The Last Croak

John I - The Last Squish

For hundreds of years the huge boulder held its position overlooking the valley. It had overseen the rise and fall of the Indian empire along with a valley awash in buffalo. It looked on as the cowboy pushed westward, followed by the railroad and then highway. The vigilant boulder weathered the floods, the rains, the winds, the rattling of the ground from time to time. Its base weaken over time but the mighty rock stood strong and proud. Today it was sentry to a farm, a road, a distant pond, a nearby town and school, and eyed some of the town's citizens with concern. One such citizen was John...

John liked to step on things. He tried to do this in private because he thought it was an unusual thing to enjoy, but he couldn't help himself. He couldn't understand his penchant to squish, but gave in to the urge every time. As a child, when he walked to school he had a compulsion to step on every alternate groove on the sidewalk to the beat of whatever song was playing in his head. But when he saw a bug, that really threw him off his rhythm since they were not as evenly  spaced as the sidewalk grooves. Plus, he had to lift his knee up a little higher to get a satisfactory squish. For the larger bugs, like a cockroach and spider, he gave a high-pitched squeal as he stomped them. If one were to watch John as he encountered areas of higher bug density they would think he looked and sounded quite silly. John was the kind of citizen that others gave wide berth to.

As John got older he tried to squish larger critters. He once saw a medium-sized tortoise crossing a walkway at a crowded shopping plaza. With the exception of some young children, shoppers were keeping well out of the way of the tortoise to give it free passage. It was about three quarters of the way across when John spotted it. With glee in his eyes and a smile on his face he quickly ran to the tortoise, began to hyperventilate, then he jumped up high with both knees raised, and with a loud scream brought both feet crushing down dead-center on top of the tortoise's shell. Things didn't turn out as John expected. Although his feet crushed through the shell with unbridled satisfaction and splattered guts everywhere, including the faces of the young children who were watching with morbid curiosity, his feet did not find purchase on the far side of the shell. John's feet slipped out from under him and he fell onto his back squishing whatever turtle remained. A small crowd soon gathered around John and he quickly scurried away in humiliation. John returned to squishing bugs.

When John was an adult he became a licensed truck driver and that's how he earned his living. One of the perquisites to the job was the ability to squish larger critters with abandon, without ramifications, and John experienced every much the satisfaction of squishing with his big wheel as he did with his foot. He just had to rememberer to keep his windows down so he could hear the impact and resulting squish. John was now creating road-kill out of armadillos, opossums, raccoons, squirrels, and occasionally a coyote or deer. Life was good.

John's last squish came when he was driving his truck back to town late one night. He was very sleepy at the wheel. To stay awake, John had been picking out objects ahead of him to focus on — a sign, a bridge, a piece of litter — anything to keep him from falling asleep. But then he came to a long stretch of highway and was unable to find anything suitable for his attention. No sign, no bridge, no litter, nothing. His eyes blurring as sleep crawled up his spine into his consciousness. There! There it was! Hopping across the farm road on his left. John focused on the frog to keep awake. He just had to turn his steering wheel ever so slightly, just enough to ensure that the wheels of his truck and the croaking frog met with a satisfying squish. And it was done. A strange peace come over John as bliss illumed his face.

John soon fell asleep with a complacent smile on his face. It is quite amazing that the truck continued on the highway for another quarter of a mile, even making a slow turn to the right as the highway curved. Unfortunately, when the highway curved back to the left, John's truck continued its slow turn to the right and drove right off the highway and crashed into a rocky cliff. When John woke up he was dazed from the crash and quite fatally injured, but was feeling no pain at the moment. In his daze he thought he was dreaming and wondered if the steadily growing rumble sound might be his alarm. Then, for the briefest of moments, he thought he heard the beginning of a squish and the world ended.

...The huge boulder was precariously balanced on its perch. Its base had eroded over the centuries and was now so tenuous that it could give way at any moment. That moment came when John's truck crashed into the rocky cliff far below. It was only a vibration, but it seemed to grow as it travelled up the rocky cliff and magnify as it focused its energy into the crepitating neck of the vigilant head. When the brake came it was fatal and the decapitated head plunged precipitously downward gaining speed all the time until arrested by the cabin of the truck, which was instantly flattened as the driver's body was pasted onto the rocky canvas. The vigilant boulder, like John, was no more.