Frog Fiasco

Yorn only wanted to watch television.

That was the part that would bother him most later.

Not the frogs.
Not the citywide amphibian emergency.
Not the fact that Mayor Llama would eventually use the phrase “an opportunity for amphibious civic renewal” with full sincerity.

No.

What bothered Yorn, in retrospect, was that this entire disaster began because he had wanted to sit on his couch, eat stew, and watch a wildlife documentary about Arctic seabirds.

That was it.

That was the dream.

Instead, at 6:14 p.m. on a Wednesday, he discovered that his cable was out.

Yorn stared at the blank television screen in stony silence. The cable box beneath it displayed a single, smug-looking blinking light. He had already tried turning the television off and on, which was step one. He had unplugged the cable box and plugged it back in, which was step two. He had hit the side of it once with the flat of his hand, which was step three, though not one officially endorsed by manufacturers.

Nothing.

The screen remained dark.

Yorn looked at the cable box.

The cable box continued being useless.

“Fine,” he said aloud. “We’ll do this your way.”

Twenty minutes later, after wrestling through an automated menu that seemed designed by someone with a personal grudge against the living, Yorn found himself on hold with Eternity Cable Services.

The hold music was not good.

It was a looping flute melody over a slow percussive rhythm that sounded less like corporate music and more like something being played at the entrance to a tomb no one should have entered. Every thirty seconds, a woman’s voice cut in to say, “Your call is important to us,” in a tone that suggested this was not true in any meaningful sense.

Yorn sat on the edge of his couch, one elbow on one knee, phone pressed to his ear, staring at the dead television with the defeated patience of a man being slowly outlasted by electronics.

At minute fourteen, the flute solo came back around in a way that felt accusatory.

At minute nineteen, Yorn briefly considered going back to the mountains.

At minute twenty-two, the music cut off.

A deep, measured voice came on the line.

“Thank you for calling Eternity Cable Services. This is Ramses. How may I shepherd your troubles into the light?”

Yorn blinked.

He had expected a Cheryl, maybe.
Or a Todd.
Not Ramses.

Still, he was too relieved to care.

“My cable’s out,” Yorn said. “The screen’s black, the box keeps blinking, I’ve reset everything twice, and now I’ve spent almost half an hour listening to whatever haunted flute nightmare you people use for hold music.”

There was a pause.

Then Ramses said, with grave sympathy, “Ah. You have endured the music of waiting. I am sorry.”

Yorn sat up a little.

That was, honestly, the most human thing anyone at Eternity Cable Services had ever said to him.

Then there was a rustling sound on the other end of the line—linen shifting, faintly dry and papery—and Ramses cleared his throat in a way that somehow made Yorn picture folded hands and ancient patience.

Most people in Snowdrift Bay knew Ramses. He was, as several townsfolk had put it with complete normalcy, “the mummy at Eternity Cable.” A literal mummy. Wrapped, ancient, courteous, and somehow fully employed in customer service.

“Thank you,” Yorn said. “Can you help me?”

“Yes,” said Ramses, in the solemn tone of a man about to discuss either cable service or burial rites. “We must proceed carefully. These boxes are temperamental. They carry signals, yes, but also intention.”

Yorn frowned.

“…I’m sorry?”

“Look first upon the device,” said Ramses.

Yorn looked at the cable box. “I am looking at it.”

“Good. Establish dominance.”

“I don’t think that’s—”

“Now,” Ramses continued, undeterred, “press the power button thrice. Not twice. Not four times. Three is the number of balance.”

Yorn hesitated.

Then, because he was already in this conversation and wanted his program back, he pressed the button three times.

Nothing happened.

“Done.”

“Excellent,” said Ramses. “Now place your thumb upon the menu button and hold it there while picturing the Eye of Horus.”

Yorn stared into space for a full second.

“What.”

“The Eye of Horus,” Ramses repeated gently. “If you do not know its precise shape, a general feeling of watchfulness may suffice.”

Yorn lowered the phone and stared at it as though it had betrayed him personally.

Then he brought it back to his ear. “Ramses.”

“Yes?”

“Are you giving me cable instructions or placing me under temple supervision?”

Ramses chuckled softly. It was a dry, papery sound, like an old scroll being amused.

“Sometimes, my friend, there is overlap.”

