The Physiology of Love and Frogs Page 2

  Chapter 4

  Mr. Mullens pauses beside his desk for a minute, looking every bit the gaunt professor with thinning strands of hair, examining the class. Taking a headcount, he smiles, checking off his roll before continuing.

  “All present and accounted for. Good.”

  Producing a stack of papers, he hands them to the table in front of us. “Pass these back, please,” he tells Tony and Madeline before walking to the next table and repeating the motion.

  Taking the sheets, I thank Tony, who nods, even smiling his practiced, preppy smile before turning back around. Taking one, I pass the rest back to Mikey while Tammy hands hers to Cheryl, who in turn hand them Peter and Susan. After they’ve finally made it to the back, Mr. Mullens speaks.

  “For anyone who didn’t get the memo, today we’ll be dissecting frogs. Since we’ll be dealing with sharp implements, I have to ask you not to fool around. That means you, Mike.” Mr. Mullens points to the back as Chris and John snicker.

  “Yes, sir,” Mike responds as he stands and salutes.

  “All joking aside, I’m being very serious. You all know the school’s policy on zero tolerance, so anything that even looks like it might endanger another student, even if done in jest, will result in disciplinary actions. These days, that could mean jail time or worse, so does everyone understand?”

  Murmurs cut through the accompanying silence as a few people answer, many simply nodding or doing nothing at all.

  “Alrighty then. Now that we have that out of the way, I want you to look your handouts over.”

  Looking down at the desk, I stare into its metal sheen for a long moment, pausing as I wonder if I’ve blown my chance to ask Tammy out. Sure, we shared a few laughs, but that isn’t exactly what I’m trying for today. I’d hate to think that someone like John could ruin something so special for me, that…

  “Winston, are you paying attention?”

  Hearing those words, I immediately focus, suddenly aware that my contemplations somehow morphed into a daydream.

  “Sorry, sir,” I say to a bout of laughter from the back. Someone, possibly Mike or John, feign a cough as well, pretending to sneeze while saying “wussy” under their breath.

  “Guys,” Mr. Mullens sternly notes before nodding at me as if to say that’s fine, staring at the back afterward. He lets silence finish the thought before continuing.

  “As I was saying, we’ll be dissecting Goliath frogs. For those of you that have never seen one on the internet or on television, where have you been? I’m kidding, I’m kidding. For those of you who don’t know, Goliath frogs are the largest species of aurana in the world. Some grow up to a foot or longer and can weight in excess of seven pounds.”

  “A seven pound frog?” Chris calls. “Bet they have some tasty legs.”

  “Focus,” Dana chides from the front, to a few chuckles.

  Mr. Mullens continues.

  “These were generously donated by a colleague of mine doing research in Cameroon, so never let it be said that this school hasn’t tried to broaden your horizons. We’ll be examining the..”

  Staring at that piece of paper, I glanced past the heading Goliath Frog (Conraua goliath), taking note of some of the bullet points provided. Five to seven pounds, thirteen inches in length; these things are massive. No wonder it looks like someone spilled hatpins on our desk.

  “so you’ll have to pull the nictitating membrane down and…”

  Tammy leans toward me. “I’m going to let you do the cutting, good sir, if you don’t mind. Don’t think I can dissect something as big as a dog.”

  I nod and then tune back in as Mr. Mullens continues detailing the procedure to come.

  Chapter 5

  After Mr. Mullens’s lengthy breakdown on what we’d be looking for finally concludes, he asks Dana if she will help him for a moment. Walking to the back of the room, the pair retrieve two covered carts as tall as they are, pushing them to the front of the room. As they situate them, I keep thinking how the carts look like they’ve been procured from the cafeteria, looking like something you’d see at Subway or a bread store. Finally ready, Mr. Mullens starts calling on students to “step up and retrieve your specimen. “

  After calling two people, he gets to my name.

  “Winston.”

  Walking to the front of the room, I’m astounded by just how large the specimens have to be. Although covered, I can see a foot protruding, and it’s massive, reminding me of a Halloween costume I’d worn as a child. One year I dressed up like a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle, the outfit coming with a foam shell and a mask, green leggings, and these tiny green gloves. That appendage looks like one of those gloves after I’d slid my hand inside.

