The Phrogger

The Phrogger

By Damon Decker

Nina could not get inside her house fast enough that Friday night. With the upcoming election, the recent natural disasters, the trending celebrity scandal, and the current political feuds on social media, the newspaper label had been working itself down to the wick. At no point was anyone ever walking through the office, more like they were running like chickens in a coop when a coyote breaks in, energized by zero sleep, caffeine, nicotine, Zyn pouches, tobacco, adrenaline, hopes and dreams. Nina was thankful she decided not to wear high heels today. She kicked off her business shoes on the door mat without even untying the laces, not even bothering to place them neatly on the shoe rack. She dropped her purse on the table and fell onto the couch like a fallen tree trunk. For at least 15 minutes, she just laid there motionless, her face pressed into the couch, not even caring enough to take her glasses off. Then she suddenly remembered she is a human, and humans have this annoying need for things like water, food, and exercise every night before bed. Her stomach grumbled. There was no time for lunch. She hadn’t eaten anything since her anchovy salad this morning. Her three energy drinks had powered her through the day but did little to fill her belly. She propped herself up on one arm, fixed her glasses and scoffed at how annoying human needs are. She climbed up off the couch, but cursed when she nearly tripped on a pair of her stilettos that idled on the floor near the coffee table. She froze where she stood for a moment. She had no memory of carelessly discarding her $300 Stilettos on the floor by the coffee table like that. If she remembered right, she always left those under her bed. She picked them up and returned them to their home in her bedroom. She didn’t even bother getting in her sleep clothes before going down to the kitchen and putting together a tuna fish salad sandwich. She pulled down a white bowl and some cans out of the cupboard. She pulled the tabs on the cans and dumped the shredded, white meat into the bowl. She squirted in mayonnaise, mustard, and wasabi. She sprinkled in salt, pepper, garlic powder, onion powder, and dried dill weed. She chopped up some celery and pickled red onions and dropped those in there as well. She took a big spoon and mixed the whole slurry together. The spoon made a pleasant clink and clank sound against the bowl as it mixed, reminding Nina of the time she used to come home from school and hear mom making this for her after-school snack in the kitchen. Once the mixture was stirred into a tasty spread, she threw two slices of dollar-store white bread in the dirty, thrift store toaster. She was surprised to find the toaster on the wrong side of the kitchen counter. As long as she had lived here, Nina always kept the toaster on the other side of the counter. She tried to remember any guests she had recently or any reason she would have had to move it. But before she could put her finger on any possible suspects, the bread popped. Shrugging it off, Nina placed them on a paper plate, and spooned her spread onto the bread.

After dinner, Nina went upstairs and dressed in workout clothes, a sports bra and leggings, to do a 35-minute run on the treadmill. She slid her Air pods in and listened to one of her favorite brain rot podcasts while she ran. After she was done, she went to the bathroom, stripped down and got into the shower. When she walked into the bathroom, she discovered a little heap of wet towels on the floor. She didn’t remember leaving them there, then again it wouldn’t be the first time she’s forgotten to clean up after herself. She came back downstairs in comfy clothes and cleared out her purse. Nina plugged in her workphone on the kitchen counter and put her personal in her pajama pants pocket. Everything was good, her human needs were satisfied. Nina filled up a kettle from the kitchen faucet and sparked the stove to life. She pulled a bowl-sized mug from the cupboard and placed a bag of decaffeinated black tea in it. She poured boiling water into the mug, which started to glow goldish brown from the moment the bag began to twirl in it. Now that she had her tea, she was ready to work. Nina walked back up the spiral staircase which had become a museum of her life with photos of her adventures as a journalist and her more wholesome, personal memories. But she stopped midway up the stairs when she noticed the picture of her holding her baby brother for the first time was crooked. Giving no thought to how that happened, she adjusted the photo back to the correct place.

