomboy’ when she was a girl, although her mother had always got a sour look on her face when he used that word. Her friends growing up, mostly boys, had called her a “cool girl” in part because she wasn’t afraid to wrap an older sibling’s pet snake around her neck, to let a live spider walk across her hand, or to gut a fish she’d caught. And when it came time in high school biology class to dissect a euthanized cat, she’d been the one to use the scalpel while her lab partner Donny Morrissen had fainted dead away next to her after she parted open its skin. So she certainly wasn’t going to be afraid now; after all, these were just frogs.
But that didn’t mean Lucy was necessarily happy about the situation.
…Continue the story in the comment section.
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Her partner for this dissection was the new girl at school, Ashley by name. And while Lucy was plenty used to being partnered with other girls, who would chat and giggle and take nothing seriously, while Lucy did all the work, Ashley was a different sort. Stocky, in a sleeveless tee, with a gaze that would stare down any boy, Ashley gave Lucy a dismissive glance and grabbed the scalpel before Lucy could get out a word.
“I’ll take this. I did this all the time in my old school.”
Then Ashley grabbed the tray of frogs and pulled them in front of her. “Hmm,” she said, looking down at the pale, bloated creatures. “I’ll never say this isn’t gross.” She picked up a soggy frog.
While she did this Lucy just watched. Ashley bit her lip, spread the frog out, lowed the scalpel to its torso.
Lucy glanced around the room, at the other students, not one of which had yet lifted their frogs. Ashley began to cut.
Lucy gasped. She touched Ashley’s elbow, not hard, just a brush. “Excuse me! Wait!”
Lucy stopped. “Huh?”
Ashley rested her hand on Lucy’s hand, which held the scalpel, which was stabbed into the frog. “Let’s do this together.”Report
My thoughts went in that general direction, too, but I couldn’t have written it half as well as this.Report
I love this, both because it shows tenderness below the toughness in a way I don’t know I could have pulled off, and because it went in a totally different direction than I was thinking about.
Well done.Report
Thanks 🙂
I really need to start writing again. I want to, but I don’t seem to make time. Nor can I seem to come up with a good story idea. Anyway, I love doing little things like this.Report
Actually, Lucy was quite fond of frogs. She’d spent many hours down down at the creek behind her house catching them so she could examine them closely. She liked looking at frogs. But this time, she realized, they were looking back.Report
I have a general idea where I want to go on this – mind you, I’ve been going through the XKCD archives lately, so it’s a weird tangent, but my brain is prioritizing my World of Warcraft headcanon vignette. I don’t know if it will work as more than a joke, but I’ve salvaged real ideas from jokes before.Report
It was odd. While they didn’t talk, they communicated with their eyes in ways that somehow made sense to her. So when the frog on her right looked at the frog on her left, Lucy knew he was saying “You need to anesthetize it before you make the initial incision.”Report
Ooooooooo! This story could go places!
But @mike-schilling , you know what this means now! You have found a new calling! You will write the first great novel of the 21st century, Lucy, Empress of Frogs.
Which is actually going to be a lot of work so you better get started.Report
“I used to be fine with this kind of lab exercise, but recently I’ve started to feel amphibian about it.”
The teacher smiled. “I think you mean ambivalent, Lucy.”
Lucy paused as her frog army began to march into the classroom. “No, I really don’t.”Report
They retreated, broken and beaten, back to the safety of the creek. It had been a disastrous defeat, and Lucy could sense her followers beginning to lose faith. She knew she had a lot of ‘splainin’ to doReport
And then Lucy doubled over in pain, her fingers stretched and her skin burst as her fingers elongated. The remnants of her skin peeled away, revealing webbed front legs. By now, her old human skin from all over her body peeled away revealing green skin glistening with slime. Lucy squatted down as she picked at the bits of human skin still stuck to the slime.
The teacher, who had till then frozen in horror broke in to motion as she started running for the door. Lucy trained her now bulging eyes on the teacher and bounded forward, landing just behind her, Her two foot tongue shooting out and wrapping itself around the teacher’s hand. At the touch of the tongue, the teacher fainted
Meanwhile, the rest of the class was screaming as the army of frogs, each the size of a small cat swarmed the class forcing the students to stand on the tables to get away from them.Report
I like the direction this thread has gone 🙂Report