Annex Episode of
The Available Heroes
Story and Art:
Luis G. Abbadie
(You can also
read the Spanish version here)
To the Portland Frog,
Keep Portland Weird
The first duty
of a revolutionary is to make the revolution.
—Ernesto “Che”
Guevara
All those people
had one thing in common, folks. They didn’t wait to know where they were going
before they started their journey. They each had what Jim Henson liked to call
“ridiculous optimism.” Without that, we wouldn’t have this amazing world we
live in.
—Kermit
Jenny Everywhere
and Laura Drake had arrived in Portland that morning. The first thing they did
was go for a walk and have breakfast. At noon, they would see their new friends
Charlene and Kim, whom they had met in Washington (1); they decided to leave with
some time to continue exploring and familiarize themselves with the city. They
rented a car to make things easier; they were headed to the meeting place along
an avenue, and while waiting at a traffic light, they noticed, half a block down
a side street, a handful of people gathered along the outside of a building.
Among them, one person in a yellow chicken costume stood out.
“Look, a
chicken,” Laura said.
“A chicken and a
dozen people,” Jenny replied without much interest, busy with a bag of nachos.
She preferred to let Laura drive whenever she could, although of course, she
had to be supportive; sometimes. Laura couldn't take her eyes off those people,
and suddenly she swerved the wheel and swerved down that street, then parked
about fifty meters from the people who had caught her attention. “What's going
on?”
“"Most of
them are reporters, I'm sure,” Laura pointed ahead. A couple of houses down and
a block's width away, those men and women were staring at the building, several
of them holding not only cell phones, but professional cameras. A few were
carrying slogans, but it was a very sparsely attended protest demonstration.
“A chicken
reporter.” Jenny took a sip of her Dr. Pepper, still uninterested. Then she
looked up. There were three... no, four people on the roof of the building,
looking down. In the center, as if she were the most important, a blonde woman
wearing a black short-sleeved blouse and sunglasses. “She must be some kind of
artist,” she suggested.
“Have you seen
what that building is? The ICE(2) headquarters”.
This finally got
Jenny a little curious. She squinted and lowered the aviation goggles she
always wore to lessen the sunlight and better see the figures on the rooftop. Two
of them were wearing military uniforms; a man was taking photographs of people
on the street. The woman looked down arrogantly, as if she were posing.
“Wait... I think
that's Christen Nome,” Laura said.
The United
States Secretary of Homeland Security stood on the roof of the ICE building,
defiantly staring down the reporters on the sidewalk. That explained it; the
woman dubbed “Cosplay Christen” in the media for her recurring commercials
where she dressed as a factory worker, a police officer, an ICE agent, and
other things to dramatize her government propaganda must have been trying to
look good for the photographs the journalists would take.
“The aide who
turned US national security into a gang of drunkards.” Jenny nudged Laura. “Let's
go, I don't want to be in the photos.”
“How about I take
one of you with the chicken?” Laura suggested. “He's eating a hot dog; if you
stand next to him with the nachos, you'll definitely go viral.”
Jenny gave Laura
a sideways glance and popped another nacho to keep from smiling at her lousy
joke. Laura made a U-turn and headed back toward the avenue.
***
They met with
Charlene Chan and Kim Garrett at a rooftop restaurant in downtown Portland.
They had met a few days earlier at a street concert, and Jenny and Laura had agreed
to continue supporting their new friends in their plans to help a Russian
friend Charlie and Kim had met in Washington (3). Jenny had insisted on an
afternoon of socializing without discussing more complicated and risky matters,
neither Charlie's investigations as a self-taught detective nor the problematic
Russian politics in which they had suddenly become involved. Furthermore, she
had noticed Charlie gazing at Laura with suspicion as he began to notice her
rather drastic ideas and her technological expertise, which even made up for
the lack of resources and sponsorship. When the hacking was a mere side issue
for her, it was beginning to become clear that perhaps she wasn't just talking
the talk when suggesting things that should be done to resolve the surrounding
crisis. Although Jenny hoped to continue to moderate Laura's impulses somewhat,
she didn't want her friends in Honolulu to believe that Laura was a potential
danger. Even though she just might be!