  “I saved you and Tammy the biggest one. Figured you guys would appreciate it more than anyone else,” Mr. Mullens says, flashing me a smile as he points at one of the trays.

  “Thanks,” I reply, surprised that he’d chosen us and not really sure just how much of an honor I consider it to be. Reaching down, I start to lift the tray with one hand but Mr. Mullens corrects me, pointing at my other arm.

  “Careful, it’s heavy.”

  Nodding, I readjust and pick it up with both, stunned by how weighty that covered tray is.

  Before I can sit it down on the desk, Tammy has to readjust all of our tools. That’s how massive the thing is. It ends up taking up so much room that we have to straddle it across the sink so we’ll have enough room to work.

  “Class, before you start, make sure to follow the protocol outlined on the sheet I gave you. I want you to ignore the lab manual for now and only focus on the parts I’ve detailed there and on the board.” Mr. Mullens looks kind of excited in that kid in a candy store kind of way as he awaits the final reveal.

  Brandishing a pair of thin latex gloves, I ready myself for whatever’s lurking beneath that shroud. I don’t want to tell anyone because it’s kind of embarrassing, but I have a somewhat weak stomach and am not good at dealing with dead things. It’s always been that way.

  When I was a kid, I saw an opossum get hit by a pick-up truck and tried to help it, but the thing made me sick. It was dragging itself along that thick white line with its front paws, trailing blood and guts everywhere, and I only managed to worsen the scene by mingling vomit into the fray. Afterward, I avoided looking at roadkill altogether. Added to that was the fact that I’d eaten a big breakfast and had Sloppy Joe’s for lunch, and the combination was already upsetting my stomach. I consider telling Mr. Mullens, but Tammy looks nervous, putting her arm around me while using me like a shield. Her knight in shimmering latex. The thought causes me to bite my tongue.

  Stomach, don’t fail me now, I say to myself while pulling back the shroud and revealing the massive thing underneath, words like seven pounds and thirteen inches not doing it justice. It’s huge, with a gargantuan mouth and sizeable legs, every bit of six pounds.

  “Jesus,” Tammy mutters, staring at the frog and flinching.

  “For real,” I add.

  Around the room, others react to their newly-found discoveries as well, some gasping and adding qualifiers like “cool,” the group in the pack taking it one set further. Noticing Mr. Mullens stand and start walking toward the back of the room, I turn in time to see Mike holding his specimen in front of him, making the thing dance across the table. I’d seen the same thing in comedy skits before, but not with something large enough to partially obscure the person manipulating it.

  “I swear, if I…” I hear Mr. Mullens start, but by then I’ve already refocused on the task in front of me.

  “So, any idea how we’re supposed to do this?” I ask Tammy, who is now standing and hugging my side. I stand as well, pushing my stool to the side so I can work unhindered.

  “No idea. The sheet says we have to determine the sex first by looking at the thickness of the pads on its, does that say thumb? While we’re doing that, I figure we should pin the damn thing down.”

  I n
od. “Makes sense to me.”

  Looking around, I notice that several of the others have already started pinning their specimens and figure if we’re going to do something wrong, we should do it as a collective.

  Lifting its front foot, I notice how limber it seems and how thick its toes are. “No webbing, “I say.

  “Huh,” Tammy notes, tensing and moving so close that I can smell her shampoo and feel stray hairs touch my cheek, making it damn hard to concentrate.

  Not wanting to seem like a pervert, I try my best to ignore her proximity, looking down at the frog instead. It has a thick pad on what amounts to its thumb, so I figure it’s a male.

  “Congratulations. It’s a boy,” I tell Tammy, who smiles.

  “Our first of many,” she coyly responds. As she says it, she playfully squeezes my arm, light enough that it feels – reassuring, I suppose.

  “Does the thing have fingernails?” Tammy asks, looking down at its foot. Moving closer, she touches the frog with gloved hands, maneuvering one of its toes. “I thought these things were supposed to be together, webbed like you said, but these kind of look like..”

