The Eloquent Mr. Toad

Part 1

            The eloquent Mr. Toad lived in a shoe on the bank of a normal river. The boot, to be precise, washed up to the shore’s edge when Mr. Toad walked up to the river one day. He didn’t know what to think, in truth–the boot floated down the river because a local farmer was hooking up with Sancho the ranch hand. The secret lovers were in a sordid relationship, and like humans do, they chucked all their logic out the window so they could penetrate one another and pound it out. However, for Mr. Toad, he had no concept that this strange leather palace was an ordinary boot, but in his head, he perceived it as a gift from the higher power.

            Mr. Toad was a very intelligent amphibian, he didn’t know why, but from birth there was this feeling of being self-aware of his surroundings. He knew wherever he was born was not where he was meant to be. You see, Mr. Toad was manufactured by Pet Market Inc.: an illegal website in the deep web where people can purchase rare and exotic animals. He had never known anything else except for plastic walls, fluoride water, and fluorescent lights. He had a few brothers and sisters but it was immediate to him that he was very different from his siblings. Countless times, he spent trying to speak to them, but his relatives looked at him with horrid eyes. The shock would send shivers through the container, and quickly Mr. Toad was labeled a “witch.” He didn’t know why he spoke, or why he had the ability to comprehend that he existed with a purpose.  The other amphibians and reptiles lived very differently, it was as if they were ignorant and never knew there was something more outside their repetitive daily lives. It took Mr. Toad some time to accept his circumstances–he was a tadpole all alone in a tank with no answers. Without anyone like him life in a tank became a cruel place for a tadpole. He was neglected for a year while maturing from tadpole into toad.

            During this period, Mr. Toad’s mind became his greatest ally. He saw the world with so much potential, in his mind, meditation and creative thought kept him at bay, but it wasn’t for long, because he craved the company of a friend; someone to stimulate his mind by sharing thoughts and ideas. He would start to crack the days before Turtle showed up, but before that happened; Mr. Toad would feel the first bite of life’s cruelty.

            The day before Turtle arrived, Mr. Toad’s life was brimming with tension. One thing Mr. Toad did not foresee was inciting such aggression from his tankmates. You see, Animals who do not look past their Id and basic instincts only know how to exist with primal needs. There is no way for them to look past their eyes, and if they had one, nose. Mr. Toad had hit his tipping point when he cracked. From the moment he spoke, and all the tankmates heard him, he was forcefully shunned and pushed around the tank. It hurt the other Animals to hear his voice; it made sense and shot an exploding dynamite of fear throughout every fiber of their being. They could not handle thoughts that contradicted their innate behaviors. How could I exist in a world outside myself? This question plagued everyone’s mind, and the Animals blamed Mr. toad for making them think and become aware that something bigger existed outside of them. These days grew so bad that Mr. Toad was becoming severely thin. The others beat him and would take all of his food away so that he would slowly die from malnutrition. Mr. Toad was lying on the sand of the plastic island inside the tank. The Keepers who controlled the tank watched Mr. Toad with brooding eyes. One wore two plates of glass held by wire over his eyes. The striking image of magnified bulging eyeballs forever burned into Mr. Toad’s mind.

            His body grew leathery and rough with a thin layer of skin hiding his bones. The captors decided to monitor him in a private tank to study him for observational purposes. He was a highly specialized toad made from two exotic species. No other crossbreed existed like him, but to Mr. Toad, he had no knowledge of this and simply thought he was like all the others. Except for the fact, he could think for himself. Mr. Toad immediately thought of his captors as a higher power. He saw them staring at him every day, the only thing he could correlate was that since The Keepers were bigger than him they were obviously a higher power. Anything outside the confines of his tank made his head hurt with fear. However in the moment of close proximity to death, Mr. Toad felt the touch of power as a baby blue-gloved hand came through the tank and grasped him. The other Animals turned away and hid, they too feared the gloved hand, but it was in their best interest they not ask questions. As much as Mr. Toad feared the hand it made him so much more interested to discover more information about it. A few moments of slow motion occurred as Mr. Toad was lifted off the fake sand into the air and out of the tank. His eyes cracked open and he spoke softly.

“I’m going home.”

He didn’t necessarily go home but he became tankmates with Turtle. It was a new tank, smaller, and away from all the other tanks. However, Mr. Toad did not meet Turtle for a few days because he hid at the bottom of the tank. The Keepers fed Mr. Toad private meals and his fatigued mind grew stronger by the hour. His reality started to grow past the circumstances of his confines. It was as if all his thoughts and intentions formed together and the higher power answered him. He hoped and prayed to leave, and in his mind, even though he did not know the name for these feelings, he began to trust his instincts. It would be one morning as he snacked on some food, while singing with absolute happiness, his eyes connected with Turtle, who only peered from under the water like a periscope of a submarine. Turtle had been in this tank for a long time; he was an ancient turtle who was 30 years old. Most Animals never knew a turtle to live past 20 years at the most. Turtle was destined to live till he was at least 80 and in an ocean, but he was depressed, lonely, and not able to connect with anyone. The music of Mr. Toad delighted Turtle so much that it awakened him from the deepest of slumbers with joy. He had not felt the feeling of joy in over eight years. Hearing the first sound of music inspired him to lift up from the nest of rocks he made for an everlasting sleep.  He saw a lot during his heyday until the day he was caught. Turtle swam the Pacific Ocean coast to coast and saw parts of the ocean no one had touched in a 100 years. He had a family, too, but since The Keepers captured him, he found his world slowly dwindling into oblivion.

