Botticelli Magazine Number 12

Page 37

lost its color and it doesn’t smell bad. Is this the last frog that escaped? Tentatively, you reach your hand out towards the frog. Pressing your fingers into its cold frog skin, you can feel a heartbeat. Perplexed, you draw your hand back. If it’s not dead then…is it sick? You pick up the stiff frog and stand, stumbling over something beneath your feet as you do so. You point the flashlight downwards and it’s...another frog! You pick that frog up too, holding it between the flashlight, and your head starts to swim. What happened to all of your frogs...? You’re holding two cold, possibly sick, frogs in your hands and your stomach is starting to turn. You resolve to set the frogs back down and tell your Dad about what you found when a flash of light blinds you. Your head spinning, you stumble towards the source, your flashlight trembling in your hand. At the far end of the room is a tall figure with a hunched back crouching over something on the ground. Forgoing your flashlight, you feel along the wall for the light switch and flip it on. The figure shields their eyes and when they wheel around to see who turned on the light, your mouth drops open. “Miss- Miss Meza?!” you sputter. It was unmistakably her— she wore the same long chain of beads around her neck and had her hair done up in the same way that she did when you had class with her this afternoon. “What’re you doing in my house?!” One of the frogs falls from your hand and lands on the floor with a sticky, wet sound. Your eyes rake up the ground to see that your teacher has a whole pile of frogs at her feet and you stumble back, bracing yourself against the wall. You sink down to the floor, the flashlight and the other frog rolling out of your hands. Your eyes dart from the pile of frogs, to the stick that your teacher holds in her hand, up to her face, and then back down at the frogs again. “Are you a witch?!” “Just calm down— “Was I dissecting my own frog?!”

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