Spin Cycle - Jen McConnell
When the heat subsided, the frogs rained down like a bill come due.
Alone in the Aqua-Mat, Audrey watched the aggressive green downpour, the hand- washables limp in her hands. Voices shouted, brakes squealed, car alarms wailed. Croaking frogs filled the street and wind swept through the open front door. When it was over, silence set in. Audrey exhaled and set her delicates on the chipped countertop.
She glanced over her shoulder at the pajamas and socks tumbling in the dryer. She moved to the open door, shielding her face from dozens of frogs jumping past her into the laundromat. Sounds of the frogs leaping into open washing machines—flesh landing on metal—followed her outside.
On the sidewalk, Audrey nudged the tiny creatures aside with the edge of her sandal. Some were dead, others just sat there breathing. The street was silent except for a woman sobbing and the hum of the overhead cable lines. Audrey saw only a sea of green frogs around her, like a moss blanketing a fallen oak. She lifted her gaze. This sudden moss covered not just the street and sidewalks but the tops of cars and bus shelters and the newspaper boxes chained to light posts.
Audrey bent down to peer at the frogs in the gutter, close enough to smell the stink of brimstone or sulfur or whatever it was that clung to the poor creatures. She sniffed, thinking of high school biology when a boy dared her to lick a frog before they dissected it. He told her that’s how people got high. Who, she asked him, could be that desperate?
Her next thought—Where in the world? —was interrupted by the sight of a frog looking up into her face. No time for this to register as the frog croaked at Audrey and jumped into the air. Another frog croaked, then another, until the entire street was croaking and hopping around like popcorn in hot oil.
Audrey jumped back, landing on a frog, the flesh turning to mush under her heel. She looked through the Aqua-Mat window and saw that the dryer had finished, her warm clothes waiting for her return.
She stood still as the frogs hopped around her.
Instinct told them to jump but not where to go.
Originally Published by Clockhouse, 2011
Jen McConnell has had stories and flash recently appear in Santa Fe Literary Review, DASH, Paragraph Planet, Doubleback Review, October Hill, The Disappointed Housewife, and more. Currently, she serves as Fiction Editor for The Bookends Review. Her debut collection of stories, Welcome, Anybody, was published by Press 53. Read more at jenmcconnell.com.
