![[3023] Frog Man - Part 1](https://external-preview.redd.it/pngnWgtESDOWo1WT5wz1bT75q8hvUgWrqKOlF-d3MNs.png?width=1080&crop=smart&auto=webp&s=76b8e4a8b8ae9d50956dd737bd6a3e2eab22dd4e)
Story: -
https://docs.google.com/document/d/12OhXYwF036Tn5HUPeUsJFRKFvQMbue-TtYisKoiq6Zg/edit?usp=sharing
Crits: -
[823] https://www.reddit.com/r/DestructiveReaders/comments/1wx8ww7/comment/pf08qnp/?context=3
[2377] https://www.reddit.com/r/DestructiveReaders/comments/1wyt2il/comment/pea0yxh/?context=3
> 3200 Words
When you jump into Chapter 1, expect to step into a slow-burning, psychological trap that operates on a completely hidden frequency.
While you are immediately hit with the numbing, exhausted fog of a mundane tech job, the real experience of reading it is the creeping realization that every tiny, repetitive detail is a variable in a massive, hidden equation. The text forces you into a state of hyper-vigilance, you aren't just reading about a guy staring at a monitor, you are being forced to track a cold coffee cup, a loose cable cover, and an unyielding corporate debt like a puzzle you didn't realize you were volunteering to solve.
It is a profound test of patience because it masks a high-stakes corporate sci-fi horror inside the rhythm of pure administrative boredom. The text relies on you feeling that heavy, insomniac loop so that when the narrative engine finally shifts beneath the floorboards, the drop is absolute. You are watching a consciousness slowly figure out the physical boundaries of its own prison using nothing but the micro-changes in the room around it.
You cannot rush it because the book is actively training your brain to notice the exact anomalies required to understand how a mind might try to break a system from the inside out.
Context: A gang loots dead soldiers during the American Revolution.
I’m seeking feedback:
- On my German. What do you think of the Hessian by how he speaks?
- On Philosophy, what are your impressions of the German Idealism, Kant’s theory of mind, which was discussed
at the final scene?
- Or any bits and bobs you’d like to rant or discuss: style, era, mood, setting, themes, material culture, lingo, character dynamics
[846] The Feedback
Frankie stumbled backwards onto the damp grass and froze. His eyes were adjusting to the darkness, but he could make out Alicia stumbling away from her tent. She was holding her left arm straight and rigid toward the ground with her right, obviously hurt. He saw the dark, wolf-like shape following close behind her.
Frankie kept waiting for his eyes to adjust, to snap into focus and demystify the tall shadow in front of him, but they never did. He watched in a dreamlike daze as the figure caught up with Alicia. Methodically and quietly, it reached a large, clawed hand around her face, muffling a terrified whimper.
With its other hand, it sank claws deep into the centre of her chest and dragged them down through the girl's stomach. Frankie could hear the faint squelch of tissue and viscera being shredded, but Alicia made no sound. Not even as the contents of her stomach and intestines sloshed onto the hillside, and not as the crunch of teeth crushing the back of her skull offended the night air.
His mind was screaming at him.
“Run” … “Hide” … “Help her” … “For God’s sake, do something!”
A voice rang across the valley.
“Bastard!”
He realised it wasn’t his own.
He watched, entranced, as Michael ran screaming at the figure, a golf iron held up against the firmament like a great sword. The same one they had used to hit golf balls off the mountainside that evening.
The rage of his sister’s loss flowed through Michael as he charged the beast, but it had opened his throat before he could bring any wrath upon it. The club fell from his hand, and there was a moment of stillness before blood streamed silently from his throat. He fell back to the cold earth and sat staring into the darkness, making no attempt to stem the bleeding.
Michael accepted his end with great dignity. Frankie always remembered that part.
Frankie watched as the creature lowered itself onto all fours, now more wolf than monster, and walked slowly towards Michael. If Michael had closed his eyes in terror, he could not tell. Its jaws opened and clamped around the boy’s face, and although Frankie’s body screamed at him to look away, he watched as the wolf tore away his friend's memory in the darkness. The moans of agony lasted only for a short while, but the sound of flesh tearing and bones crunching persisted.
Still, Frankie remained frozen.
After a short time, a veiled shadow crept out of one of the tents. His mind raced, begging that it not be her, pleading with her to get back into the tent.
Mary’s scream shattered the silence. There was a horror in it that was hard for Frankie to fathom, which made him realise he wasn’t in a dream. He watched as his girlfriend took off running across the hillside. He remained frozen to the earth as the beast bounded after her. It caught up to her in an instant, leaping onto her back and pinning her to the ground.
This was the moment. Adrenaline flowed through him, and he knew he should spring into action, but he couldn’t. He felt his legs and arms melt away into his body until he became a limbless blob stuck to the hillside. Even his mind had ceased talking. All that remained were the nerves firing off electrical signals throughout his body, a cacophony of explosions trying and failing to uproot him from the soil.
Mary screamed for help, but it was abruptly cut off by the creature tearing away her lower jaw. Frankie found a strange comfort in knowing her suffering would be ended soon. The thought of Mary’s terror as her eyes searched helplessly in the dark for her parents to comfort her in those final moments overcame Frankie. His whole world became blurry and out of focus, but he remained conscious.
Mary’s suffering was not over. The creature fed on her body for a long time before she finally succumbed. Frankie listened to her groans and incoherent pleas as the creature buried its muzzle in her belly. Eventually, the night went still, save for the sound of the beast gorging itself on teenage flesh. He remained frozen, his eyes fixed on nothing at all, and his mind gone to some far-off place.
A flurry of movement brought him back again. It was Barry and Aaron sprinting from their tent back towards the cars. They had made it quite some distance before the creature snapped its head in their direction and took off after them into the night. They were at least a couple of miles from safety. Frankie knew they wouldn’t make it.
The police found him there, sitting in the very spot he had been when the attack had first started.
“Are you alright, son?” one of them asked as the others examined the scene around them.
Frankie did not hear him. He trembled lightly and stared off down the hillside. A policeman shooed away some crows that were perched on Mary’s body.