Chapter 1


    I have never been one for staring contests. I can’t seem to stop myself from blinking. My eyes water faster than they normally would if I didn’t have to sit there and think about not letting them close. I just lose control of my own eye muscles. I always lose.


    Today, I wouldn’t have guessed this about myself.


    I stare unblinkingly at what absolutely should not exist. My eyes narrowing and widening, trying to process the animal looking back at me. It’s very similar to a frog. But it is the largest frog I have ever seen, perhaps five times the largest I have ever even heard of. And it appears to have a pair of leathery wings coming out of it’s back, tucked neatly against its sides. It is all the normal colors of a bullfrog, and yet so distinctly otherworldly even its drab colors manage to look more vibrant than your everyday amphibian’s.


    I’m very used to reptiles and amphibians. More so than most people my family would say. My childhood summers used to be spent visiting my grandmother down South, chasing toads and crickets through the grass. While most people had pet dogs or cats growing up, I had frogs and snakes, and the occasional lizard. I would quietly smuggle them in while the adults were busy. And I was forever being caught out days or - if I was lucky - weeks later and forced to give them away due to my mother’s fears.


    Perhaps my mother’s fears were well founded though. She always did say that she felt snakes and everything like them were “unnatural and don’t belong.”


    I’m certainly not an expert, but I can pretty confidently say that frogs do not naturally have wings.


    Frogs don’t have wings. They aren’t the size of an overly well fed house cat. And their eyes most certainly do not tend to convey an air of impatience, if they bother to pay such close attention to humans at all. So obviously this creature I’m locked in a staring contest with simply doesn’t exist.


    Finally, I blink.


    It swats at its left eye with its long pink tongue. Closing its mouth into a smug smirk afterwards, it won the staring contest. Still, it is focusing directly on me, as if I’m the anomaly in this situation. And a disappointing one at that.


    Grinding my teeth, I have to agree with its assessment. I am disappointed too. Just a week ago I got my medication adjusted. I’m tapering down to wean off my antidepressants and of course I was told by my doctor that hallucinations were a slim possibility. But I assumed with this ridiculously slow titration I’d be fine.


    But doctors always fail to deliver in my experience. If I had known I’d be seeing flying frogs for the next few weeks I would have just quit cold turkey like I wanted to and saved myself the seventy-five dollars.


    The winged frog creature takes a deep breath in, expanding as if preparing to let out a throaty “ribbit”, and the river seems to swell alongside it. Rising in anticipation of the frog’s croak. But instead it slowly releases its breath to nothing but silence. I watch as the creature stretches out its wings. They shadow the river bank, cloaking the clusters of minnows and critters making their way against the current. Its wings are larger than I would have imagined a cat-sized creature to have. They stretch nearly five feet from tip-to-tip, covered in the same slightly damp skin it has on the rest of its body; a deep, mossy, green that sharpens to talons at the ends.


    The frog starts to flap its wings, raising itself about a foot off the ground and ever so slightly closer to me. I can feel a faint gust of air across my cheeks.


    Closing my eyes, I will myself to come back to reality.


    I want to be off this medicine. Not put onto other drugs to offset my apparently impending psychosis.


    When I open my eyes there will be just a frog. Or maybe just a bird. Not a mixture of the two. I will pack up my things and go home. And I will keep titrating down each week because I feel better. Now three…two…one…


    I open my eyes and relief floods through me. There is nothing in front of me but my blanket, my book, and my water bottle. The sounds of the river at my feet are peaceful, the sunshine filters through the clouds, creating a hazy light that reflects off of the water and sparkles into my eyes. Smiling, I pick up all of my things and turn around to grab my bag and -


    It’s there. Hovering a few feet off of the ground, just above my bag, the winged frog didn’t actually disappear.


    I snatch my bag up, stuffing my items in it despite the dirt and damp that has seeped into the blanket, ignoring what my mind has no business conjuring up, and head home. I refuse to look back.


    Even though the view is lovely this time of year I don’t look around me as I make the short walk home from the closest river edge. Instead I Google how long hallucinations can last as you come off antidepressants. Reddit has lots of answers, people mostly say they experienced auditory hallucinations, not visual ones. And if they did have any visual ones they were more shadowy figures, or quick flashes of something from the corners of their eyes. Things that disappear when you look at them directly. Not like the full blown animal that seemed as real as the cows I’m passing by right now.


    I file away this information to worry about at a later time and rush across the last half block worth of grass between me and my front porch. I haven’t looked back once. I haven’t glanced around to see if it’s still there.


    Running up the stairs, I finally open and shut the front door to my place. It’s almost too warm in here now that the sun is fully up, basking my home in its rays. Leaving the lights off I kick off my shows and drop my bag just past the threshold. The rest of my belongings fall next to the other piles of worn shoes that never seem to make it into the cubby holes I built specifically to keep them out of the way. My house needs a good cleaning.


    Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.


    I want to go back to sleep.


    I don’t have time to rest though. I wasted more than enough time this morning at the river staring at things that absolutely don’t exist. It’s time to shower. I have a job interview in less than an hour and it will take me at least thirty-five minutes to walk over to their offices. I need this job, badly. My mortgage will be overdue by two months soon and I don’t know how I can keep the bank off my back if I don’t settle up quickly. I’m down to the last of my savings and I’m not bringing in enough money from selling my sculptures online, babysitting, or any of the other odd jobs I try to pick up to cover my bills. I thought that when I moved out to the country all those years ago I would be able to sustain myself the way I did in the city.


    I can’t lose my grandmother’s house.


