The Bat-Thing by Frogg Corpse
Good morning and welcome to another edition of October Stories! Today, is a short story by Frogg Corpse.
The Bat-Thing
By Frogg Corpse
Wide-eyed into The Darkness,
Descending into the mouth of the monster.
Stalactites grow larger, from masseter to mandible.
Biting down to the Gaian floor.
With every step taken, light falls dimmer behind them.
Its stalagmite teeth trickles to ooze. Welcoming them.
The Flowstone walls met wetness at their feet.
Pale lights flicker down the throat of the beast.
Shadow, swallows them whole.
Lost in a Rotunda of silent Echoes.
The Chasms roar.
For the last time, their whispers were heard
Bouncing along the tunnel tubes,
With every inch dissipating.
Stopped by the point-blank black wall.
All enveloping in its veiling.
Slipping down deep in the couloir abyss.
Fallen sounds Inaudibly deafen... Abruptly deadened.
Resting eternally, in the belly of the grottos.
"The only way back was forward in Tartarus."
The Caverns were breathing. This animal was alive.
It swept their very breathes:
Falling.
Falling
Falling
Falling
Falling
Falling
Hover,
Falling
Falling
Falling
Falling
Glide,
Falling
Falling
Falling
Falling
Spin
Falling
Falling
Falling
Feather
Falling
Falling
Slide
Falling
Falling
SNAP!!!
Twitching as if a neck had broken, eyes leered from the upper pocket of a slate nihil chamber.
They could see him, but he could not, See THEM!
Even experts Turn mystics, Oh Deep in this shock.
In the last moments down here, One can only assume:
...THE BAT-THING...
The scent was new. The pit bottom was tainted with the familiar smell of metallic copper and iron.
A warm red liquid seeped across the vast moon-milk floors.
Crimson spatters sprayed christening the Anthodite frostwork gems kniving themselves awake.
Disturbed from a thousand-year slumber painted in small crimson splats, a circular warmth scabbed over with minerals passing through the air.
The Ores... The Stones... The Rocks. The mysteries of The Dark rode in on a soft current breeze.
Inhaling the still dampened mirth, united within the drips, spits, plops, and reverberations. From the sounds of sliding raindrops.
Plunging in the sheets, the shelves, and onto distant Rivers.
The Cavernous music chimes, forever still, it lingers.
Immortal it wails: doused in screams of blood.
Indeed, a neck had broken in the impending fall. Some would state that it was “A disaster from the start.” And the few who might grace these pages may contest that the accident was “a blessing”, due to the height of that unfortunate fall that the man had suffered when greeting the lunar slate that befell him.
Lamp oils burned in hand as the last of the group repelled in haste. A few stood in a static shell-shock holding flames against the chasm floor. A deep expressionless gaze washed over the group's faces while peering toward the body laden in spurts of convulsions. Next to a roaring torch: two gem researchers raced toward the last gasps while falling to their knees dropping sample packs of cargo clamored beside their freshly fallen comrade. Disbelief and confusion had set in, the hovering hands above him were disarrayed in apprehension holding back from moving the seizing explorer. With a few twitches of limbs, the group watched the last little kicks of his, dispense. The man’s life spark finally snuffed out, as their colleague, ran all around them.
The others had tuned out. One member paced franticly rounding up gear: lighter fluid, backup lights, climbing bags, research, medical kits, and assortments of necessary travel tools. Wanting to move towards a tunnel visible in the glinting of flames, he knew he couldn't do it alone or travel too far. He knew the group couldn't stop venturing amidst all of the personal emotions, in a creed of panic. The cartographers began mapping the rotunda in an unsettled state of mind attempting to neglect the thoughts of the recent tragedy. The others' thoughts were scrambled and scatterbrained. Their goals of trekking forward and making camp became a top priority. The team knew they were too far down for immediate outside help to reach them.
"He's dead there's nothing we can do. Just another sacrifice to the throat of the monster. We must press onward." The group lead coldly remarked at the kneeling gemologists.
"He's your friend too, you know!" A cartographer snapped back, irritated.
"He knew about the cave! He took the same risks, as we all did. He knew what he was getting into down here. We all signed up for it!" The group lead quipped.