Nina walked into her bedroom and gently closed the door behind her with her non-tea hand. She strode over to her desk, placed her tea on the coaster, and sat down in her comfy office chair. She leaned back, taking a moment to savor being able to work in her silent, comfy study at home, instead of her water closet-sized cubicle in the loud, rambunctious office. She reached to open the drawer to retrieve her laptop but was surprised once again when she found it already placed on her desk in front of her. She always puts it away when she wasn’t using it. Nina must have been having an off-day of some sort. First the shoes, then the toaster, the photograph, and now the laptop? She must be sleep deprived. She has been working a lot more lately. She opened the laptop, the screen lit up showing the password bar with a background of some miscellaneous lake in some far-off country taken by some aspiring photographer. Nina pulled out her Airpods and slid both of them in her ears. The intro to Rockwell’s “Somebody’s Watching Me,” started jingling in her ears. Nina took a chug of her tea and got to work. She went from a blank, untitled document to a full page and a half in minutes. She was ruthlessly scribbling down every single thought and idea she had for the article with clips, quotes, and citations from the hours of research she had already done. She proceeded to do even more research; article reading, fact checking, source verifying. She ran some ideas through Chat GPT for advice.

Nina’s ADHD poised her to completely lose track of time while working. Before long it was 11:59 at night and she grabbed her mug to take another chug of tea only to find the mug was dry. For a hot second, she almost got up out of her chair to get a refill, but at the change of the second, she decided to stay put at her desk and finish the last paragraph before going down. She kept working at her article, typing, rereading, editing, typing, rereading, editing, and repeating. It was a long and tedious process, but it never failed to thrill Nina. She always had a talent for taking the most mundane and dry topics and making them into an article worthy of reading. 12:27, 1:13, the time continued to pass, and Nina was still working. For another moment, she wondered if she should get up to go pee. She decided she didn’t need to. Or maybe to brush and floss her teeth? She can do that tomorrow morning. Wash her face? She did that in the shower. Maybe just look out the window to appreciate the outside? She’s been doing that all week from her office. Nina kept working, her ADHD drilling her into hyperfocus. The article looked good. If Nina kept working, it would be ready to publish by Monday.

At first, Nina could not figure out why her face was now planted in her desk. Had she hit a literary wall? Writer’s block? How long had she been laying like this? She rolled her head over to make sure she was still alive. She rolled her face across the desk until her eyes found the clock. It was 5:32 in the morning. “God damn, now I really do have to pee,” she thought. She didn’t know it, but one side of her face was as red as a cherry from laying face down, and the other was pale from sleep. She looked a bit like Two-Face from those old Batman comics. Her arms were as asleep with her arms pulsing like static on an old television struggling to connect to a channel. She commanded her arms to grab the edges of the desk, which felt like controlling the claw in an old crane machine, and she rose to her feet, pushing the chair back.