“I don’t think there is.”

“There is more in this world than wires.”

“There should be less in this phone call.”

Ramses hummed thoughtfully. “Very well. Let us simplify. Unplug the box.”

Yorn reached down and pulled the cord.

“Done.”

“Now count to seven.”

Yorn waited.

“One… two… three…”

“No,” Ramses said.

Yorn stopped. “What.”

“You must mean it.”

“I am counting.”

“But are you counting,” Ramses said, “or merely progressing numerically?”

Yorn closed his eyes.

From somewhere deep inside himself, he found the strength not to hang up.

Very carefully, he said, “Ramses. I need you to understand that I am trying very hard to stay polite.”

“And I honor that effort,” Ramses said. “Now. Count to seven with purpose. Then reconnect the box using your left hand while thinking of the Nile at dawn.”

Yorn’s eyes opened.

“My what hand.”

“Your left.”

“Why.”

“Because the left hand is closer to the heart.”

“That has nothing to do with cable.”

“It has everything to do with receptivity.”

“This is insane.”

“It has worked before.”

That gave Yorn pause.

It should not have.

But it did.

“…For cable?” he asked.

“For a number of things.”

Yorn should have stopped there.

A wiser man would have stopped there.

Instead, because the cable was still out and because desperation lowers the standards of reason faster than people like to admit, he switched the phone to his shoulder, crouched beside the television stand, and reconnected the cable box with his left hand.

He did not think of the Nile at dawn.

He thought, vaguely, of a river and resentment.

That was apparently enough.

The cable box began to hum.

Yorn froze.

The hum deepened, vibrating through the shelf beneath it. A strange green light seeped from the vents in the box. The blinking status light went solid, then began flashing much faster than before, with a kind of manic confidence Yorn did not care for.

“Ramses,” he said slowly. “It’s making a sound.”

“Interesting,” Ramses murmured.

“Sparks are happening.”

“Mm.”

“Don’t ‘mm’ me.”

The hum became a whine.

Then, with no warning whatsoever, the cable box burst in a flash of green-white light so bright Yorn had to throw one arm over his face. The room filled with a roaring sound like a thousand tiny wet hands slapping tile at once.

The couch shook.

Something hit him in the leg.

Then another thing.

Then several more.

The light vanished.

The humming stopped.

And in the abrupt silence that followed, Yorn lowered his arm and looked around his living room.

There were frogs.

Not one frog.

Not several frogs.

Thousands.

Frogs on the coffee table.
Frogs on the bookshelves.
Frogs on the arm of the couch.
Frogs bouncing off the television.
Frogs under the lamp.
Frogs on the lamp.
Frogs emerging from what seemed, on philosophical grounds, to be impossible locations.

One small green frog was already sitting calmly in his stew.

Yorn stood very still.

A frog leapt onto his shoulder.

Another hit the window and slid down it like a bad decision.

Then the croaking began in earnest.

The room erupted into amphibian sound so loud and total it seemed to rearrange the air itself.

Yorn lifted the phone back to his ear with astonishing care.

“Ramses,” he said.

“Yes?” said Ramses.

“There are frogs in my house.”

A pause.

Then, very calmly: “Ah.”

Yorn’s eye twitched. “What does ‘ah’ mean.”

“It means,” Ramses said, with great dignity, “that we may have encountered an unintended secondary manifestation.”

“There are frogs in my house, Ramses!”

“Yes, I heard the acoustics change.”

“Why are there frogs?”

Ramses exhaled softly, the sound of a man searching a long hallway of memory.

“Well,” he said at last, “if the invocation of receptivity is slightly misaligned… and if the box is of poor craftsmanship… and if the signal current is already spiritually unstable…”

“Ramses.”

“…then on rare occasions one may accidentally trigger something adjacent to the Second Plague.”

Yorn stared at nothing.

“The what.”

“The Plague of Frogs,” Ramses said. “A classic.”

“A classic.”

“Very famous.”

Yorn watched in mute disbelief as a frog launched itself off the bookshelf and landed directly on the remote.

“Why are you talking like this is a known inconvenience.”

“In fairness,” said Ramses, “it does not happen often.”

“How often does it happen.”

There was a longer pause.

“…More than once.”

Yorn made a sound that had no linguistic content whatsoever.