"...For each to be the first, going together as one." Three members chanted an eerie motto in unison, cutting off the increasing spat.
Dark ones snicker about in their holes watching the group from afar. Lamp oils and lights show their eyes with reflective glimpses in the shadows blending into the gypsum and calcite. Creatures bobb back and forth hiding in and out of the rays of the expedition’s lanterns. Slithering into the despair of darkness through a blue-speckled couloir shaft. A glow shimmers off flowers of ore, creating a stream burst of prisms tracing the walls of this speleothemic sanctum.
-The team itself came from various locations across the world to take on this privately funded expedition. And should this documentation ever be recovered from my person on what occurred in this cavernous hole: I request that this dirge-filled account be archived without omissions as evidence and be made a warning on the exploration of further ancient site structures for future investigations. Let this voyage die not in vain.
The screeches and clicks predominantly swell louder and louder. Inching from a distance making close footwork on the new dwellers. I stop momentarily inking the words into this journal — fixated on the abyssal fall of [redacted] a seismologist from Pasadena. The sound etched in my ear as I anxiously look at the crew:
"Do you hear THAT?" I question the group. Making eye contact with the cartographer.
" Wha… What the hell's that clicking?" The archaeologist turns her head from discerning the area.
"That's the bats comin’ up out of the tunnels." The map maker responds while jotting lines and distance notes marking down the chamber.
"No-na-na-na-na-not the clicking…" I respond with a serious amount of impending dread…
"Must be dinner time…" Our team’s diver nonchalantly responds while adjusting the straps to his tanks and heading toward the tunnel a few yards away.
"Th-Th-Th-Th-The CHATTERING!!!” Our field medic cries out, just as perturbed as I.
The group's lanterns pierce through the croaking sounds in the dark revealing many reflective eyes in a void-filled mist. The group rallied their survival gear in a maddening panic with haste. The fresh blood in the air brought in some unfamiliar party guests:
"Quick Light some torches!" Our lead guide calls out.
Shadowfiends lure live bait offshore from the cave's murky water.
Stalking us with sound. The dark ones' pale webbed hands grip flowstone pillars.
It's been too long since flesh has touched their fangs. They’ve ventured for miles from their resting nest grottos. They will not be denied such pleasures while moving after the meat-bags that race around.
A cauldron of bats swarm the moon-milk chamber. The colony's sonar pulses off of Aragonite mounds, pinging in one massive bleak cloud. The bats jet beyond white tunnel tubes, attempting to escape from the mouth of an even bigger monster behind them. The winged onyx cloud thwarted the dark ones from their new meal, pushing them back into the fumarole muck.
The Fiends are ripping bats between their teeth. Gnawing on droppings while clawing for more. A torch lays untouched, still burning on slate shining on dripping pale bodies clawing and grasping at the chasm-smashed corpse of [redacted]. Dragging him away with a smear. Submerging into the nearby mud pits, the carcass is tugged below with a splash. Dark Ones cling to the walls, I cannot advert my eyes from these listless gargoyles peeking from oozing ceiling cavities.
“The Cavernous music chimes, haunting still lingers.”
The fiends mount for a second wave. A croaking chatter intensifies, calling in reinforcements.
Webbed claws impale bat mammals craving for the human flesh running on the other side of the chamber. Swarming from ceiling nooks, they spread as newborn hatchlings. Slashing through the living bat cloud mincing against their pale flesh. They attempt to latch on to the taste of a bigger meal. The mappers scampered — fleeing along pearlescent tunnels choked out by skeletal bones from numerous species of unidentified peculiarities. These cavernous dwellers vomited the carbon husks outright near the bubbling mud vats they bobbled from. Subterranean paths etched in rimstone dams and felspar chase our footfall: we are being hunted!
A shrill shriek quakes, battering behind them down the passages.
