Hop. Hop. Hop. He was always hopping. Carl’s favorite thing to do was Hop. Sometimes he liked to swim. Or get food. But he was tired of living his life without meaning. He wanted to get a job.

Little did they know, Carl was really a frog.

Guest Contributor Zoey Zozo

The murder scene was wiped clean long before the police arrived to trample it in their carelessness. It didn’t matter. Their best evidence was always manufactured.

Carl would maintain his innocence until the day he was executed. Most non-biased observers believed him. He was a convenient fall guy to take the blame for a crime that couldn’t be solved. Yet no one dared leap to his defense. If the court system officially concluded Carl had murdered a family of seven while at the same time driving his taxi on the other side of the city, who was anyone to argue.

The windows to Carl’s apartment were always closed. Summer heat and cancer-causing insulation made the one-bedroom flat in the still unseemly section of Brooklyn stink of rot and turpentine.

But as far as New York City house cats went, Carl had it better than most thanks to the corpse in the bedroom.

Autumn had descended over the valley with all its bronze and beige. Solomon found clinging to the days required more vitality than his chronic fatigue would allow. He sat his jeep with the same listlessness he sat his arm chair. Neither the work nor his TV could keep his attention.

His life was fading. Even patriarchs come to an end. His family would live on without him, but Solomon wished, in a secret part of his soul, he could take all this land with him. He was ready to die, ready to leave his family, but not ready for nothing.

She was no ordinary cow. You could tell immediately by the indecent way she chewed her cud. She almost licked her lips with anticipation. She understood it was wrong, but she chewed anyway.

And there she was, the infernal bovine, munching the grass in my front lawn. Damn her.

Ben strained with all his might. It had been an errant throw, despite Rodney’s insistence it was on purpose. Now here they were, poised on the edge of a cliff, literally hanging on with their fingertips, trying to reach Ben’s coin. A stiff breeze would blow it over the abyss.

“Tails. I go first.”

Hannah’s entire life has been spent looking for the perfect bathroom. It goes without saying it needs to be clean. Spotless. No untoward odors or any hint of fecal matter. It would be best if the toilet had never been used. A virgin toilet made just for her. Someone might suggest a secluded spot in the woods but it’s probable that sometime in the history of the planet a creature had at least urinated on the spot. Diapers, as someone mentioned, are completely out of the question.

Someday, Hannah dreamed, she would finally be able to stop holding it in.

Carl had not wanted the bottom of the well. The high-traffic areas–the bridges, the forests–had all been selected when it was finally his turn to choose. His parents complained he should have taken his classes more seriously, but regrets were of no use. His only hope was hard work would result in a promotion.

Calvin had no way of knowing any of this when he fell down the well behind the old farmhouse.

Scottie and Claire loved the junk yard. To other folks it may have seemed a dire place to grow up, but for the two siblings, it was paradise.

Modesty had been instilled in them at an early age. Their parents made it very clear they were never to mention they were from the richest family in town.