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Red Frog Man

Baltimore, Maryland, October 7, 1850

The icy, whistling wind made it hard to breathe, nearly sweeping me off my feet as I struggled against it down the dark, snowy road. I sensed a warning, as if it were trying to hold me back from my destination: the gravesite of Edgar Allen Poe.

On the year's anniversary of his death, I was determined to practice an ancient ceremony over his burial plot in an attempt to speak to him. I ran through the steps in my head for the millionth time.

Necromancy was strictly forbidden, but my morbid curiosity had the better of me, and I had nothing left to gain or lose in this world. The road trailed off into puddles of frozen mud, slivers of cracked ice thrusting through my pants as I sank down, drawing closer to the wrought-iron graveyard gates with each treacherous step.

The gate swung open with a rusty screech as I approached. I spotted Poe's location immediately because of the unearthly fog lingering there. It enveloped me as I knelt down to begin the rite.

I scratched a circle over the mound, then drew a pentagram inside it. In the center of that, I lit a red candle.

"Spirit of Poe, speak to me! I desire knowledge of the afterlife."

Heavy footsteps thudded behind me. I spun around, nearly knocking over my candle. The man himself stood before me, holding out a hand. Branches from a nearby sapling waved right through him. His eyes were filled with liquid sadness, but a faint, mysterious smile flickered on his lips.

"You wanted me?"

I stood up, gathering my short breath and my senses as well as possible.

"How are you, sir? What part of the afterlife do you reside in?"

"Certainly not the better place." His gaze lowered. "My hell is to forever relive scenarios of my own invention. A mind unclean is its own punishment."

"Is there no hope?"

"Nevermore. Come, let me show you what I must experience tonight."

I drew back, but he reached for my hand.

"Please… I am so lonely in the hellscape of my corroded imagination. I have not spoken to a human soul since my passing."

The anguish in those hollow eyes… I mutely allowed Poe to grasp my trembling hand. A heated shock jolted through my veins as we were transported to something like a dark, shadowy stage.

In flickering light, a crippled man with a bulbous, misshapen head danced slowly to the rampant din of a tambourine. His dragging feet and twisted face belied the pain he must be in.

"Faster, faster!" A king sat on his throne, waving a staff and calling out mockingly. "Thrice as fast gets you thrice the pay—and if you cry out you don't get anything."

The scene melted and reshaped. Now the king was interrogating the cripple.

"You have a sister? As badly malformed and disfigured as you are?"

"Yes. She is weak and sick…"

"Bring her to the castle! We'll give her a fine room and board. She'll be well cared for."

"You promise?"

"Yes. I'll do it for you, my man."

Another change showed what really happened… only shame and mockery. I covered my eyes, but her sobbing filled my head like a thousand needles.

"Enough!" I cried. It melted again. Now a plague tore through the kingdom, staining bodies red as blood leaked out of their skin, killing them slowly.

"Lock the castle gates!" The king ordered. "I shall quarantine myself and my friends till this is over."

"What about the people, your highness?"

"Let the plague run its course among the impoverished. We shall be better without them."

A masquerade party filled the king's ballroom with cloaked, masked figures. He rubbed his hands gleefully.

"The crippled slave said he would show up best and last. I wonder what he will be coming as."

"A frog man, perhaps!" Chortled a wolverine creature whirling by. "And his poor dead sister would make a fine troll."

A knock, and the door fell open by itself. The din of music and voices died away to stunned silence. The crippled man wore tattered, bloodstained clothes revealing skin oozing red and peeling ribbons of flesh.

"How dare you show yourself disguised as a plague-infested pauper?" the king roared. "This is not amusing in the least! Get out!"

The cripple strode up to the king, hurling a soiled rag in his face.

"This is not a disguise—I am the Red Death you have sought to hide yourself from. To avenge my sister's innocence, I bring this curse upon all of you!"

The king shrieked as red and black stains crawled up his skin. Everyone clawed at themselves, trying to erase the oozing blotches which grew inexorably over them like funguses. The crippled man stood at the center, watching with arms folded.

"Mercy, my man!" The king fell at his feet only to receive a kick in the ribs.

"You don't want to die in your own blood? Very well then…" The cripple pulled out a match and struck it on the throne.

Flames burst up in an explosion of scorching heat, swallowing the entire scene as screams of agony tore at my ears. The cripple was not spared the fire he set for his enemies. His red eyes glared directly at me as though I were to blame somehow, the last thing he must have seen as he burned alive with the others.

I squeezed my eyes shut and pressed my hands over my ears, yet the heat ate into me and the visceral cries could not be muffled.

Suddenly, nothing: as if I had died. Deafening stillness and shuddering cold pierced me to the marrow, replacing any other sensations. I opened my eyes. Poe was still holding my hand, that same sad smile playing on his face.

"Now you know. I watch hopelessly evil situations like these eternally, unable to intervene. How much I wish I had written redemption into the painful stories I now live among!"

"I need to get back," I whispered, unsure if I was truly speaking or if I even had a body left. "I don't want to share your unhappy afterlife forever."

"You are spared. Go and tell others what you have seen."

Another jolt of electricity sent me to my knees. I lay in the dirt at the foot of Poe's gravestone, his final mournful cry echoing hauntingly in my head:

"Lord help my soul!"

Words: 1,073.

Inspired by a mashup of the Edgar Allen Poe stories The Masque of the Red Death and Hop-Frog.
Written for the October 2024 Bard's Hall contest.

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