By the time he got off the phone, the situation had worsened in ways that felt personal.

The frogs had spread to the kitchen.
Then the hallway.
Then, somehow, the bathroom.

Yorn spent the next hour scooping frogs into buckets, opening windows, shouting “OUT” at animals with no concept of ownership, and discovering that frogs, when frightened, could achieve absurd vertical ambition.

At some point one got inside a boot.

At another point three emerged from a breadbox he was confident had previously contained only bread.

By the time the front door finally swung open under the pressure of sheer amphibian volume, the first wave spilled out into the street.

That, unfortunately, was how it became a town problem.

Snowdrift Bay did not react to the frog invasion all at once.

It reacted in pockets.

The woman from across the lane opened her front door, looked down at the mass of frogs overtaking her step, and quietly shut it again.

A boy near Cobblestone Square shouted, “YES!” and began trying to sort them by color.

Fabian Flamingo screamed once, very sharply, when he discovered seven frogs inside a bucket of ranunculus.

Spike, upon seeing the first major wave hopping through the square, said, “I don’t want to overreact, but this feels biblical in a targeted way.”

By morning, the frogs were everywhere.

They slicked the cobblestones.
They clogged gutters.
They appeared in planters, barrels, alleyways, on porches, under benches, and in at least one taxicab.
The fountain had become unusable because the frogs had apparently claimed it as a ceremonial site.

Mayor Llama, standing on an overturned crate in the square while three frogs sat on one shoulder like strangely engaged advisors, declared the situation “challenging, but potentially brandable.”

Yorn, who had not slept properly and currently had a frog in one coat pocket for reasons beyond comprehension, stood at the edge of the crowd with the thousand-yard stare of a man living through a customer service consequence.

He called Eternity Cable again.

This time Ramses answered after only nine minutes, which somehow made it worse.

“Eternity Cable Services,” said Ramses. “Ramses speaking. Ah. Yorn.”

“You know it’s me.”

“I know the sound of a man standing in frogs.”

Yorn pinched the bridge of his nose. “They’re in the square.”

“Yes, I’ve heard reports.”

“They’re in homes, Ramses.”

“Yes.”

“They’re in the diner.”

A pause.

“That is inconvenient.”

“Inconvenient? There is one in the mayor’s sash.”

“Ah,” Ramses said. “Then it has spread with confidence.”

Yorn lowered his hand and spoke with frightening calm. “I need a solution.”

Ramses considered.

“At this stage,” he said, “direct reversal may prove difficult.”

“What does that mean.”

“It means,” Ramses said gently, “that the frogs are now an event.”

Yorn almost dropped the phone.

“I do not want an event.”

“Few do. Yet events come.”

“I want my cable back.”

“An understandable desire.”

“And fewer frogs.”

“Also understandable.”

“Can you fix it or not?”

Ramses was silent for a moment.

Then he said, with deep sincerity, “Not remotely.”

Yorn looked up at the gray morning sky as if asking the universe whether there had ever been a moment in history when it felt bad about itself.

“Then what am I supposed to do?”

“At this point,” Ramses said, “you must either wait for the plague to complete its natural arc…”

“I hate every word you’re saying.”

“…or introduce a counterforce.”

Yorn frowned. “What kind of counterforce.”

“Something louder than frogs,” said Ramses. “Or hungrier. Or mechanical.”

Yorn stared out into the square.

Then his eyes landed on Zephyrus.

The wizard was wheeling something enormous out of a workshop.

It was brass.
It was wheeled.
It had gauges.
It had a glass chamber.
It had a nozzle like the snout of a deeply overfunded animal.
A little pennant attached to one side read:

AMPHIBIAN RECOVERY ENGINE, MARK II

Yorn narrowed his eyes and started walking.

An hour later, half the town had gathered in the square to witness what Zephyrus repeatedly described as “the elegant solution.”

The machine looked like a steam-powered nightmare built by a carnival engineer suffering a fever. Copper piping curled around a central tank. Gears clicked. Pressure valves hissed. A wide intake nozzle glowed faintly green, which no one loved. Perched on top was a whistle assembly that looked purely decorative until Zephyrus announced, proudly, that it played a little tune every time the chamber reached “peak frog density.”

“Why would it do that,” Yorn asked.

Zephyrus looked offended. “Because victory should be audible.”

