by Ed Higgins
All right, so the frog I risked my lips on (not to mention the contents of my stomach) when I leaned over and reluctantly planted a big smacker on those glistening lips (thank God the requirement wasn't to French kiss the smirking little pond scum!) hasn't turned out exactly fairytale. I'm yours he croaked in sonorous baritone as I demurely held my hand over my open bodice, lest the little pervert leap down the front of my dress to lodge wet and writhing in my cleft. A pleasure in any event I was saving for the Prince. And that after the wedding of course. Well, it seems once a cursed Prince-into-frog it's ribits forever, transforming kisses not withstanding. Or in my case, come every sundown he slips back into a tailless amphibian of the order Anura, leaps away from the dinner table with that moist smile of his and its out to the garden pond, endlessly croaking the night away on his favorite lily pad. In the morning I wake to a damp bullfrog on my pillow wanting me to Prince him back with yet another face-sucking metamorphosis. Live with it, he tells me every morning as we later sit down to breakfast. We all have our curse to bear. Hey, gonna pass that plate of flies?
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I like to play around with folklore, myths, fairy tales, biblical stories & the like to see what kind of new spin I might put on the otherwise familiar--it's an exercise I regularly use in my creative writing class. Anyway, this flash piece grew out of one such and was published in Twisted Tongue Magazine a while back.
I like this piece. It's funny, and I think that you did a good job expanding this moment into a habit or a regularity of sorts.
I think that the sentence "Well, it seems once a cursed..." is a little awkward, though. Maybe a comma after the hyphenated combo would help there.
Cheers,
A
Very funny and creative Ed. Well done.
Ha! Not much of a transformation. I like that. If you marry a frog-- guess what?!? You get a frog. Kudos, Ed.
Love the play on metamorphosis /reverting to pond scum. Love things fairytalish, folklorish, biblical. Nice. * Q