Jenny told them
what they had seen that morning at the ICE facilities; Kim and Charlie laughed
at the description of the chicken and the reporters.
“I'd already
seen the news,” Kim said, “and I think it's what you were thinking.” She looked
at her phone for a moment and showed them the video, a worm's-eye view of
Christen Nome peeking out dramatically. A caption overlaid the video read:
“Christen Nome exposes herself to AntiFa protesters on the chaotic streets of
Portland without protective gear.” Jenny burst out laughing, while Laura shook
her head, looking weary.
“Someone should
put her out of her misery,” Laura said. Jenny tried not to react; comments like
that were precisely what could ruin her intention to break down the barriers
between Laura and their new friends. Fortunately, she had tapped into a
sentiment so widespread it didn’t surprise anyone.
“It’s the worst
thing that could happen right now,” Charlie said. “Just look at what they’ve
done since Chuck Shatner’s murder; any dead person is a martyr, and a
justification for insisting they have the right to go to any lengths to combat
the imagined threat of ‘AntiFa terrorists.’ It would be a massacre.”
“Worst thing is,
it could happen. I’m already
convincing myself that the Shatner incident was a setup, but even if it wasn’t,
they’ve milked it for all it’s worth. And even though there’s no AntiFa organization,
there are many violent people among antifascists, not just among their
opponents; any day now, one or two could commit something atrocious and give
the government the excuse it's looking for.
“It's clear that
Nome came to Portland to gather evidence of the supposed disaster we're
experiencing here. Fox News keeps reporting that there's a daily war with AntiFa,
that businesses are no longer open because people are in too much danger, that
smoke bombs and tear gas are thrown in the streets all the time... because the
president said so.”
Jenny looked
around: an elderly woman was walking her Pekingese dog, some children were
running toward the park with a ball, a few teenagers were laughing as they got
out of a family SUV. Not a single broken window, not a single violent act.
“If I'm not
mistaken, this street is full of AntiFa,” she said, shrugging. “That's a real
threat to Drumpf; he needs angry, fearful people to thrive.”
“Look,” Laura
said, “there are a couple of soldiers from the National Guard... they look
bored to death.”
“The city is
showing peaceful resistance quite successfully,” Kim said. “Plus, they shut the
doors of the military and ICE agents out of restaurants and hotels, deny them
bathrooms. The bad thing is that many of those soldiers don't even want to be
here; they were forced to come and face imaginary threats; they're not to blame
for what's happening. Some do get relentless, of course, but they're few.”
“ICE is a
different story,” Charlie observed. “Mr. Dixon, who told us to come to Portland
to find his son, had already warned us about this: they're violent and racist
people, many of them are members of the KKK, the Proud Boys, and the like. They
signed up for ICE so they'd have a legal justification for abusing and antagonizing
minorities.”
“There goes a
crocodile with a microphone,” Jenny pointed out. “What's up with the mascots?”
“It's kind of a
Portland thing. Mascots and eccentric characters. Haven't you seen them in the
plaza?” Bagpiper on a unicycle is my favorite.
“The protests
are getting good. Last night there were two mascots at one of them,” Kim said,
and started looking them up on Instagram. “Oh wow! This is better!”
She showed them
a video that was being streamed live. Several mascots were dancing in front of
the ICE agents: a dinosaur, a raccoon, even a unicorn with its enormous head
hanging back. Further on, Two mimes were also dancing. The music was Mexican.
They laughed
heartily at this; even Laura relaxed, and finally said. “Maybe they've finally
found a way to truly carry out peaceful resistance.”
“They've been
demonstrating for nine months, going from weekly to daily all over the country,”
Charlie said. “Isn't that peaceful resistance?
“The government
ignores them, that's all,” Laura replied. “They let them do it because they see
it as a way to vent their discontent and not get in their way. But this,” she
pointed to the video, “they won't tolerate it; we've already seen that the MAGA
people, starting with their leaders, are completely closed-minded, they have no
sense of humor!”
