Flash Fiction Friday 155: Josh’s Frog by Angela R Sargenti

Welcome to Flash Fiction Friday and the one hundred and fifty-fifth piece in this series. This week’s is a 193-worder by Angie Sargenti.

Josh’s Frog

“Don’t forget to save me a bullfrog.”

Josh grinned. “Will do.”

It all started when we were kids. They read us a story in class about a princess who kissed her way through hundreds of frogs, looking for a prince.

All through the years, every time Josh went gigging, he brought me back a nice fat frog, and every time I kissed it, nothing happened.

“That’s gross,” he’d say.

“You eat them,” I’d answer. “That’s even grosser.”

As the years went by, the bullfrogs grew fewer and fewer, and once Josh went off to college, they stopped entirely.

Finally, he showed up at my door one day while he was on spring break.

“You got my frog?”

“That’s kids’ stuff,” he said, grabbing me off my feet and spinning me around. “It’s time you tried the real thing.”

So I kissed him, and all those years of kissing frogs must’ve had some effect, because suddenly I was hugging air and kissing the sky.

At my feet sat a big fat bullfrog, who promptly hopped away.

“Well, damn it all,” I told him. “What’s a girl got to do to find love around here?”

*

I asked Angela what prompted this piece and she said…

I was going through some of my son’s old toys and I found these two stuffed frogs he had.  I don’t know why, but the story just flashed in my mind.  Maybe that’s why they call it flash fiction!  (By the way, my son’s name isn’t even Josh.)

Thank you, Angie. I loved it.

*

Angela writes mostly erotica, but she’s also fond of horror, as evidenced by her zombie blog, After Old Joe. She wrote her first erotic stories under her pen name, AR Shannon, but quickly changed to her real name. She enjoys reading, cooking, and working on her dollhouse. She also likes to poke around antique fairs and such and collect strange things. Some of her favorite finds are a pair of tusk candlesticks, a werewolf action figure, and an acupuncture doll. She lives in California with her husband and three crazy cats.

Her story “Caught Looking” appears in the recent anthology, The Big Book of Domination, and her five sexy e-books, Working Out the Kinks, Start Me Up: A Collection of Erotic Love Stories, So Spankable!, Brattitudes, Lord Sir Beast, and Werewolf Brothers Make Better Lovers are all available at Amazon. The Cowboy and the Mail-Order Bride is her second novel with Blushing Books, her first being She’s No Angel.

*

You can find out more about Angela and her writing from:

• Amazon Author’s Page: http://www.amazon.com/Angela-R.-Sargenti/e/B002XPPFRI
• Friday I’m In Love (blog): http://angiesargenti.blogspot.com
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/angiesargenti
• Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/angiesargenti

*

Excerpt for The Cowboy and the Mail-Order Bride:

“Let’s go. We’ve got a busy day ahead of us.”

“What am I learning today?”

“How to catch a pig,” he told me, taking me by the elbow and guiding me towards the head of the stairs.

“A pig? You didn’t say anything about catching pigs in your letters.”

“I must’ve forgot.”

“You didn’t forget that other thing, though, did you?”

He stopped and jerked me around to face him.

“Little lady, you’d better watch your tone when you’re talking to me. And get that scowl off your face before I take you back into the bedroom and make you late for breakfast.”

I wanted to protest, but I didn’t. Instead, I merely nodded and smoothed down my skirts.

Once downstairs, I welcomed the men warmly, treating them like guests at some fancy dinner party. I gathered up my skirts to sit down at the head of the table, and John Henry took his place at the other end.

I still didn’t want to catch a pig, and I wondered why he was trying to get my goat. In retaliation, I started a conversation guaranteed to nettle a man so set in his ways.

“Did you hear, John Henry? They might start letting women vote in Wyoming.”

“The hell you say.”

“No, it’s true,” I told him. “I read it in the newspaper yesterday.”

“Well, even if they do, no wife of mine’s going to stick her nose where it don’t belong. Which puts me in mind of something else: I don’t want to catch you gossiping and spreading rumors like those women in town, or you and me’s going to have us a problem.”

“What else?” I asked him. “What else is against the rules?”

“Well,” he said, stroking his moustache, “I don’t rightly know. I ain’t had time to sit and think it all out.”

“Then how will I know? How will I know I’ve broken the rules if you don’t even know what they are?”

“Yeah, John Henry,” asked Shorty. “How will she know?”

John Henry set his fork down and looked from Shorty to me.

“Well, I’m a fair man,” he told me, “so I think it’s only right you get a warning. You keep it up after that, there’s going to be trouble.”

I nodded.

“Fair enough,” I said, taking another of Mrs. Allen’s delicious biscuits and breaking it open.

Shorty chuckled.

“You ain’t scared of nothing, are you?” he asked me.

“Not too much,” I said, catching John Henry’s eye in a challenging manner.

John Henry stopped grinning and looked like he wanted to pound his fist on the table.

“Good,” said Shorty, oblivious. “I think you’ll do just fine out here, won’t she, J.H.?”

“Sure will,” he said, looking directly at me. “Hell, she ain’t got no choice.”

*

This novel is available from: http://www.amazon.com/Cowboy-Mail-Order-Bride-ebook/dp/B00Q6Y0PPO and http://www.amazon.co.uk/Cowboy-Mail-Order-Bride-ebook/dp/B00Q6Y0PPO.

*

If you’d like to submit your 6-word or 500-word max. stories for consideration for Flash Fiction Friday, take a look here.

Related articles:

• http://www.theguardian.com/books/2012/may/14/how-to-write-flash-fiction
• http://www.bridportprize.org.uk/blog/flash-fiction-all-you-ever-wanted-know-were-afraid-ask
• http://www.fictionfactor.com/guests/flashfiction.html
• http://www.awkwordpapercut.com/writing-flash-fiction.html
• http://learning.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/10/03/short-and-sweet-reading-and-writing-flash-fiction
• http://www.wikihow.com/Write-Flash-Fiction
• http://www.writing-world.com/fiction/flash.shtml
• http://www.thereviewreview.net/publishing-tips/flash-fiction-whats-it-all-about
• http://www.everydayfiction.com/flashfictionblog
• and guest blogs about short stories on this blog: Alberta Ross, Jane Hertenstein, Helen M Hunt, Morgen Bailey, Sarah Grace Logan, Warren Bull.

** You can subscribe to this blog on your Kindle / Kindle app via Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.com **

You can sign up to receive these blog posts daily or weekly so you don’t miss anything. You can contact me and find me on the internet, view my Books (including my debut novel The Serial Dater’s Shopping List, various short story collections and writer’s block workbooks) and If you like this blog, you can help me keep it running by donating. Thank you.

For anyone looking for an editor, do take a look at Editing and Critique.

If you would like to send me a book review of another author’s books or like your book reviewed (short stories, contemporary crime / women’s novels or writing guides), see book-reviews for the guidelines. Other options listed on opportunities-on-this-blog. And I post writing exercises every weekday on four online writing groups.