The toast cooked itself and appeared before him buttered and on the plate. Jody was dimly aware of his wife bustling around the kitchen, but he had to read the nutritional information on the back of the cornflakes box. 0.3g of fat per serving. He should remember that, it could be useful.
The time on the stove showed he had another seven minutes before he had to leave for the school. Enough time to finish his tea and brush his teeth, check his reflection and hold 15 seconds of monosyllabic pleasantries with the wife. The drive would take another twelve minutes, then five to get to class, which included a coffee-stop in the staffroom, and a final ten minutes to prepare for the day. It was all scheduled.
Jody turned off the lights in all the rooms except the kitchen and left the house locking the door behind him. He opened the garage and sat in the car. The radio of the land rover came on automatically with the ignition. There were no decisions he had to make. A glance in the mirror and he reversed to the end of the driveway and turned onto the street.
The car was stopped with a jerk as it crunched nose-first into the garbage truck that chose to stop outside his house.
He blinked. His neck ached. Oh that’s right, it’s Wednesday.
Jody sat examined the close-up on the back of the truck. It’s mechanical arm dumped the contents of their wheelie bin on the bonnet of his car. She’d gone and put the recycling in with the general rubbish again. He stared at the trash a moment longer, till the truck lifted the bin up again. The front of the car rose a bit with the weight, and with a wheezing cough the airbag popped out. In his mind Jody could see the comic book style replay – big yellow letters forming the word BIFF or POW over the point of contact or maybe for emphasis they’d repeat the same hit from several different angles across a series of frames.
The airbag deflated and he rubbed a hand across his jaw. Had he remembered to shave today? Sometimes, in the water of the shower he lost track… ah that hurt, a slap to the face.
There was a shout from outside the car. A garbo (was that what they were called?) in yellow hard-hat and orange reflector-vest rapped on the window leaving grubby knuckle-marks. Jody looked out the back of the car. The wives was running out of their houses, not just his wife but everyone’s wives. They were crossing the lawn. They were nearing the road. Soon they’d fence him in entirely. He reversed and some of the rubbish fell off. Gripping the steering wheel through the sack of the airbag, he took the car around the truck and the garbos and the wives and left. Didn’t want to be late for class.
The parking spaces were unmarked, but everyone had the same space everyday. Jody parked the car. And turned to the back seat for his jacket. Two splats of blood formed a line pointing to her. There was the initial shock of seeing her, laying on her back with her little legs at odd angles, and then there was the creeping horror. She looked mostly dead. Her eyes were half-closed and her mouth gaped. There was a split across her middle, and pale innards leaked over the leather interior. How could he have forgotten?
Carefully, he picked up her little body and placed her in the fold of his newspaper. She was cold, but shallow breathing showed she was still alive. Skip the coffee. Skip the class. None of it mattered now.
No.
He couldn’t let anyone know. They might not know. He tore off a sheet of newspaper and rubbed at the mess left on the seat. Maybe no one would notice..
Folding her little body inside the newspaper he made a dash for his classroom.
High school biology is nobody’s friend. Jody nestled his head into his folded arms, prying eyes open just enough to stare over the books guarding the front of his desk. Utterly bored. The toads were busy writing at their desks, fifteen minutes left for them to prove themselves. Fifteen minutes left until a new batch of terribly badly written essays wafted his way like the scent of animal trucks that trundled through his suburb to get to the meat factory just upwind. His gaze snuck to the drawer of unmarked junior’s essays, then he quickly looked away. That’s where she waited.
He hadn’t even known the car had airbags. One corner of his mouth twisted up and he glanced back to the drawer. Maybe…
She hadn’t liked the crash at all. Now he could imagine she was calling to him in a low grumbling voice. Sprawled on top of those essays like a paperweight, staring up at the small line of light where the top of the drawer met with the side of the desk. She would be angry, and scared, and wild and probably in pain. Jody narrowed his eyes further, glaring at the students through the stubble of his eyelashes. Perhaps things would be easier if he let her out. Or ended it quickly. Bah, toads. The bell rang.
Students shuffled past, dropping their scribble sheets on his desk. Jody watched them pass. They all looked the same. Not in the way they dressed but in their faces, a happy-lonely-glazed look. Well they’d be back. Right around two, they’d return for their practical. Plenty of time to think about strategies.