“Almost everyone
on the far right has always been like that,” Charlie said. “I've noticed this
for a long time. They don't even understand simple sarcasm; if something isn't
in quotation marks, they take it literally.”
“Shall we go
there again?” Jenny suggested, grinning. “I want to see that mascot
demonstration!”
“The history
books will remember the furry uprising of 2025,” Charlie said, and the four
girls laughed.
***
The frog danced
to the rhythm of El Tri's “El Muchacho Chicho.” It was a huge green mascot with
a circular opening in its jaw covered with mesh so that the wearer's face was
not visible. On this occasion, Bancroft Street, a small street that ended at
that corner with Macadam Avenue, was packed with people. ICE agents, their
faces hidden behind bandanas, ski masks, and face masks, kept the crowd at bay,
or pretended to, as people didn't try to get closer, although they didn't give
way either. Everyone danced and occasionally sang along. In some places, the
ICE building was protected by a barrier of particle boards. Jenny joined in
without a second thought. Charlie and Kim looked at each other, smiled, and did
the same. Laura sighed with exaggerated resignation and shook her head, but she
was smiling. Jenny approached the frog and danced a complete circle around it;
the frog twirled around in time with her. Then Jenny looked at Laura and, still
moving her hips, invited her to join her with a flirtatious gesture of her
index finger. Laura shook her head, but Jenny persisted in drawing her in, and
extended both hands toward her. She gave in, and took her hands as the song
ended and was replaced by another oldie: “Aserejé” by Ketchup. Jenny screamed,
and along with the frog, Laura, and about thirty other people, they began to follow
the choreography of the song. Charlie broke away from the dance to start
recording a video. A hand shoved her shoulder, and she turned around: it was
one of the ICE agents; she had stepped back too far and had invaded the
perimeter of the detention center. At least the man hadn't pushed her
violently; she mouthed the words “my bad” and took a few steps forward. “This
is my kind of rebellion!” Jenny exclaimed. It was already getting dark, but the
streetlights were sufficient, and the party wouldn't stop anytime soon. Laura
waved something at her, suddenly serious. Officers were coming through the
building's vehicle entrance with a fire hose from an open glass door in the
building on the right, beyond the gate. That didn't look good at all. Amid her
misgivings, Laura was surprised by the ridiculous length of that hose; they
must have prepared it for that night, she decided.
Beyond the gate
stood an unmistakable figure: Christen Nome.
The officers
approached the perimeter marked by their colleagues to limit the proximity of
the dancers, and two other men came to help them hold the hose further back.
The people dancing closest to them, seeing them, began to shout at them in
Spanish and English when they saw what they were doing. There at the fence,
Nome raised his arm and brought it down with purpose, signaling someone inside
the building to turn on the water flow.
There was a
burst of water, but it came from behind the officers holding the hose. Those
farther back screamed: the hose had been completely cut, and the high-intensity
stream had hit the officers from behind. Only a few of the protesters were
drenched, with water widely dispersed and no longer at its original intensity.
They laughed at the soaked officers and continued celebrating, unconcerned about
the soaking. The nearest ICE men rose from a puddle; one of them still holding
the end of the hose. Many people began filming them as they laughed at them.
Along the wall, Jenny ran full speed toward the corner, passing behind some
officers, while others were already chasing her. Laura, Charlie, and Kim ran
parallel through the crowd to catch up with her. A couple of officers noticed
and tried to intercept them, but the crowd deliberately blocked their path with
their dancing. The chicken and a unicorn held hands and blocked their way,
while the four girls walked away without looking back, and ran until they were
sure they were no longer following. They stopped, giggling breathlessly, and
stood there until they had recovered a little from their run; then they resumed
walking at a normal pace.
“How did you get
behind them without being seen?” Charlie asked. “I didn't see either!”
“They were busy
with the hose, and I shifted... I went behind the plants.”
Laura rolled her
eyes; Jenny was never going to learn discretion. If they were going to continue
in the company of these girls, maybe it would be better to give them their full
trust as soon as possible. It was better that Jenny could speak, and act,
without hindrance... and so could she.
