All James could do is sit there,staring at his own unfortunate image with a goofy smile plastered on his wierd little face. James sat there all day, pondering his fate.
Day turned to night, which turned back into day again. For the second morning in a row, James was greeted by the same unmoveable silly image as the day before. And like yesterday, he was forced to sit and stare at himself all day, with a ton of thoughts flowing through his mind. Where is she? Has she forgotten him? Did she go on a trip? Meanwhile, the sun slowly rose, and slowly sank again.
Before James knew it, yet another, third morning comes round again. And still he's stuck staring at his distastefully tacky form. He began to wonder if this had always been him. But no. He was once human, and once had the freedom to move about freely. He was getting tired of having and feeling this mocking grin constantly on his face. Of the total silence, boredom, and lonliness. He wanted to at least watch TV . All he could do, is think to himself and make up his own stories. He would think of songs, but what use was that? He couldn't even so much as hum. He tried singinging at one point, but nothing came of that. His wierd froggy lips remained frozen in a wierd smile. And that crown! That stupid, foolish-looking golden crown on his green froggy head. It was utterly humiliating, to be stuck looking like this. He looked like a damn fool with a silly gold-colored little crown.
The days were very long. The shadows of the sun through the window shifting painfully slowly. No matter how much he tried moving and wanted to move, he could never so much as shudder even his smallest of digits.
Suddenly, towards the evening of the third day stuck like this, he heard the front doorknob jiggle! The very first sound he's heard in three days while he waited patiently (or very impatiently while being forced to be nothing but patient, since tacky ceramic frogs have nothing important to do). The noise startled him greatly. Of course, as always, his figure remained stubbornly in place. He was there so long, that the image of exactly what he looks like and what he now is was seared into his mind.
"Finally! She's home! Now hopefully, she hasn't forgotten me!"
Then he heard some voices. Unfamiliar voices.
"It's a damn shame she died in that manner," said a male voice.
"Yeah, she was foolish enough to think she could take on..." James missed the rest of that sentence, for one of the men dropped a bunch of stuff on the floor. James would never get to know the rest of the story fully. But "she died"!? Elspth? The one and only person in the entire world that knows....or rather knew...an what she did to him? She was dead!?
"Well, we have to pack all of her things and get this place ready for the next resident."
"Wait! Next resident? So she IS dead!?" James thought.
He saw a shadow of one of the men quickly pass by a corner of the mirror. But it was too quick for him to get any sort of look. Instinctively, he tried whipping his head around. But it remained in place! Even the gaze of his eyeballs remained completely in place. Forever frozen in one specific spot.
Apparently, those two men were busy packing things away. He could hear them pick stuff up, place them in boxes, and tape the boxes closed. He would hear one or the other keep coming and going, hauling boxes of stuff out of the house.
Meanwhile, James continued sitting there silently. Unnoticed. Even as he saw the two men heft a chair in front of him and carry the thing outside with all the other junk, he still remained silent and still. Still with his stupid mocking smile locked in place on his green ceramic face.
Then he heard yet another voice enter the house. A third one. A woman. She greeted the two men.
"All loaded up?"
"Yup," replied the man who sort of became the leader of their little two-man group.
"What about me,?" Thought James sadly, completely unable to draw any attention to his insignificant form.
One of the men did a look around, and finally noticed James.
"What about this frog prince statuette? It's kind of ugly. Tacky as hell," as he said.
"This thing wasn't a listed item."
He reached out and picked up James. From his perspective, the hand was HUGE, and he wanted to cower away. Suddenly, he felt a warm touch! A human hand came down and laid on top of his back momentarily. He felt the huge fingers close around his shrunken body, and grip him.
Without any effort at all, the man simply lifted James from his place. The whole time James thought of himself with some signifance. He even thought of himself as being his normal human size and weight. He certainly FELT heavy. Afterall, this ceramic prison became his entire world for three agonizing days and he couldn't budge even the tiniest bit. It was very disconcerting and shameful just how easily he was lifted one-handedly by a person when he couldn't even so much as lift a single arm....or....leg. He now felt smaller than ever with the realization of just how much his personal world has shrunk. Being lifted up that easily, made the rest of the world and his lack of being able to go to work, pay his bills, or even so much as turn on a television, has gone so far out of his reach. This was it. He was just this small little immobile statuette of a frog with a stupid crown on its head, and a stupid smile plastered on its stupid face.
He held James up for the woman to inspect him.
She reached out and grabbed James. She, too, had little trouble holding him in a single hand. She gazed upon James's silent form as he tried with all his might to just part his lips. But they remained forever shuttered. Only Elspeth knew what he is! Nobody else does! And she's dead now! And he can't communicate in any way whatsoever!