Ramses, who had at some point arrived in person and was now standing beside Yorn wrapped in ancient linens and the serene calm of a man who had accidentally loosed a biblical pestilence before breakfast, tilted his head thoughtfully.

“It is handsome,” he said.

“You are not allowed opinions right now,” Yorn replied.

Ramses accepted this with grace.

Zephyrus threw a lever.

The machine roared to life.

At once, the nozzle began sucking up frogs in a violent green blur. They flew off porches, out of gutters, away from flowerbeds, and across the square in startled arcs, vanishing into the transparent holding chamber with wet little thumps. The whistle on top let out a cheerful toot-toot-toot every few seconds, which made the entire operation feel much less responsible.

The crowd cheered.

Children ran alongside the machine, counting frogs until the numbers lost all meaning.

A woman near the bakery crossed herself when a dense cluster of frogs vanished from her awning in one magnificent pull.

Spike, standing on an overturned bucket for a better view, shouted, “THAT’S RIGHT, YOU SLIPPERY BASTARDS, THE AGE OF MAN RETURNS.”

“It was never the age of frogs,” said Yorn.

“Tell that to the last sixteen hours.”

Zephyrus swung the nozzle across the square with increasing confidence. Frogs vanished by the hundreds. The chamber filled, glowed, emptied through some secondary process no one asked about, then filled again. Every time the whistle chirped, Mayor Llama applauded like he was watching a parade.

Yorn watched the machine consume the last major cluster around the fountain and let out a long breath.

Beside him, Ramses folded his hands.

“Well,” the mummy said, “that went better than the locusts.”

Yorn turned slowly. “The what.”

Ramses looked ahead. “Nothing.”

By late afternoon, the town was mostly clear.

A few stragglers remained in shady corners and morally compromised birdbaths, but the crisis had passed. The square was wet, exhausted, and smelled faintly of pond, but it was standing.

Snowdrift Bay had survived.

Again.

Yorn stood with Ramses near the edge of the square as Zephyrus accepted far too much praise and the frog machine cooled with a series of smug little clicks.

“Well,” Yorn said at last, “my cable still doesn’t work.”

Ramses nodded solemnly. “No.”

“That was the original problem.”

“Yes.”

“And now everyone in town has seen a frog come out of my mailbox.”

“A difficult week.”

Yorn glanced at him.

Ramses, wrapped and dignified and impossibly calm, looked back with the expression of a man who had seen dynasties rise and fall and genuinely did not consider this his worst Thursday.

Against all logic, Yorn laughed.

Just once at first.

Then harder.

Ramses smiled.

“I am sorry,” the mummy said. “For the frogs.”

“You should be.”

“I was trying to help.”

“I know.”

Ramses inclined his head. “Your anger was justified.”

“That’s the nicest thing anyone at Eternity Cable has ever said to me.”

“I am glad.”

Yorn looked out over the square, where townsfolk were already retelling the story with the speed and confidence of people determined to improve it through repetition. Someone near the diner was insisting the first wave of frogs had spelled out a warning. Someone else claimed the vacuum had briefly achieved sentience. Mayor Llama was trying to determine whether the machine could be repurposed for leaves.

The whole town was ridiculous.

And somehow, deeply, warmly alive.

“What happens now?” Yorn asked.

Ramses considered. “Now, I suspect, we continue talking.”

Yorn looked at him.

Ramses added, “Also, I can schedule a technician for your cable. A conventional one.”

“That would have been useful yesterday.”

“Yes,” said Ramses. “I see that now.”

Yorn shook his head, smiling despite himself.

That evening, as the sun sank gold over Snowdrift Bay and the last of the frog panic gave way to storytelling, Yorn sat on his porch with the phone tucked to his ear once more.

Inside, his television still did not work.
Outside, a single frog croaked from somewhere under the steps in what sounded suspiciously like defiance.

On the other end of the line, Ramses was telling him, in grave and patient detail, about a much older catastrophe involving sacred ibis, an overconfident prince, and a ceremonial fan.

Yorn listened, laughed, and looked out over the strange little town that had somehow turned a cable outage into a civic amphibian event and, in the process, handed him a friend.

In Snowdrift Bay, this was apparently how things worked.

You lost your television.

You gained a mummy.

And if the week went especially badly, possibly several thousand frogs.