“Did you see
Christen?” Charlie said. “I'm sure the hose was her idea.”
“She’s eager to
provoke people, to create a riot,” Kim observed, “to create evidence of
AntiFa.”
“But no one
takes the bait, thankfully.” Charlie rubbed his face with both hands to wipe
away the sweat.
“So far,” Laura
replied. “If in any of these attempts they run into somebody short-tempered,
who knows what will happen”.
“I think it's
more likely they'll plant disguised agitators among the protesters,” Charlie
observed.
“It's likely...”
Jenny looked thoughtful. “If someone could get through to the ringleaders, it
would be much better; after all, dealing with ICE thugs is useless.”
“Anything helps,”
Charlie corrected, “it's just that no single thing is determining. But the more
stuff like today happens, the more it will become evident to everyone that the
resistance, the AntiFa, are not violent people.”
“But they're
speeding things up,” Laura expressed her true concern. “They're looking to ground
their power base before the midterm elections, so they don't lose an inch; and
certainly, to ensure that they will appoint the next president themselves
without anyone being able to prevent it. This form of resistance is good... but
there's very little time. More needs to be done.”
“That's why they're
reinforcing the religious angle,” Charlie said. “Their Christianity is
corrupted, apocalyptic. Now they want to impose it in schools; Shatner is
presented as a religious martyr. If they were Catholics, they'd surely want to
canonize him.
“Did you hear someone
jokingly post that a curse had been placed on him? Not to kill him; it was
meant to be a humorous tidbit, saying they hoped to cause him zits and that his
microphones malfunctioned... but since his murder happened two days later, many
took it seriously. They even say his wife was very scared about it before
anything happened to him. Nothing to reinforce fanaticism like a literal witch
hunt.”
The four of them
fell silent for a moment.
“Listen,” Laura
said suddenly, “I just had an idea. To start attacking the root of the problem,”
she looked at Jenny meaningfully. “But first, we need to talk about some
things.”
Jenny looked at
her, her eyes widening.
“Seiously?”
Charlie and Kim looked at them both, intrigued. “Well... better than it
happening the hard way.”
Charlie looked
at them suspiciously and stopped walking.
“Let's see now.
Let's get this straight. Do you belong to some subversive network? Are you
anarchists, or something? For days now, your ambiguities have reminded me of
the Oktyabr Samizdat (4) girls, and we already know what the deal is with them.”
Jenny and Laura
looked at each other in bewilderment and burst out laughing, which only added
to the other girls' confusion.
“Not at all,”
said Jenny. “No, no... It's just, well... let's just go to the hotel and we’ll talk
there.”
Laura suspected
they wouldn't get much sleep tonight.
***
The room was
dark; Christen Nome's eyes opened and she tried to discern the unfamiliar
shapes of the furniture. It took her a few moments to remember that she was in
a bedroom on the fourth floor of the River's Rim Hotel, on Hamilton Street, a
couple of blocks from the ICE building. Commander Fallon had offered to create
a makeshift bedroom in the offices, perhaps a temporary holding room, but she
wasn't going to let them give her something so uncomfortable and tasteless.
Thinking about
it, she remembered that frustrating day, the quiet streets, the pathetic crowd
of Latino and Black dancers, with a few white Americans mixed in. The failure
of those incompetent officers who had allowed the AntiFa's only actual act of sabotage,
cutting the water line, to succeed; and who had even let the girl who did it
escape! The fury produced by these memories cleared Christen's mind.
What had woken
her up? She didn't know, but it had been sudden. She sat up: she was completely
uncovered. The light from a street lamp streaming through the window allowed
her to make out the blankets piled on the floor. She reached for the lamp on
the nightstand… and remembered there wasn't a lamp on the table. There was a
light switch somewhere on the wall, but she couldn't remember where. She cursed
and swung her legs off the edge of the bed. She checked the time on her cell
phone, which she'd left on the corner of the mattress: 3:36. She noticed the
battery was low.
She stood up;
she was wearing a MAGA T-shirt and her panties. She walked barefoot to the
bathroom door; opened it, found the light switch, and flipped it: nothing. She
tried a couple more times, but the light didn't come on.
