Froggy's Revenge
(*old short story I wrote back in the late 80's or early 90's)
Froggy’s Revenge
by Michael Birkes
Ba-doink! Ba-doink!
The computer generated image of a frog hopped sporadically up the screen, avoiding the car images as it tried, frantically, to cross the image of a four lane highway. Back and forth, up and down. Dodge the sports car, leap ahead of the truck. Wait for an opening and go, go, go!
“Com on, Froggy!” The small boy playing the video game spoke to the frog on the screen with encouragement and enthusiasm. He was smiling as his eyes darted all over the screen, taking in every detail. His concentration was intense. His excitement was pure and real. He was very much into this game. Stabbing at the jump button with fanatic meticulousness, coordinating those stabs with the direction of the joystick, his eight year old body barely able to bet his head high enough to watch the screen, he played for several minutes, until a long lull between ‘scenes’ came.
He looked around the video arcade, slowly, making sure to miss nothing. The place was still empty. The owner was still away at the bank getting change. The boy estimated that he had at least ten more minutes before the owner would be back.
The place was almost silent. The only sounds were an occasional musical fanfare and other miscellaneous video game noises from the bright orange machine a couple of games away, and the sounds from the Froggy game that the boy was playing. All of the other games seemed to be out of order. They no longer showed screens filled with their usual, preset demonstrations of the games that each machine held. Instead, they displayed black screens with a single, large circle in the center of each. Around the inside edge of each of the circles were bizarre, red symbols, like runic letters from some archaic language. The boy smiled. “Just you and one more left, Froggy.”
Closing his eyes, the boy concentrated for a brief moment. Opening his eyes slowly, he stared up into the screen of the game before him. The colors filled his eyes, and everything else around him blurred until all that was clear was the game. Then, gradually, the video arcade, the world, everything that was not the game, seemed to melt away around him. The screen became huge, encompassing him in its bright colors and hypnotic sounds. There was the little frog, panic in its eyes. Ahead was the highway, eight lanes of deadly traffic. The noise from the engines was near deafening. The sports cars were speeding bullets. The trucks were juggernauts of destruction. The rest of the cars were just fodder. Crouching down, the boy spoke to the frog, raising his voice just enough to get over the cacophony of the highway. “It’s okay, Froggy.” He looked out into the havoc that was the road. And smiled. “Froggy, it’s time to kick some ass.” With that he made eye contact with the little frog and nodded toward the road. The frog followed the boy’s eyes with its own. It instantly turned back to the boy, intensified panic on its face. “I can’t,” it said in a voice much reminiscent of Jack Benny.
“You have to,” replied the boy, his voice more matter-of-factual than demanding. “You have to make the high score. And when you get across this one, you’ll have made the high score.”
“If I get across, you mean,” answered the frightened frog. Its heart was racing. Its breath was shallow and rapid. It felt feverish.
The boy smiled, an odd, fanatical look on his face. “Oh, you will.” He reached down and touched the frog with the end of his index finger. The grog winced at the contact. The boy stood up fully and made a grand, sweeping gesture with his hand, indicating the highway. “After you, Froggy.”
As the frog turned to look, it felt something strange. It felt confident. With a deep breath it leaped over the white line onto the asphalt, barely avoiding the crushing wheels of a massive truck, and sidestepping just quickly enough to avoid the toxic exhaust fumes from the passing limousine. Its confidence building, the frog felt something else. Something it had never felt before. It felt anger. The searing heat running through its veins made its head pound and pulse. These people in their cars and trucks were trying to kill it! They had to die. They deserved to die! Then another revelation came into the frog’s mind.
He was an individual.
He was not an ‘it’; not just a target to be smooshed into the road.
Fuming with unbridled hatred, the tiny frog stood his ground. As the next truck got closer, the frog could feel himself growing. He could feel the muscles all over his body enlarge and tighten with unimaginable strength. He could feel the extra weight and mass being added to his gaping, snarling mouth! Growing. He could no longer see the oncoming truck. He was becoming a towering, green behemoth! Like some huge, green, hairless ape, he stood on his hind legs, waiting. He was almost as tall as the truck that was still barreling, top speed, down the highway at him. For once, he could actually see the driver inside the vehicle. He enjoyed what he saw. The driver had the most terrified look on his face. This look went from terror to all-out panic as the frog behemoth stopped the truck dead in its tracks with a backhanded slap to the grill, bursting the radiator! The driver screamed as his truck was lifted into the air and shaken with brutal force, the frog’s claws digging deep furrows into the front fender and ripping holes into the hardened steel axle. In the next moment, the truck was cast aside, skidding on its passenger side door and sliding to a halt some several yards away!