"Oh dear lord, no! I don't want that thing! I don't want it anywhere inside the house! The only place it would look good in, would be out in the little garden outside."
"Yes ma'am," the man said as he turned to walk away.
James tried yelling for help and to stop. But he remained completely silent, as he always shall.
As the man walked away, James got a good look at his previous spot for the past three days. On his shelf, was a thin coating of dust with a perfect shape of his ceramic frog's body's imprint as a cleaner spot. A little less that 5 measly inches im diameter. All the volume his tiny little body takes up I this world. The woman quickly wiped it up, with no indication that he once spent a three day stint on that shelf. And all his world was; just a shelf. Now he will apparently be relegated to a garden in the back of the house. And nobody would be the wiser once this man finds a spot to his liking. Which would be James's new home on a permanent basis.
The world continued to bounce, as the man walked closer to his destination. With growing alarm, James realized he had to do SOMETHING. But what, exactly? And how? The only part of him that wasn't inanimate was his brain! It wasn't exactly very useful for manipulating anything in the outside world. Not even his own now ceramic frog-shaped body. That's just it. This object was his prison! A permanent prison!
He heard the man say: "here we go! The perfect spot for this wierd little thing."
The ground got closer and closer as the man bent over to plant James into his spot. He was lamenting his fate, while thinking about being transformed into an inanimate object that is never able to express to any of the outside world that he is alive. Even squirrels and birds would be able to land and/or walk on him with impunity.
The man deposited James into his spotand turned him around to face outward. A small shrub to his left his new companion. He stood up and walked away. The very last human touch he would ever feel, and already completely forgotten about by the man who placed him there. James was shouting after him in his mind, but his mouth remained locked in place, forever smiling at the world despite his inner turmoil.
The man opened the back door, walked inside, closed it, and the world became silent with the sound of a couple of birds chirping somewhere above poor James's head. He didn't even have the pleasure to look up, nor to either side. He could only sit and stare at the back door and back side of the house, with a small piece of a branch from the bush blocking a sliver of his vision. Even the bush was able to at least wave about even slightly in the breeze, and the breeze could make the branches make some bit of soft noise. Even that small bit of pleasure is lost to James. A freaking BUSH is livelier to the world than him! He's just a garden ornament, and nothing more; with the image of himself in the mirror from his first three days as an object completely seared into his memory.
-----
Years and years would pass. The sun would make it's trip to the peak of the sky, and slowly descend. Day after excruciating day where a minute felt like hours. And an hour felt like a day. He would have insects crawling across his body, with excruciating ticklish sensation. Never able to reach a webbed frog finger up to flick the insect away and scratch himself. A big hairy spider made its way to one ofnhis eyes and made its home there for several months. Everyday, spinning it's web. Everyday, wandering to the exact spot on his eyeball. And the entire time, James's mind was a roiling mess, desparately wanting to shiver and knock the creepy thing off. But he remained still and unflinching. Still smiling despite himself.
Summer turned to fall, and fall into winter. To spring and back to summer again.
That spider either finally moved on, or else it died. Birds would build nests somewhere above him. They would lay their eggs and baby birds would be making their terrible high-pitched chirping for food. James never able to look at the birds. His vision forever frozen, constantly staring at the exact same spot. The back door that families would come in and out of. Nobody would ever acknowledge him. Not even so much as look in his direction. And even if they did, they would never suspect a human mind and soul was trapped within. He just sat there with a goofy smile on his face, wearing his goofy little crown. Staring at a closed door.
During the fall, leaves would bury him. In the winter, it was the snow. He was so small and so low to the ground, even a couple of inches would leave him buried. It was so perpetually COLD! One particularly frozen morning when the ground was free from leaves and snow and only frost covering the ground and James's horribly frozen body, he would see an old man; the current property owner he supposed; come outside for some fresh cold air with a warm sweater on and a cup of steamy hot drink in his hand. "Hot chocolate?" James would lament.
The man would take a couple of sips of whatever was in that mug, sigh with great satisfaction, then turn around and walk back outside. Leaving James to his own devices alone in an early wintery-dead garden. Staring at that door that constantly keeps him shut outside and the damnable frozen air.
That's his entire world. Staring at the back door ar the back of the house. A small branch taking up a sliver of his vision. Cold then heat. Light then dark. The chattering of birds and wind in the trees above periodically. And only occupying the same 5 inch diameter piece of earth while the rest of the world continues going about its business.
And there James sits to this day. And tommorrow. And the day after. The day after that. And far into the future. Never blinking. Never budging even the slightest. Completely silent, and with a stupid mocking smile plastered on his face with his own image still seared into his mind, and his mind thunderous. The world outside his mind, completely quiet.