Chapter Three: Amphibian Incontinence.

Signal the Frog lost track of the passing days and tearful nights as weeks stretched into months. She ate as little as possible. Often her food wasn’t even alive and her water was only occasionally freshened.

Jeremy decided to send a photograph of Signal to an artist who could make a cartoon-like drawing. Once again the heavens opened and the hand of the beast wrapped its sticky fingers around her trembling body. Jeremy took the frog out to the garage and placed her on the workbench to take the photo. Signal quickly hopped towards the brightest light she could see. Jeremy grabbed the frog and replaced her on the workbench and then wiped the frog urine from his hand. Signal again tried to hop away but discovered that no matter which way she hopped, the paw of the beast was always in front of her. Jeremy began to lose patience with his frantic frog, and quickly grabbed a hammer and nail that were lying nearby. If poor little Signal had any idea of the fate about to befall her, she would have stayed still.

The upright walking beast took a number of photos, some of which were rather embarrassing for a female frog. Later that night, Jeremy removed the nail with a Craftsman 22 oz claw hammer and Signal was returned to her small world, her head pounding from the injury. After a few days the wound healed, but the trauma and humiliation would haunt her for the rest of her life.

A week later, Signal was released into the backyard of Jeremy’s home by a smaller, cleaner, and more feminine hand. Signal was no worse for the wear, although she would hiccup and kick out her right rear leg whenever something touched the scar on top of her head. The abandoned frog would make her home in the 24-inch concrete pipe that provides drainage along a nearby road.

Late one summer afternoon, Signal heard the sound of children laughing nearby. Right then, a strange flat object splashed into the puddle of water in front of the pipe.

“Poppa!” cried the little frog. She rushed out of the pipe to him.

One of the children, a virgin boy of pure blood, picked up Signal and kissed her full on the mouth, then threw her back down into the puddle. The other children screamed in disgusted laughter as they all ran away. Now soggy, Frankie the sail-frog was no longer amusing.

Chapter Four: Fear And Madness.

Jeremy mailed the less explicit photos of Signal to the artist with instructions to draw her without the pained expression on her face. He carefully hid the rest of the pictures in an old Hushpuppies shoebox under the bed. After four to eight weeks, the illustrator returned the photograph with his drawing in a large envelope marked with the words, “Do Not Bend,” written in black ink.

Jeremy opened the envelope and was delighted to see an animated frog with a smiling happy face. Also in the drawing though, was the nail in all its cursed glory.

Not being able to afford to have the drawing redone, Jeremy decided to call the nail an antenna. “Maybe,” he thought, “if I can get enough members to join the site, I can have that nail airbrushed out.”

No one questioned why it was a whip style antenna instead of a patch or quad-helix. Worst of all, nobody knew of the humiliation suffered by poor Signal in order to create the shirts they bought. Nobody that is, except Jeremy. Meanwhile, over in the moldy drainage pipe, Signal begins to feel very strange.

Late at night, when a man’s fears come to call and the quiet is deafening, Jeremy thinks about poor Signal. He stares up at the ceiling; his eyes wide, and sweat beading on his forehead. He ponders the urine smell he cannot wash from his right hand. He wonders if she is there in the room, waiting for him to fall into slumber, to exact her revenge. Any sound that might be a frog's hiccup causes him to turn on the light and frantically search the room.

Not finding anything he’ll dash out to the backyard in his blue velvet pajamas, crawling through the swampy yards looking for Signal like a wild-eyed werewolf on the first night of a full moon.

He screams into the night sky, “Curse you Signal! Curse you from your flaring nostrils to the tips of your little webbed feet! Curse your hyperactive kidneys and weak bladder!” Only the rising of the sun will quell his maddening search for the frog.