The boy watched from the edge of the road. And smiled. His eyes were afire with excitement. “Yes,” he murmured. “Kill them all. Destroy. Wreak havoc.’
Beautiful, shiny sports cars were being flung about with violent abandon, their passenger’s frantic screaming abruptly ending on impact. Trucks had some of the smaller vehicles in their driving compartments, as the frog hurled the now tiny cars through the windshields of the non-threatening big rigs. He flattened cars into the asphalt, using other vehicles as sledge hammers. The roar of the engines became a whisper next to the crash of metal and glass. He was enjoying his frenzy.
In a short time, the only sounds on the highway were the occasional moan of a dying driver, and the cackle of flames as they blackened the destroyed vehicles. In all, eighty-nine vehicles lay, sprawled out in heaps and pieces. Giddy with battle lust, the frog leaped about the thirty feet to the far edge of the highway, his huge, newly-clawed feet making great holes in the ground, accompanied by a thunderous thud, he ripped up chunks of dirt and grass. He screamed a ferocious war cry, and yelled, “YES!!”
The boy nodded. “Yes.”
The boy shook his head rapidly, snapping himself back to the video arcade. All was as it had been. Except that the Froggy game’s screen was black, with a white circle in its center. The circle had some odd runes on it.
“Soon,” the boy said, as he stepped away from the game and made his way toward the only game with its normal screen showing. “Soon you can all come out to play. Just one more friend to wake up.”
He reached into his pocket as he neared the game. Pulling out a quarter with some bizarre runes on it, he peered at the screen. He had saved this game for last, because getting the high score would not be a problem. This was the game that he played the best. Knowing that he needed the high score on every game in the place for this to work, he had saved the easiest for last. This way there would be no last minute uncertainty. In minutes, it would all be done. “Oh, yeah! He was on his tip toes, so that he could get a good look at the screen. “You and all your friends get to come to my world soon. Then we can really rock this town!” He inserted the quarter in the slot, heard it rattle its way down, past the wire that registers one more credit, into the coin box. He read the screen one final time. The screen showed a silhouetted image of Tokyo, Japan, superimposed over the face of a very famous monster. “Okay, Godzilla, it’s time to kick some ass.” He pushed the start button, and smiled.
Froggy’s Revenge
by Michael Birkes
Ba-doink! Ba-doink!
The computer generated image of a frog hopped sporadically up the screen, avoiding the car images as it tried, frantically, to cross the image of a four lane highway. Back and forth, up and down. Dodge the sports car, leap ahead of the truck. Wait for an opening and go, go, go!
“Com on, Froggy!” The small boy playing the video game spoke to the frog on the screen with encouragement and enthusiasm. He was smiling as his eyes darted all over the screen, taking in every detail. His concentration was intense. His excitement was pure and real. He was very much into this game. Stabbing at the jump button with fanatic meticulousness, coordinating those stabs with the direction of the joystick, his eight year old body barely able to bet his head high enough to watch the screen, he played for several minutes, until a long lull between ‘scenes’ came.
He looked around the video arcade, slowly, making sure to miss nothing. The place was still empty. The owner was still away at the bank getting change. The boy estimated that he had at least ten more minutes before the owner would be back.
The place was almost silent. The only sounds were an occasional musical fanfare and other miscellaneous video game noises from the bright orange machine a couple of games away, and the sounds from the Froggy game that the boy was playing. All of the other games seemed to be out of order. They no longer showed screens filled with their usual, preset demonstrations of the games that each machine held. Instead, they displayed black screens with a single, large circle in the center of each. Around the inside edge of each of the circles were bizarre, red symbols, like runic letters from some archaic language. The boy smiled. “Just you and one more left, Froggy.”
Closing his eyes, the boy concentrated for a brief moment. Opening his eyes slowly, he stared up into the screen of the game before him. The colors filled his eyes, and everything else around him blurred until all that was clear was the game. Then, gradually, the video arcade, the world, everything that was not the game, seemed to melt away around him. The screen became huge, encompassing him in its bright colors and hypnotic sounds. There was the little frog, panic in its eyes. Ahead was the highway, eight lanes of deadly traffic. The noise from the engines was near deafening. The sports cars were speeding bullets. The trucks were juggernauts of destruction. The rest of the cars were just fodder. Crouching down, the boy spoke to the frog, raising his voice just enough to get over the cacophony of the highway. “It’s okay, Froggy.” He looked out into the havoc that was the road. And smiled. “Froggy, it’s time to kick some ass.” With that he made eye contact with the little frog and nodded toward the road. The frog followed the boy’s eyes with its own. It instantly turned back to the boy, intensified panic on its face. “I can’t,” it said in a voice much reminiscent of Jack Benny.