The moment she turned around, there was something that stopped her dead in her tracks. Her bedroom door was wide open. Didn’t she close that? There was a green post-it note slapped to the door that she didn’t remember putting there. She apprehensively walked over and snatched the Post-It off of the wall. The note was not in her handwriting. “I left a present for you in the kitchen.” A bright pallor splashed across Nina’s face. A wound inflicted by the extreme consternation that slapped her cheeks like the hand of a giant. The Post-It slipped from her hand and landed on the floor. She dearly did not want to see what, or more accurately who, was waiting for her in the kitchen but the giant of consternation that had slapped her across the face was now grabbing her by the throat and pulling her forward out of the room. She scanned the hallway. “Where are you?” she shouted. “Why are you here?” But there was no one there. She treaded down the hall, careful not to make any noise with her footsteps. She descended the stairs, readying herself to face whoever was waiting for her at the bottom. She reached the foot of the stairs and took a deep breath, “Who are you?” she shouted. “Why are you in my house? Whoever you are, I’m calling the police!” She walked out into the living room and kitchen area, surprised to find that no one was there. She looked around. Has this all been some kind of prank? Had she left the front door unlocked last night and someone decided to pull a quick joke? Her eyes moved to the dining room. On the table was one of Nina’s china plates. Placed on top of it was Nina’s work phone with another Post-It note stuck to the screen that read three words, “Play me, Nina.” Nina removed the Post-It note and unlocked her phone. She presumed the note writer meant they had taken some kind of video. She clicked on the photos app and discovered a reel she had not taken. The imaginary grip that had been holding her by the throat this whole time forced her hand to press play on the video. At first the video was shaky, but when it stabilized, Nina recognized the inside of her own kitchen. The one she was standing in right now. Nina felt a shock pulsate through her body as though she had just been tased. The camera bearer made their way through the hall without making as much as a sound of shoe sole on wood. They walked up the spiral staircase leading to the second floor, passing all of the photos and mementos that Nina had furnished it with. She recognized every photo on the wall, but worst of all Nina recognized her own bedroom door at the end of the upstairs hallway. It wasn’t until then that Nina had a firm understanding of what she was watching. What Nina was learning now is that it’s time to move out. The intruder reached a glove hand for the door knob of her bedroom door and rotated it ever so slowly. They pushed the door open. Nina expected that the burglar would be walking into an empty room, but sure enough, when they walked in there was Nina sitting in her chair, working at her desk with her back to the door. Had they gotten an actor to portray her in the film? How long had she been gone when they filmed this? What had she been doing? An animation maybe? Maybe one of those creepy AI videos they're making these days? Special effects? If so, the computer programmer really knew what they were doing. Even those fine details. She was eerily disturbed by how accurate the person’s movements were, how they mirrored everything she had done the night before. The camera operator seemed to flinch and step back in a sudden rush of apprehension when she almost got up from her chair to go refill her tea but decided otherwise at the last second. Even what she wore was accurate. The actor was mirroring every movement she had made the night before.

Nina’s stomach was doing summersaults in her ribcage like the anxiety giant was now punching her in the gut over and over again. She prayed this was just a fever dream. This was not special effects, this is not animation, this was not an actor playing her. Someone had come into her bedroom last night and filmed everything she had done from working on her article, to changing her music, to sharpening her pencil to falling asleep at her desk, and the worst of all, she had never known they were there. Her music and her headphones had silenced their entrance. She had never turned around or looked over her shoulder. She never got up for any reason. Her back had never turned away from the door.

Nina clicked on the phone app and dialed 9-1-1 immediately; she put the phone to her ear. The call was answered after a single ring, “9-1-1, what is your emergency?”

“Hello, hello, police? Someone came into my house last night while I was home. They filmed me at my desk without me knowing!”

“Now hold on! Hold on, ma’am! Slow down, I can’t understand you. Is there someone in your house right now who shouldn’t be there?” Nina did her very best to explain the entire situation to the dispatcher, her voice swaying like she was on a roller coaster.

“Okay, we’ll send officers immediately. But ma’am, I really don’t mean to scare you, but I have to ask. Are you sure the intruder is gone? Have they left the house yet?”

“I think so…I..” Every drop of blood drained from Nina’s head when she realized she actually had no idea. She turned her head over her shoulder, looking back towards the front door. She hadn’t noticed the muddy footprints that weren't hers until now. Their presence scared her at first, but a haunting realization made the phone slip out of Nina’s hands and drop to the floor. There were muddy footprints going inside, BUT NONE GOING OUT.

As horrifying as that is, the most horrifying thing was when she looked back towards the window. First she noticed her own reflection, then her eyes made out that there was a ghoulish face staring at her through the window. A clean shaven, bald man with concrete-colored skin, an unnatural, fanged smile that went from pointed ear to pointed ear, and eyes of obsidian. It was unhuman, a strange sense of uncanny valley creeping through Nina’s blood. Then the face started to grow bigger, indicating that the creature was approaching, walking towards her. Was he going to try to break the window? Nina glanced at her own reflection and suddenly remembered the most horrifying fact of all. The face staring at her in the window was actually a reflection from inside the house, and the golem was approaching her from behind.