Its roar is different from anything known by mortal ear. The sonar bursts into ethereal ear-curdling madness. If only our comrade hadn't fallen stopped by that primal hole, maybe, our silence would have let us pass. Hekate's room, now muck-covered in Hades. Glowing from an oculus seven spiked points of a diadem are crowned upon a thirty-foot Hellenistic statue erected at a crossroad. The racing team scatters from a malevolent abomination tunneling. Only thirteen are left to dissect this cavern cravenly:
2 gemologists, 2 archaeologists, 2 cartographers,
2 divers, 2 cavers, 2 medics,
Then lastly one historical writer. Running through gypsum. [Names Omitted]
Shrieks of Echolocation ring monstrous waves. A colossal hand bends its ivory spear-tipped fingers slowly gripping the side walls of the tunnel. Its pale body and face weave in a black cloud of bats. Its wrath and might quake with mystery. Its wings draped from its arms, while the shouting of ten-thousand pitches came crawling from a flapping storm as it crawled with the running and hopping of dark ones sloshing with mud. My eyes peered along such a sight as my lantern flickered with my journal in hand. My feet clamber, but swiftly I move while turning my head from the statue at the crossroad.
Picking a passage from the rotunda of splitting tunnels, a few of us sprint down a corridor from the rumbling of what I can only describe to be: "A Bat-Thing". A flash of thought came reminiscent of a sculpture by Guillaume Geefs. Yes! It seemed as if the team ran Le génie du mal was stalking us! The fallen angel wasn't sitting in St. Paul's Cathedral, it was sitting here. It was alive! It was hungry. It was behind me. It wasn't in London. . . It was pissed!
We careened through the tubes of dolomitic rock until the screams behind us dissipated. Catching our breath in a dim chamber, which seemed temporarily safe for the time being from pitch and roar. We check our persons, seeing if life and limb lay intact on those of us who remain whole and distanced from the incursion of the Shadowfiends, but unwelcomed with the news in haste that our disregarded in our surroundings lead to five of our team only collecting themselves in this chamber. Panicked, the remainder of the eight's descent leads them deeper into the unknown, now missing in the tunnels of Hekate's left hand beyond its crossroad. A route chosen in the fleeting moments diverging its road opposite from our dashing havoc.
One archaeologist, one cartographer, one diver, one caver, and I the writer. Attempt to escape this hellish labyrinth without a medic. May Hekate's right hand, lead us to salvation.
A disclosure document for the expedition via a pre-packet was distributed to each of us before our departure. A copy had fallen out of one of our packs as we gathered our breaths in the brooding chase. One of the members tucked it back in its place after quickly glancing over it:
“In the advent of a split group, death, or disbanded team respected groups within each party must display, impose, and continue their duties on the research site respectively in their field of study. Any research documentation written, gathered, collected, or taken must be compiled during the relocation of the party. In the situation of an on-site field extraction, all information must be left with the last person(s) remaining during evac and recovery. This commissioned expedition is of the utmost importance as you've learned in orientation, as this team is to be the First, going together as One.”
– The Ravenwood Institute Nightfalls, Maine.
- This disclosure stirs reluctant hope for the missing eight. I ponder on their safety and for their success in escaping the shrieking clutches of that Bat-Thing. I regret ever taking on this expedition with the team. What the hell is going on down here?
The group marched through the silted chamber gours. Eroding pools of puddles collect around our toes. The archaeologist has taken samples of felspar, quartz, jadeite, and water pool samples along with helictite, anthodites, and other frostworks amongst the small traversed chambers that shelved themselves as bookcase rows. These walls all around glow yellow from activated the glowsticks popped, and the last remainder of the torches the team has, is running empty. I assisted in cracking glowsticks with the fellow team caver before the diver and cartographer scouted ahead switching over to headlamps and discovering another rotunda at the end of a winding slick tunnel.
Around the shelf bed, a hole eroded in the middle of a dry cracked floor, while this particular chamber also sported a declining tunnel leading below. Inside the hole itself rushed deep greyish waters with flowing rolls of white rapids reflecting from the sticks and headlamps. At this point, I remain reluctant and silent jotting in my journal while the cartographer maps the area. I gazed with a tingled jolt electrifying my spine when watching the diver pointing in the tube's direction. Requesting the remaining four group members press on foot with our venture to the Nesting Grottos.