“You have to,” replied the boy, his voice more matter-of-factual than demanding. “You have to make the high score. And when you get across this one, you’ll have made the high score.”
“If I get across, you mean,” answered the frightened frog. Its heart was racing. Its breath was shallow and rapid. It felt feverish.
The boy smiled, an odd, fanatical look on his face. “Oh, you will.” He reached down and touched the frog with the end of his index finger. The grog winced at the contact. The boy stood up fully and made a grand, sweeping gesture with his hand, indicating the highway. “After you, Froggy.”
As the frog turned to look, it felt something strange. It felt confident. With a deep breath it leaped over the white line onto the asphalt, barely avoiding the crushing wheels of a massive truck, and sidestepping just quickly enough to avoid the toxic exhaust fumes from the passing limousine. Its confidence building, the frog felt something else. Something it had never felt before. It felt anger. The searing heat running through its veins made its head pound and pulse. These people in their cars and trucks were trying to kill it! They had to die. They deserved to die! Then another revelation came into the frog’s mind.
He was an individual.
He was not an ‘it’; not just a target to be smooshed into the road.
Fuming with unbridled hatred, the tiny frog stood his ground. As the next truck got closer, the frog could feel himself growing. He could feel the muscles all over his body enlarge and tighten with unimaginable strength. He could feel the extra weight and mass being added to his gaping, snarling mouth! Growing. He could no longer see the oncoming truck. He was becoming a towering, green behemoth! Like some huge, green, hairless ape, he stood on his hind legs, waiting. He was almost as tall as the truck that was still barreling, top speed, down the highway at him. For once, he could actually see the driver inside the vehicle. He enjoyed what he saw. The driver had the most terrified look on his face. This look went from terror to all-out panic as the frog behemoth stopped the truck dead in its tracks with a backhanded slap to the grill, bursting the radiator! The driver screamed as his truck was lifted into the air and shaken with brutal force, the frog’s claws digging deep furrows into the front fender and ripping holes into the hardened steel axle. In the next moment, the truck was cast aside, skidding on its passenger side door and sliding to a halt some several yards away!
The boy watched from the edge of the road. And smiled. His eyes were afire with excitement. “Yes,” he murmured. “Kill them all. Destroy. Wreak havoc.’
Beautiful, shiny sports cars were being flung about with violent abandon, their passenger’s frantic screaming abruptly ending on impact. Trucks had some of the smaller vehicles in their driving compartments, as the frog hurled the now tiny cars through the windshields of the non-threatening big rigs. He flattened cars into the asphalt, using other vehicles as sledge hammers. The roar of the engines became a whisper next to the crash of metal and glass. He was enjoying his frenzy.
In a short time, the only sounds on the highway were the occasional moan of a dying driver, and the cackle of flames as they blackened the destroyed vehicles. In all, eighty-nine vehicles lay, sprawled out in heaps and pieces. Giddy with battle lust, the frog leaped about the thirty feet to the far edge of the highway, his huge, newly-clawed feet making great holes in the ground, accompanied by a thunderous thud, he ripped up chunks of dirt and grass. He screamed a ferocious war cry, and yelled, “YES!!”
The boy nodded. “Yes.”
The boy shook his head rapidly, snapping himself back to the video arcade. All was as it had been. Except that the Froggy game’s screen was black, with a white circle in its center. The circle had some odd runes on it.
“Soon,” the boy said, as he stepped away from the game and made his way toward the only game with its normal screen showing. “Soon you can all come out to play. Just one more friend to wake up.”
He reached into his pocket as he neared the game. Pulling out a quarter with some bizarre runes on it, he peered at the screen. He had saved this game for last, because getting the high score would not be a problem. This was the game that he played the best. Knowing that he needed the high score on every game in the place for this to work, he had saved the easiest for last. This way there would be no last minute uncertainty. In minutes, it would all be done. “Oh, yeah! He was on his tip toes, so that he could get a good look at the screen. “You and all your friends get to come to my world soon. Then we can really rock this town!” He inserted the quarter in the slot, heard it rattle its way down, past the wire that registers one more credit, into the coin box. He read the screen one final time. The screen showed a silhouetted image of Tokyo, Japan, superimposed over the face of a very famous monster. “Okay, Godzilla, it’s time to kick some ass.” He pushed the start button, and smiled.