Just what was
left.
Oregon was a
miserable place; she'd make sure to make herself heard at her meeting with the
mayor the next day. After peeing, she went out and went to get her phone to
charge it; then she realized she caouldn’t. She tested the bedroom light, and
no, there was no power. This was unacceptable!
She grabbed the
hotel's internal phone: there was no signal. Of course. She would send someone
right now to demand that management resolve this as soon as possible. There was
light outside, so it must be a problem with the building.
She opened the
door; it ended at one end of the hallway, and four doors down, the hallway met
the middle of another; the door to another room, indistinguishable in the
darkness, was there. She began to suspect that the Portland government had
given them a dilapidated building as a way to harass ICE.
As she recalled,
only two guests had stayed on this floor, relocated for safety reasons. Two ICE
agents were in one of the adjacent rooms, in charge of their security, but she
had insisted that they not be in an adjacent room; she sometimes shouted while
talking on the phone, and she didn’t want to be overheard. She would send one
of them with the errand. But which room were the agents in? She thought about
knocking loudly; but it was ridiculous to do that, like a Mexican housewife. He
would go to the appropriate room. She considered and ruled out putting on
pants; she didn't have the patience for anything else, nor was she going to
dress for their benefit. The agents had better watch where they looked!
She sighed and
began to walk. In the hallway, out of reach of the windows, it was pitch black,
so she ran his fingertips along the wall. She counted each of the doors whose
cold wood she felt along the way: five. They would be in one of the farthest
ones, if she remembered correctly. She knocked on the door, which she barely
perceived as a black blur, and there was no response; she knocked again,
louder.
Beside her, the
door at the end of the hallway, opposite hers at the far end, clicked. So there
they were. The lock had opened, but the door remained closed.
“It's me,” She
said. “Open up.”
There was no
answer. What were they waiting for? She took a couple of steps to the door and
pushed it open with her hand. Inside, there was a little light, thanks to the
window, but not as much as in her room since it didn't face the street.
And the
officers? In the dim light, she couldn't see anyone standing there. She blinked
repeatedly to discern something else: on one side, a double bed began. Two
figures were lying on it.
She approached
the bed: they were the two officers, fully dressed in their uniforms, as she
could see in the glare from the window on the other side of the bed; but
motionless, not even their breathing was noticeable. They seemed lifeless; Christen
shook her head to clear away morbid fantasies. These incompetents were both
asleep when they should have been in charge of her personal security!
“Get up!” she
snapped.
And something
rose from the other side of the bed.
She blinked,
certain the bulky shadow was an optical illusion; but the bulging shape didn't
disappear: it straightened up to occupy the center space of the externally lit
curtain. A rounded shadow, seven feet or more. Christen let out a high-pitched
whimper and stepped back; she stepped on the rug beside the bed, stumbled, and
fell backward. Her shoulder thumped painfully against the chair in each room,
which toppled over with a clatter, and she was sitting on the floor. She didn't
stop to look at what was happening; she panicked. She turned and struggled to
sit up, her hand hitting the fallen chair and catching herself. She ran to the
door, and there she looked back: something massive crouching against the light
from the window, a hunched shape that made her think of a bear. It didn't have
a human head; it was something too wide, oddly shaped. What was she seeing? She
started walking down the hall to put some distance between herself; she
couldn't see anything and didn't want to fall again, so she was going too
slowly. She opened her mouth to scream and summon help, but stopped in time as
she combined the various elements in her terrified mind: no electricity, an
intruder, total silence. Perhaps the
building has been taken over and that's an assassin who eliminated the agents,
she thought; if so, if I call for help,
they'll come for me.
