OSCULATING BUFONIDAE -- PART THREE

On a knoll overlooking an Olympic-sized swimming pool ringed with twelve marble statues of Greek gods behind the house, she stopped and pointed to a pond fed by a small stream that meandered down from the river north of town.

“Down there, Sam. It’s yummy down there...and quiet...and private.” She winked.

He blinked and wobbled some more.

Sam followed her as she skipped down the hill toward a miniature mill wheel, turning slowly as water from the stream cascaded down a manmade waterfall and splashed against its worn wooden paddles. The sound was...oddly enticing. It beckoned to him—a come hither siren song of the sea, more or less.

“Are you sure we’re not going to be missed?” he said as she reached back and pulled him down the slope toward that inviting pond.

“Uh-huh. They only come to these shindigs my mom throws for the free food and booze—certainly not for me. Once the thing gets started, no one pays any attention to who is where because they’re all too busy packing their cheeks full like little chipmunks and drinking themselves blind. Stuffed blind rodents. Gaaaack!”

It was one of those idyllic, hot, humid Summer afternoons. A slight breeze jiggled the top of the lawn. The allure of crickets and other crawler-hoppers in the grass, fat flies flitting, and gnats packed in little gray clouds hovering here and there caught his attention. Sam couldn’t recall ever seeing such a variety of bugs—not on his side of town where dumpsters and kitchen window screens seemed to be the only real attractions for them. Here, they were everywhere. Back home, cockroaches were the big thing, with large, greenish flies running a close second.

Once at the water’s edge, where the immaculately trimmed blanket of green turf ended abruptly and the darkness of a glass-smooth pond took over, they stood arm in arm.

Over the cool of the pond, a thin mist, just a couple of inches thick, lingered above the water and iridescent dragonflies zoomed, occasionally dipping below the haze. Lilly pads, their images muted by the mist, floated invitingly, their succulent flowers sticking up through the hazy layer like lighthouses on a foggy coast, their bases veiled in a low-lying mist.

“Kiss her now, you lout,” Vern said quietly in Sam’s ear.

“What’s that thing on your shoulder?”

“Huh? That? Oh, yeah, that. That’s...um...Vern. He’s a...he’s a...dragon.”

“Oh, how cute. But I thought dragons were supposed to be huge...and...and frighteningly ferocious. He’s sweet. What was it he said?”

“You don’t want to know,” Sam said, his feet scuffling a little in the grass.

“Now,” Vern said. His tone was insistent.

Sam pulled Rebecca to him gently and landed a full lip-lock on her. He felt her voluptuous body press willingly against his and tasted the sweetness of the kiss. She fell through his grasp and crumpled to the grass in a tangle of satin and sequins.

“I’m proud of you, my boy,” then, !POP!, Vern vanished.

There came a soft chuckle from somewhere that landed in Sam’s ear and echoed as if it had traveled through a long tunnel, then everything lapsed into silence and sweet smells. The inviting call of insects skittering, jumping, crawling and flitting hither and yon awakened cravings in his gut he’d never experienced.

Rebecca wriggled free of her satin and rasping sequins, nude as the day she was born. Her tiara lay in sharp contrast to the lush green velvet of the grass. Two short hops and she slipped smoothly into the water. Propelled by a kick of long, powerful hind legs, Sam, in a single, clumsy bound, splashed in behind her, raising expanding rings of wrinkled water. !ZAP!, a brightly colored dragonfly disappeared in mid-swoop on the tip of a sticky tongue.

CROAK