He scooped up his coffee mug and went to the staff room. The coffee came straight from the finest imperial mud-puddle. He sat on an old smelly couch, trying not to think about her waiting for him. Mrs Pembers sat next to him. She was looking young today, he could have sworn she had been at least 60, but now – if not for the hair you could trace with a ruler – she could have been a different person. She smiled, politely, and tucked back a corner of her pyramid-do. A small green gem winked at him from the knuckle of her ear. The toad on her shoulder seemed to smile.
He managed to ignore her for the rest of the day. The slog continued. The essays went unmarked, the coffee undrunk.
The class came back and he chose an out educational video for them. There was a long shelf of them in the antechamber, all at least ten years older than the students.
“offering their host no increase in physical or mental abilities. Their lesser relatives, the cane toad is currently spreading as a plague over Australia. These Neanderthal cousins are known to release a hallucinogen in their poison. They’re a danger to dogs, who after killing a couple of toads become addicted to the drug and eat more toads, to the point where the toxin builds up in their system and kills them. Breaking studies have shown this new threat acts in a similar way, …”
The class were all staring glassy-eyed at the screen. Who knew how much they were actually learning. Jody went into the back room and got the worms ready for dissection. He picked up the jar of them and shook it. Inside, worms spiraled and surfed, rocketing around on the last ride of their lives. Normally he’d give the students live worms, but today that didn’t seem right, so he’d let them sit for twenty minutes in ether before class. The student’s wouldn’t notice. He had it all ready by the time the video ended. Worms, wetly laying on a small polystyrene tray next to one scalpel and a neat little pile of pins. He gave each student a tray, and they would go to their desk and stand behind it. Exactly the same. They mimed slicing down the length and pinning back the sides. Raised one hand to their ear, and the worm was gone. Green and yellow eyes shone and some burped excitedly. A couple of quick strokes with the blade and finish by pressing the pins into a pattern on the polystyrene. Oh they were all experts. Had to feed the toads somehow.
-x-X-x-
Jody lay down in the bed next to his wife. Her back was to him, her nose whistled and her toad wheezed. He stared at her shoulder, where three small sticky fingers clung to her bare skin. They set up a small impatient drumroll on his wife’s neck. He huffed, and turned away. It wasn’t long before a cold, clammy feeling crept over his shoulder. He’d left her at the school. Should he have done that? He couldn’t breathe but instead felt the dabbing of a cold amphibian tongue on his ear lobe. Had a replacement found him? The feeling was like being frozen alive, over his shoulders and icing out from his hairline. One foot at a time, the toad carefully stepped up to his shoulder. Jody twitched. Could she have come back? He’d been so sure, so sure that the accident had killed her. Airbags weren’t built for toads. They were pre-toad. He thought he’d locked the drawer. But here… here was something. It burped, long and low it rumbled near his ear. The press of a throat full of air against the base of his neck.
Jody lay completely still. There was a drop of sweat right in the middle of his back, like it had caught on something. He counted down from five, and after “one” he moved. Reached for the toad, and threw it into the wall. There was a thump, then silence. He was more awake than ever now, climbing out of the bed, pulling on his ugg-boots and stomping a foot down on the stunned frog. It gave a crunchy croak and he kicked it under the bed. The toad by his wife’s head glared at him. He stared at it, the taste of blood in his mouth. Should he..? He reached for his wife’s shoulder, she rolled onto her back – who was this? This wasn’t who he’d…
When had he married her? Who the hell was she? Two big yellow eyes didn’t blink at him. The toad opened it’s mouth ready to expel another croak, but Jody was already moving for the door.
Through their small linoleum and vinyl kitchen, to scrabble with the door handle for a moment then out onto the front lawn.
He stopped. Little bulbous heads all staring at him. They’d been waiting. Where one would fail a million would take its place. The plague only came out at night. Jody reached over to the flowerbed and pulled out a shovel. Well, if this is the way it’s going to be…
-x-X-x-
The day after the students turned up to school on time for the Thursday biology routine. Their teacher wasn’t in the room, and this time, they had no direction. No motivation. Everyone looked different, like looking through stained glass or coloured plastic, their friends weren’t who they had seemed. They idled around the room, fidgeting with their books or making paper planes. Some of them edgily looked to their bags or lunch boxes or out the window to the greasy trash can by the school gates, impromptu places to stash their poisoned secrets. Outside in the hall, a teacher explained to the substitute of Jody’s overdose on an unknown substance. This morning his wife had found him laying in their yard half buried in the mud. They thought maybe it was a household chemical. The wife was being questioned.
In the classroom the students get restless, and someone with the artistic urge to draw on the whiteboard opened the desk drawer to look for markers.
Commentary:
This was originally written as a university assignment many years ago.