  “Like fingers,” I add,

  They do look like fingers too, complete with tiny, bedded fingernails. It even seems had a hangnail, although I’m unsure if I’m perhaps just trying to compare it to a human hand.

  Mr. Mullens did say they were Cameroon. Maybe frogs there look like that.

  Maybe we should go ahead and pin it so we can look closer,” I suggest.

  Tammy nods and spreads the thing’s digits, positioning them before sitting it down, still holding onto my arm, As I lift the pin, I feel embolden by the contact, thinking this could perhaps her way of saying she likes me as well. She’s always hugging me and making contact in ways that seem flirtatious, and while the setting is less than idea, perhaps this is the time to at least start discussing how I feel. If it goes bad, I can always write it off later as a joke told while dissecting a frog.

  “Tammy,” I start, “Look, I’ve been waiting to. Well, that’s to say…” Tammy looks up as I speak, “I’ve been thinking. We’ve been hanging out a lot…”

  Looking down while fumbling for the right words, I carefully lift the frog’s foot, centering the pin.

  “Yeah,” Tammy says, seemingly interested.

  “Well, what I’m trying to say is that I’ve been having a lot of fun with you.”

  “Me, too,” she agrees, squeezing my arm tighter.

  For some reason I can’t seem to formulate the sentence correct, nor can I seem to make eye contact. I keep staring down at the frog, manipulating that damnable foot, looking for the right place to shove the needle. I don’t want to somehow stick it through its sex organs; I know it sounds silly considering what we’re preparing to do, but I just can’t, not with what I’m about to say.

  “So, yeah, I was wondering…”

  The needle slides down, pressing against the frog’s foot and biting deeply.

  “if maybe..”

  And it flinches.

  “O shit!”

  The damnable thing flinches. It flinches and flexes its fingers.

  Chapter 6

  “The damn thing moved!” I shout, releasing its foot and stepping back, my leg colliding with my stool and causing it to noisily quake.

  “What?” Tammy replies, startled, mimicking my movements as she turns to face it. “How is that possible?”

  Although I’ve yet to notice, I’ve taken her by the arm and start pulling her toward the isle, stepping sideways with the needle still locked in a death grip in the other hand.

  Mr. Mullens must have either heard me or saw me moving - how couldn’t he, everyone else had by now and many of my classmates were staring, wondering what the commotion was, because before I grasp what’s happening, he’s standing beside me with his hand on my shoulder, staring at the pin.

  John’s voice carries from the back row, exclaiming, “Is the little baby sick or something, “his voice joining Mr. Mullens’s.

  “Is there a proble..” he starts, just as both of the frog’s front legs begin to jerk up and down, as though they’re being influenced by electricity. I notice it and jump back, and Tammy apparently notices it too, because her hand tightly grips on my arm. Mr. Mullens must have seen it as well, because he stops in mid-sentence and freezes.

  “What the hell?” Cheryl exclaims as she peers across her table, noticing it as well. We start to attract a crowd as Tony, Madeline, Cirel and Dana crowd the table in front of mine, keeping their distance while staring intently. Chris starts walking up the center aisle, Libby joining him.

  “Is this your idea of a joke, because if it is…” Mr. Mullens begins, but I cut him off.

  “The fucking thing’s alive! You saw it!” I yell, perturbed by the accusation. It figures something like this would happen at school, of all places.

  Suddenly the thing shifts, teetering as it rocks back and forth, its body swaying like a turtle attempting to right itself. One of its back legs starts shaking and then the other joins in, the two kicking in unison. The left makes contact with the table and some of the instruments on top as well as the slat the frog’s laying on bangs against the sink and pins clatter against tile flooring. Then the thing starts to budge, leaning, finally maneuvering onto its side.

  Briefly, I notice its eye, and how it doesn’t look like a frog’s at all. Instead, I notice green in the center as the creature meets my gaze and stares.

  “We’ve got to get out of here,” I tell Tammy, unsure of what’s happening but knowing I want no part of whatever it might be.