As we were instructed to take the tunnel pass, the diver wanted to solo scout the rushing hole passage in the floor. The diver hypothesized that "It was a quick route only he could go." After a twenty-minute argument on separating from the group in an area we had each never ventured, the gentleman threw in his rebreather mouthpiece, flipped off the archeologist, and then dove into the snaking white rapids. Only Darkness and Pontus dwell in this bleak siphon. I climbed to my feet dusting off my jeans while grabbing my dying lantern and journal.
"He left us....!!" "He left us...." "There is nothing we can do, he was the only one with diving gear, we can't go after him! We can't go after him at all down there!" The stuttering and confusion set in with the cartographer shouting.
“He just plunged himself down the hole… If we wait here hypothermia could set in, we have to keep moving or we’ll die, let’s go.” The caver directed heading toward the passages.
One caver, One archeologist, One terrified cartographer, and one writer.
Nine are now missing. Four are left plagued, pressing on tunnel-ducking under milk ribboned drapery crawling under moist minerals shrewing through the belly of the beast in a direction to The Nesting Grottos.
“The Cavernous music chimes, It forever still lingers.”
Cascade falls chirp in the distance variously echoing their trickling waters ascending by volume. Mud trails in between fingertips edging past speleogen walls. Cream colors ebb around the hand-fanning creases of muck. Snapped glowsticks light the way, their glow increasing the dance of blue, white, and green counter reflections rocking the eyes on the walls toward another perilous grip.
Inching along wet silt tucking ourselves and crawling, hunkered, folded, and bent: one lonely cry of pain stretches outward piercing all of our ears. In the miles of darkness, dripping sounds of rushing water roll through the screams of premature ending, flowing uninterrupted. One would surmise on the flashing mental images that it was The Bat-Thing finding our diver with its claws serrating another corpse for the bone pile. Shredded into the lidless eye of void on a suspension bridge of some cloistered shelf atrium. We all stop, frozen still to the grimacing sound. The group's soot bellows out from its last torch. Rolling against ribbon-striped minerals undulating in an arch room of boulders shining with two lit lonely fires. The scream was one none could ignore meters and miles away it howled with ache. Was it the diver finding an end from the water's underbelly? Was it one of the other eight members maybe mid-stopped in a yet-to-be-charted passage heading back to the grottos? Any hypothesis would suffice in opposition to screams made by the self or those cruel tricks played by the dark in this merciless unforgiving cave.
Plunging out of the mud slick, a purging cascade of rapids flowed in tune with its surroundings. Embracing the light of glowing crystals on the lake floor. White light stratified the mirth-coated ores. This area glistened with moss-soaked stones. the cliff edges amongst hundreds of flowing waters, flushed from mouths of miniature open abysses. This was a gate to a world of untrodden wonder. This was a beautiful hell where running waters converged. Plants, trees, and shrubs nested in these resting grounds. The Lake crystals rippled below deep white and blue crevasses. Unknown holes to my eyes and mind our team, star-struck and baffled. Lost to the channeled focus peering into the crystalline void silencing the scream before. Shelved pools overflow rippling their bowls with crystal moors.
Vines wrap the room trailing great distances, reminiscent of ancient Cambodian temples bearing an opening view into the roof-collapsed sky. Moss and fungus drape shelf walls immersing stones into variant hues of green-styled bas-reliefs. Jagged rays on protruding surfaces shine glyphs across the stone refracted from the lake floor. Light gallops on sandstone making it seem that it moves with motion. Bursts of blue and white amongst moss emerald greens encapsulate this grotto. The team descends skipping on slate slabs into the resting nest where monster and mirth form together tracing Gaia's cavernous jungles. In the middle of the grottos, eight circular columns form a roofless Tholos erected on a singular island stretching to the mid-lake. The lake itself veers into a stalagmite tunnel descending in the shape of a downward spiral. Its rough current destination only lay in the eyes of speculative mystics, swallowed by its increasing depth of darkness.
Sheets of cavernous holes stretch colossally eroded above the river's murky opening appearing as a walled city of caves reducing the witness of the astounding grotto to silence. The phantom cry previously traveled into our ears on the crawl forward resides a small distance away from these embracive shadows of Erebos in this semi-circular plateau where pockets of golden embers glow.
