​     Now:

     Every thirty seconds, a toad came through the door to snatch a human up.

     Skip sat with three humans, then two,

     A toad dropped by long enough to throw two more humans into the tub to be stripped and greased.

     That made four humans Skip sat with.

     The door that led outside opened.

     A toad came in to grab a human.

     Three humans left.

     The door opened, and another human got grabbed.                                       Thirty seconds later, it happened again.                                                         That left Skip with a woman of the desert who looked maybe, what, forty?

     They waited for the door to open again.

     It didn't.

     No more toads brought in humans to splap in the grease tub, either.

     Skip sat with the woman while the three female toads looked at each other through their huge, round frog eyes.

     One of the three toads left.

​     Skip heard scuffling sounds beyond the door leading outside, but no one opened the door.

     The second toad left.

​     Now, only a single toad remained. Skip heard a sound beyond the door he didn't recognize. It resembled something like a quick, hard choke.

     "What in the fuck was that?" Skip muttered.

     "I'm not quite sure yet," Claudia replied, "but that just might be the sounds of your salvation."

CONTINUE