She started to
run, and as she had feared, she slipped and fell flat on her face; her left
knee hit the carpeted floor, and the back of her right hand hit the wall
painfully. She got up again: ahead, the open bedroom door seemed brightly lit
by contrast. She ran again; the floorboards creaked under the carpet with each
step of her bare feet. She considered closing the door when she arrived, but if
a terrorist group had indeed occupied the building, the intruder might just as
well shoot her through the door as she did so. So far, she hadn't taken a
bullet; Maybe the darkness was working in his favor, and the intruder couldn't
get a good aim. But now she was standing against the illuminated doorframe. She
opted to go straight to the bed to grab his cell phone and jump to the side, to
the part of the bedroom that wasn't visible from the hallway. She pressed her
back against the wall, a couple of feet from the open door, and unlocked his
phone. She was already wondering who to call: Commander Fallon, in charge of
the ICE facility. She'd send help, and they were very close.
A message
appeared on the screen in small white letters; she didn't bother to read it.
The phone had no signal.
“Oh my God,” she
hissed. They must have a signal jammer. They were definitely terrorists. Her
eyes felt wet; she rubbed them as she turned back to the bedroom door. After
all, not closing it had been a mistake. The intruder hadn't peeked out yet;
what if he came shooting? There were no gunshots in the building; it was a silent
raid. Maybe they were merely AntiFa hippies, like most of them despite the
media campaign they were mounting to portray them as a terrorist organization,
and not some dangerous group. If so, she wouldn't be in any danger. But then
how could they have gotten in, cut the power, blocked communications? There
must be other guards in the hotel lobby. Maybe, it occurred to her, they hadn't
shot her because they knew how valuable she would be as a hostage; she had to
count on that. If she managed to close the door, block it with the bed,
barricade herself in the room, and call for help through the window... Yes!
But she needed
to see who was out there. She frantically searched for the flashlight function
on her cell phone; she'd never used it before. It felt like it took her whole
minutes to find it... Finally! An intense beam of light appeared, illuminating
the floor, and leaving retinal impressions in her eyes that she blinked several
times to try to clear. She pressed the flashlight against her thigh and moved
toward the door, keeping close to the wall.
Her hand touched
the doorframe. She caught her breath and shone the flashlight down the hallway,
barely peeking out. The beam revealed the wall, the doors, the floor… she
scanned the hallway to the end… and saw a bulky, green boot. She focused the
light on the figure standing directly in front of the bedroom door at the
opposite end, a green and yellow figure, with bright colors and rounded shapes.
Christen had a moment of total confusion, trying to process what she was
seeing. A frog. It was that stupid frog mascot she had seen dancing outside the
ICE facilities until late in the night, with a huge, inflated head, a
crescent-shaped mouth, and large, round yellow eyes. It just stood there,
motionless, letting the light shine on it.
Amidst the fear,
she experienced some relief; now it really was the hippies. She had
overestimated AntiFa; the civilian opposition was nothing more than a bunch of
immature Latinos who didn't even take politics seriously and couldn't possibly
mount an effective resistance; after all, she herself had helped manufacture
their image as an armed terrorist organization to justify deploying troops in
Democratic cities. She felt furious with herself. or having believed, even for
a moment, her own inventions. She repeated the same things so often to the
media, and to the president, that she was almost convinced herself. A guy in a
costume wasn't going to intimidate her. She went out to stand in the middle of
the doorway, still shining her light on the frog.
“Okay, enough,”
she said. “You've made your joke. Take that off right now.”
The frog
remained silent, unmoving. It might as well have been a mannequin inside; but
it had come out of the bathroom; that was a person in there.
“Take off the
costume and tell me your name, and things will be better for you,” she
insisted. There was no response. From feeling emboldened, she went on to
experience new doubts and fears. The frog had no visible weapon, but he might
have a pistol hidden inside the arm of the costume. And whoever it was, he
didn't come alone; how had they turned off the power? And the cell phone; that
didn't make him a hippie. Maybe this wasn't so simple. “Don't you want to talk?
It's the best thing for you,” she boasted. She had an idea: she hid her free
hand behind her back, hoping the intruder hadn't seen her properly, to pretend
she'd grabbed a gun. “I'm a good shot. Or do you think I won't shoot you? A
dog, a horse; a frog. A Latino. I don't care if I put any beast to sleep that
deserves it. How much do you care about staying alive?”