  Mr. Mullens releases my arm and steps back, angling toward the table across the aisle. Reaching into a drawer, he pulls out a garbage bag used for clean-up and nosily opens it as even more students congregate around us.

  By now, John, Joni and Peter have all moved closer, John and Joni standing to my right and Peter stopping in the middle aisle.

  “Everybody, go back to your seats,” Mr. Mullens says while slowly moving forward with the garbage bag in both hands. Side-stepping Tammy and myself, he inches closer and leans down.

  “Steady,” he mouths as he angles the bag down, getting within a few inches of the table before the frog reacts.

  In a burst of movement, one of the thing’s front legs angle sideways, reaching, and that’s what it’s doing, reaching, its tiny fingers spreading as it grabs for something.. As it makes contact, I see what the thing’s after. The scalpel.

  It grabs the blade and lifts it up, holding it like a child hoisting an oversized instrument. Horrified, I suddenly realize that not only does the thing have fingers and eyes so much like a person, but it also seems to understand what the scalpel is and what it can do.

  “Ahhh!” Mr. Mullens manages as the thing bursts upward, falling back and gripping his arm. Despite his fingers applying pressure, blood surges out, rushing through the cracks between his digits.

  The frog rolls over completely as he backs away, finally righting itself. Then it leans backward, bending its legs to support its heft as it squats on two feet, looking very much like a Renaissance depiction of a imp. It seems to grin as I stare, holding the scalpel in front of it.

  As I watch that thing, wondering what it might next do, I notice Mike moving toward it. Apparently he’d joined his friends while I was distracted, and is now using what little brainpower he has to formulate a plan on the fly.

  Attack. That all he seems to understand. Attack.

  “Crazy fucking frog!” he yells while lunges toward it, reaching out with both of his meaty paws in an effort to grab hold. It seems like it might work too, until I notice that thing’s gargantuan eye isn’t simply looking toward me. It’s also scanning the room and taking in everything beside and around it, Mike included.

  Hopping sideways, it easily avoids his efforts, and looks like it might attack him. Instead, it surges to its right, moving toward the first table.

  �
�O Jesus!” I hear Cirel yell as he collides with the front table, it solidly banging against the floor as he tries to maneuver out of the creature’s path. Tony falls sideways, smashing into the wall, and Dana reacts by dropping down. But Madeline, poor Madeline, she’s just too slow. She’d been leaning over, watching the scene play out, and is slow to react, not noticing what it’s doing until it’s already too late.

  Jumping sideways, the thing surges with its scalpel protruding, moving toward her as she manages to position her hands in front of her body. It heavily collides with her arms, and instead of stopping it uses them like a launch pad and arches up, toward her head. As it does, it pushes the blade forward like a pencil, slicing into her middle and index finger as it drive it deep, piercing the gap between them. Screaming, Madeline’s face seems to erupted in a geyser of blood and the frog drives the point of its weapon deep into her left eye, and is already bounding back away like a pinball when that fluidy sack splits.

  Bounding backward, its feet make contact with the edge of the desk as it almost instantly surges ahead again, again toward Madeline. Screaming hysterically, she starts pawing at her eye as though she were trying to remove an eyelash, unaware that the thing’s coming back.

  Dana yells something as the thing angles its blade just before makes contact, managing to slice Madeline’s upper lip as it drive the blade in. Gasping, Madeline involuntarily opens her mouth as her lip splits, providing an in as the thing smashes into her stomach and drives her back, her body heavily colliding with the front table as the frog rides atop her arms. Effortlessly manipulating the scalpel, it pushes it toward her mouth, the edge jumping from her lip and smashing into her teeth before deflecting toward her gumline and surging in just below her lip. The frog straddles her arms and stomach as she falls toward the floor, arching its blade sideways as it carves a semi-circle inside her mouth.

  Chapter 7

  Amidst the chaos, people scream, trying to do something, anything, to protect themselves. Chairs hit the floor as individuals scramble, panicking as they rush in multiple directions. Some run around the room and try to hide while other dive below their tables and attempt to make themselves as small as humanly possible.