    But I didn’t account enough for less people meaning less opportunities for random work, not enough people to make money. No wonder I’ve been steadily put on higher and higher doses of antidepressants ever since I left. And that is doing wonders for my productivity.


    Antidepressants are supposed to make you feel better but all mine ever did was make me foggy and sluggish. I haven’t finished a sculpture on time since three dose increases ago. I haven’t had the energy to look for real work in ages. I can’t keep going like this.


    I quite possibly made the worst mistake leaving New York, and now I don’t even have enough money saved up to move back. It’s time for me to get a real job, a true 9-5, since moving here. Even if I absolutely hate my pickings right now.


    A vet’s office. How much more unpleasant can it really get? Sick and unhappy animals everywhere with their anxious, overbearing owners waiting for answers. It’ll be loud, stinky, and the owner is a creep…


    I throw a weary glance at my pre-picked interviewing outfit on the loveseat and rush into the bathroom.


    S.T.A.R. Situation, task, action, result.


    Situation, task, action, result. Don’t ramble! Be concise. Answer with confidence. It’s literally just an administrative assistant position… Even if you do have to hear dogs be sad and cats get shots and they may die in surgery, and… forget about all that!


    You are gonna ACE this interview!


    You have to…


    Moving past the sink I turn on the shower, testing the temperature. It’s lukewarm.


    Good enough.


    And I begin to scrub myself down the fastest I ever have before toweling dry and prepping my face for makeup.


    Remember, you want to be pretty but not too pretty. Dr. Jameson is vain enough to want a pretty receptionist but don’t be over the top. Keep it as natural as possible.


    I twist my hair back into two buns, letting some tight coils fall out of the back and tug a few more out to frame the front of my face. My dark, curly hair doesn’t like to do what it’s told so it takes three tries to get the buns to be both even and presentable near the nape of my neck.


    I take one look at my skin, a lovely terracotta color, moving towards ochre brown after all the days I’ve spent tanning by the water this late in Spring, and decide on a light dusting of blush and some mascara will be enough. Finishing up with a brown-pink lip tint before heading back to the living room to throw on my clothes, leaving my towel on the floor.


    I wonder what it’d be like to not have to think about how I look so purposefully before an interview. I bet men never think this hard about appearances and just grab their resume and head out.


    I don’t know if this is true, but it would have been nice to not had spent seventy-five minutes yesterday trying on all possible options for clothing that seemed “appropriate” enough to sit at a desk of a run down, small town veterinary office five days a week. I know the vet well enough. He wears jeans and long-sleeved t-shirts to everything! And he probably has for the past thirty years too, in fact. But I have to fit whatever the ideal is of a woman interviewing for a job regardless of what the job and setting actually requires.


    I hate this.


    The sun is still coming straight through my kitchen window, beaming relentlessly on my living room as I gather my resume and folder off of the coffee table. Taking a quick moment after to let the sun rays wash over me, calming me, before I continue looking around. The pile of dishes in my farm style sink sparks a flame of anxiety in my chest. As does this morning’s breakfast left on the kitchen countertops and the papers and books scattered throughout the rest of the living room and kitchen. The smell of bread from earlier makes my stomach grumble, but there’s no time to get a snack, and definitely no time for me to clean up my messes either.


    If I do well on the interview I’ll clean up everything and have something to celebrate. Maybe I’ll even have a job before the week is over. A job and a clean house, it’ll be great.


    Digging under the blankets by the fireplace I find the most acceptable thin shawl to cover my freckled shoulders and put it around me before grabbing a pair of kitten heels and stuffing them into my largest purse and opening the front door. Dread creeps up on me as my eyes adjust to the flood of sunshine.


    Will it be there again? Am I really going crazy just because I don’t want to take these pills anymore? Should I just stay on them?


    But nothing is outside other than the peaceful waves o f grass and distant trees along the roads and fences of my neighbor’s family farms. A long breath of air I didn’t realize I was holding in lets out of me and a ray of light, almost bright enough to compete with the one in the sky, explodes through my body.


    I can do this! I can get a real job and live in the country peacefully. I can pay my grandmother’s mortgage off and all my bills AND not be depressed. I can read in the Summer mornings and sit by the river and not see anything that shouldn’t be there - this one is tentative, but I’m really on a roll. Life is definitely looking up! I’ll bring in enough money to have more for dinner than rice and beans and maybe chicken if I’m lucky in no time!


    These sort of thoughts go on and on, carrying me to the vet’s office faster than I can notice the time passing. Pulling my heels out of my purse I lean on their peeling white fence to take my beat up gym shoes off one at a time. Slipping my toes into the kitten heels without letting my feet touch the ground.


    I got this. I got this. I got this.


    I am so positive. I knew I was ready to stop the meds. The river was just a fluke.


    Pasting on my brightest, most customer-friendly smile as I climb the wooden porch steps, I ring the bell and wait for Dr. Jameson to open the door. I can hear some dogs barking as the doorbell rings. Footsteps stomp my way right before the door swings open.


    Dr. Jameson is indeed wearing his unofficial uniform of jeans and a long-sleeved shirt. The said shirt has an unidentifiable yellow substance on the chest area and a small hole just below the left elbow. He smiles at me.


    “Ayan, come in!”


    I step into the front of a single-person run vet’s office and realize there are no other applicants. No one else is interviewing for this position. He needs help. I’m going to make it.


    But sitting at the edge of his front desk, just as content as can be, is a frog with wings. Staring at me. Not blinking. And Dr. Jameson doesn’t seem to see it at all.