The frog gave no
response, no sign of recognition to Christen's words. She passed the beam of
light from bottom to top over the frog, alert to any movement. Suddenly she
felt that her threatening attitude was too weak to intimidate the intruder:
standing there, exposed, in only panties and a T-shirt. Like the victim in a
slasher movie. Pretending to have a concealed weapon, the frog had had plenty
of opportunity to see that there was nothing in her hand. But what else could she
do?
“I'm going to
count to five,” she said. She meant for that to be a threat, but her voice
trembled a little. Her eyes felt wet again, and she hated herself. She looked
into the frog's eyes; then she remembered that the opaque circle in the jaw of
the round, upturned head was where the true face of the person inside would be.
But she couldn't see anything through the mesh covering it. “One.” Why hadn't she
put on pants? She decided that was what made her feel so bad, so scared. How
could she assert herself, in these conditions?
And why was
there no sign of life anywhere in the building after the noise she'd made?
“Two!” The
stairwell was halfway down the hall, on the opposite side of the doors to the
other rooms. If she could get there… The frog wasn't reacting; maybe she could
move forward, pretend that getting closer was part of her threat with the
count, and when she reached the stairwell, go down, or up… But what was
happening on the other floors? She had no idea. She scanned the contents of the
bedroom; there was nothing she could use to defend herself. She decided to take
the risk. She took a step forward and said, “Three!”
Where would she
go? Down below, on the next level, a guard should be at the foot of the stairs
to prevent anyone from going up; a guard who would have had to be overcome for
the frog to get here, and in any case, he would have heard her voice and come.
Upstairs, there would be other bedrooms—if they knew she was here, it was
unlikely they would have occupied them all. Upstairs, that would be it.
“Three.” She
took a few steps forward, slowly; she wanted to look as if she were preparing
to attack, but she felt that even her legs were shaking. The frog still didn't
move; watching her. Three more steps and she would reach the stairs, but the
nearest one was descending; it was a couple of meters further to the one she
was aiming for, which would take her upstairs. What if she banged on one of the
doors and made a noise? She might attract help.
What if all the
officers had been subdued?
Maybe they had
indeed taken over the building and were doing this to film her with
night-vision cameras and ridicule her. Again, she felt anger, but with it came
an almost overwhelming urge to retreat, to flee, to lock herself in the room
and sit on the floor and cry. She felt a tear running down her cheek; she
didn't want to wipe it away, to make it obvious with her actions. Instead, she
said, “Five.” The frog's eyes, round and yellow, lit up with a dull light.
Christen let out a short scream and recoiled; again, she lost her balance and
fell to a sitting position. She crawled backward in panic, turned around, and
couldn't get to her feet, so she pushed herself up on her hands and knees until
she reached the bedroom. She continued until she reached the bed and there she
braced herself to sit up. She turned to close the door and stay there until
help arrived, but she froze. The frog filled the doorframe; its glowing yellow
eyes bulged through the doorway, already inside. Finally, it was coming for
her. She had nowhere else to go. She stared at the frog, praying it wouldn't
come any closer.
The frog
extended its right arm toward her, pointing at her with its rudimentary, green
toad paws, and again she let out a short scream. Was it accusing her,
threatening her? Did it have a gun as she'd suspected, and was now going to
shoot her?
It extended its
other arm, both pointing at her. She looked at the frog, fearing... she didn't
know what, but something terrible. Then the frog flexed its right arm and
touched its left. Then it bent the other one, crossing both arms. Christen
watched everything, bewildered.
Then the frog
raised its right arm, brought its hand... its paw... to the back of its
enormous neck. It raised its other arm and did the same. Then it lowered the
other and crossed it over its swollen abdomen.
Was it...
Christen blinked, perplexed. Was it dancing the Macarena?
Then the frog
took a step forward, toward her... and collapsed on top of Christen. She let
out a yelp and thrashed against the cold fabric that covered and entangled her.
She heard voices, and footsteps; She felt like the frog was devouring her whole
in the folds of the costume, and she screamed nonstop.
The heavy fabric
covering her was removed, and Christen's tear-filled eyes were dazzled by
several flashlights. She continued screaming; she was sure she was going to be
shot, or worse.