            Mr. Toad’s singing was more like a tribal sound of hums and clicks that congealed into something quite beautiful. There were no words, but Turtle did not need to fill in the meaning with context, the sound he heard caused a glorious transfixion of his heart and ears that he could not stop listening; it was endearing and fulfilling him with life’s energy, again. Mr. Toad nearly lost his shit when he saw Turtle’s eyes. He tried to sneak away but his music made Turtle draw near, every step Turtle took brightened his spirit with bliss. Creativity and mystery made Turtle excited to see who inhabited their tank. Mr. Toad stopped singing and hid behind a plastic hula-girl figurine.

            “Please don’t stop!” Turtle shrieked and ran over to Mr. Toad.

            “Who are you?” Mr. Toad closed his eyes tightly while using the hula-girl as a shield.       

            “Oh hey, little dude, I wont hurt you. I just love the music that’s swirling from inside of you.” Turtle said as he tried to put his head on Mr. Toad’s back.

            “Music? What’s that?” Mr. Toad span around trying to break away from Turtle.

            “You don’t know what music is?” Turtle looked perplexed beyond belief as Mr. Toad shook his head side to side. This made Turtle scream like a one-day-old hatchling running from the beach to the ocean escaping the clutches of seagulls waiting to eat you. “Well, little dude; like whoa, you’re a natural talent then.”

            “A WHAT!” Turtle pulled Mr. Toad into his arms, which made him feel awkward. “Excuse me, sir, I don’t mean to cause you any intrusion, but I am most certainly not anything more than an ordinary toad.” Mr. Toad said, firmly, he wiggled out of Turtle’s big bear hug and put some distance between them.

            “Damn, man, they got to you, huh?” asked Turtle.

            “I have no idea what you are talking about, look, why don’t you and I just stay on opposite sides. We can leave each other alone.”

            “You have no idea what you are,” said Turtle who didn’t listen to a word Mr. Toad said to him.

            “Alright, then I’ll go and stay on the other side of this island.” Mr. Toad was perplexed with annoyance as he walked away.

            “You must have grown up here your entire life.” Turtle’s voice grew ominous and made Mr. Toad stop in his tracks. “That little voice inside your head is what separates you from them. Them, meaning, The Primals.”

            “The Primals…” Mr. Toad’s mouth fluttered with the word but no sound came out. He could not face Turtle and kept his back to him.

            “You felt alienated from your siblings because you were nothing like them. The moment you tried to communicate a single thought outside the basic necessities of eating, sleeping, fucking, and shitting, they–The Primals–looked at you like you were a ghastly ghoul. They looked at you like you were a criminal, worse, a monster, because you could think. “

            Mr. Toad turned to face Turtle with fear electrifying off his body because every word Turtle said was validated with an intense feeling of truth. He never knew how to describe what he was feeling, except for in this precise moment, everything Turtle said resonated inside of Mr. Toad louder than before as if a million golden bells were ringing nonstop.

            “They don’t like for us to think outside the box of our innate behaviors, and especially in this prison, you would have never been able to encounter some wise cats like I met when I was a child.” Turtle spoke loudly, his mind trailed down memory lane drifting off into thought about the three old-wise-blind cats who taught him everything.

            “What’s a prison?” Mr. Toad felt more inquisitive than ever before.

            “Look, little dude, there’s a lot I got to teach you about but in due time. I don’t want to shock you with too much information, but for now just know there’s a world much bigger outside these walls and the walls of this building.”

            “How do you know all of this?”

            “I’ve been around for a while, but before I got captured, I lived on the waves of Los Angeles with my family. My grandfather was an ancient turtle who lived a long time, he taught me many things about this world. So that I could one day pass along the wisdom of Mother Earth on to the next generation.”

            “Fascinating…” This was all Mr. Toad could say as he breathlessly became happier as his mind filled with knowledge.

            Mr. Toad made it to the bank of the river as sunset turned into night. He escaped the prison where he met Turtle; the experience was a painful and exhausting period in his life. His body had scorch marks and cuts as he passed through tall blades of grass and discovered his new watery home. His feet stopped when the cold water touched them. The water rejuvenated him and gave him a sense of peace, a constant that could allow him a chance to snap out of the frenzy of his mind. It was the loud sound of lightning that caused him to jump to his legs within a single leap. A sheet of rain dropped from the sky and covered the area. He knew that he needed shelter and started to run around, but immediately stopped when he saw the dark shadow of a large boot travelling down the river toward him. There was no waiting, Mr. Toad knew this was his only chance and took a leap of faith into the water. Pouring rain drummed deeply into the crevices of the river causing loud sounds of a beating drum.  He swam to the boot, but the current became belligerent, and Mr. Toad lost his footing. Nearly swept away, he became entangled in the shoelace of the boot. To his safety, he caught a branch and held on to it. The tree limb was sturdy and not going to break but the little branch nearly snapped. However, Mr. Toad jumped on top of the tree limb and wrapped his arms and clasped his fingers together. The shoelace nearly broke his back. Lightning puked all around him causing the sky to turn a harsh color of pink.

            It was in this moment, Mr. Toad thought of Turtle and stopped fearing he would lose the boot and simply believed in himself. He told himself that he would not let himself fail; not this time. It was as if, in this very moment, he channeled the strength of Turtle and heaved his body up from the branch, wrapped his legs around the trunk for leverage, and hoisted, with all his might, as he reeled in the large boot. Each pull felt like he grew stronger and with no measure of doubt telling him no. Mr. Toad knew he could do this, he always did, but it wasn’t until, now, he believed in the power he possessed. Turtle was right all along; Mr. Toad proved he was meant for so much more than to be just another ordinary toad.