“Miss Nome...
Miss Nome!”
It was a man in
ICE uniform. Behind him, two more looked around with rifles at the ready. She
stopped screaming and allowed herself to be helped off the floor, trying to
understand what was happening. Several flashlights shone on the empty costume,
crumpled on the floor, while some men searched the bedroom.
“Where is he?” she managed to utter, pointing at the costume, neither hearing
nor understanding the questions the agent was asking her. “Where is he?”
Eventually, they
searched the building without finding the intruder. Christen later claimed that
in that case, one of ICE's own men had to have done it all. But there was no
evidence of this. The power lines had been cut in the basement; the night
guards in the opposite room had been drugged unconscious with a complimentary
drink that the manager claimed hadn't been provided by his staff; now their
cell phones had perfect reception. Upon arrival, Commander Fallon assured her
that the upper floor had also been cleared to give her privacy. Some agents
began to whisper that she might have tried to fake an attack to make them look
bad…
No one knew who
took the photos of Christen in her underwear and crying, which began to
circulate among ICE personnel, but when a couple of days later, several other
frogs joined the festive demonstrations in the streets with the FrogtiFa flag,
it was said that this initiative had been inspired by rumors from that night.
For whatever reason, the frog immediately became a symbol of peaceful resistance
in Portland. Meanwhile, Christen quietly consulted with some MAGA
fundamentalist members who claimed that AntiFa was also using black magic to
attack the government; after several sleepless nights, she was willing to
believe anything.
***
That night, as
Laura Drake had anticipated, the girls didn't sleep either. Rather than stay in
a hotel, they went to Biketown, a biker bar, where they were joined by the
Oktyabr Samizdat girls. They spent the night celebrating, drinking beer, and
playing "Macarena" over and over again on the stereo. Around 4 a.m.,
they all danced almost the entire song standing on the bar, while the bar crowd
applauded and whistled.
Laura had been
in charge of getting the photos of Christen to the ICE agents; photos Jenny had
taken when she was still in the costume. To do so, she created an OnlyFans
account under the name “Cosplay Christen,” which already had 65,000 followers,
and they still hadn't taken her down.
Jenny had had to
explain and demonstrate her “entry” and “exit” skills so Charlie and Kim would
believe her, and even get their heads around it, since it would have been
impossible to implement Laura's idea with them present without doing it first.
It was difficult the first time, Laura knew that well.
“Nome is going
to have a phobia of frogs her entire life,” Jenny said, “and at least here in
Portland they'll continue to use them every day!”
“If you’d told
us your plans,” Briana said, her Russian accent accented by intoxication, “we
would have introduced you all to the people we met over the last few days. If
the frog had such an effect on the Nome, you could introduce her to the
Sleestak next time!”
“There's always
another day,” Jenny replied.
Credits
“The Night of
the Frog” is a tribute to fans and collectors of classic comic book characters.
“The Night of
the Frog” Copyright © 2025 Luis G. Abbadie. Credit must always be given to the
author.
The Available Heroes is a series of stories that bring classic public domain characters, whether orphaned or open source, back to life, in order to deal with the challenges of today's world.
With thanks to
Scott S. for his valuable information about Portland (I'm omitting his last
name just to be sure not to inconvenience him with, shall we say, “the bad guys
in the story”).
The character
Jenny Everywhere is available for anyone to use, with one condition: this
paragraph must be included in any publication involving Jenny Everywhere, so
that others may use this property as they wish. All rights revert.
The character Laura Drake was created by Jeanne Morningstar and may be used by anyone without attribution. All rights reserved.
This is a work
of fiction, in which any resemblance to real-life characters and situations is
subject to the rules of parody, and is not intended in any way to constitute a
faithful representation of reality.
Notes
3) This happened in The Many Lives of Octobriana (currently in print).
4) A subversive musical group banned by Russian authorities, whom the four girls met in The Many Lives of Octobriana and The Week of the Long Knives (both currently in print); its members belong to the PPP, a communist-anarchist group of protest through artistic expression.