- Acheron, were these your waters of woe? Did you push the diver deep into Lethe's trench? What was your judgment? How much toll for the ferryman's way? …Something remains afore us on these stygian steppes.
Weary from our quest, the team made the decision to set up camp and refuel. After many hours chartered and the last hour of it spent running… The group focuses on furthering field study documenting the nesting grottos. Small talk then circles back with the cartographer and caver discussing the loss of the group amidst re-evaluation of our gear and monitoring our light rations. The cartographer surveys the next route of options for the team, conversing back and forth with the group while discussing with the archaeologist the questionable matters of Hekate's statue and the Tholos out on the lake, and the chiseled ancient art on the grotto walls. Questions about those damn Shadowfiends and that bat-like beast took center stage. These strange occurrences have made our field archaeologists baffled. We are miles from any discernable landmass in [redacted]. All of us are still in shock at the insanity and death that fell upon the trip deep within this cave. Our major question pondered: " Where is it now that we dwell in, lost in this dammed cracked earth?”
Further into the roof-collapsed jungle streams trickle out of westward metamorphic slopes, creating the outer grotto walls. Water crystals beam armies of reflection lit by glowsticks on the grotto's shore while resting heads doze on travel bags. As I stop writing and close my eyes, another murderous howl screams into the bellowing chambers stripping the nodding of their fatigued tears.
Eyes burst open and alert, the team lifts their bodies off the cool and mellow ground. Screams of agony echo beyond the ominous Tholos, heavy is the air that we breathe in this room. In silence we stare at each other—panting. The clear lake cauldron bubbles from its tunnels below. Blurring perceptions in the water’s glow it vomits forth a sickly glowing hue of brown muddied rust engulfing the entirety of its waters as it vents, bubbles, and gags itself up. Snatching our packs, we stand aghast haunted by the fresh yawping scream with the inclusion of boiling mud. Racing along the lake's outer coast we aim towards the grotto’s spiraling stream. Suddenly, the waters fell silent. The lake ripples parted into a cloud of stagnant mystery. Cold mist dropped on us from the cavernous shelves, we could all feel a coldness incoming.
My colleagues and I affix our eyes above at some dark mist flowing from a city of holes moving as if it were alive. Dimming the glow and smothering the life of the torches lit near the entrance of the room the mist eerily engulfs the space. Gazing down at the infinity-walled current riding against the rim of the lake, my instincts yell at me to jump without warning in the scarcity of courage. Into the darkness of the current I crack five glow sticks open, tossing them into the murky lake while throwing two more down the river's tunnel swept away into the black crested void. Plops and drips sound from the lake as glowsticks disappear underwater. Like fish biting at bait, the tops of heads bob up from the murky stagnation. Eyes reflect in the darkness, dipping up and down inside of the blackened pool. An army of chattering croaks belt from hundreds of heads resting on top of the waters. At that moment the team knew… The Dark Ones are swimmers, and they were watching.
The chamber rumbled, a scream penetrated our faces. A gnarled pair of diving gear rose to the lake surface, absent of the bodies piloting them. Snickers, squeaks, sneers, and chatters laughed around us as the white-glazed reflective eyes leered at us ashore while the diving gear lightly bumped its way by their eerie croaking and clicks, knocking against the immobile Shadowfiends wading in the water. The writhing screams beyond the current held no secret: The Bat-Thing was picking us off, one by one, flushing us out with Fear. Sonar sounds screech and ping, and mortal screams grow louder in multiple volumes and voices. Vile sludge drips on our clothing and flesh. Lurking above us covered in muddied blood snarls, the fiends leer down at us with thin fanged teeth dripping their doom and grim.
Crawling from the atrium of manholes the living smoke slowly rolls reaching at our soles chasing our escape for bottomless air. Swallowing all light in the room, these maddening creatures in the mist band together as a pack. The chamber’s rumbling grows as screeches are amplified. Many of the winged species are shaken out of their cavernous canopy. Inching closer to shore, a colossal ivory hand grasps from the obscure lake pit within the grotto.
Climbing out onto the nesting ground, this sanctum of hell swarmed with ancient life. We were trapped by a sea of hungry mouths where a new civilization colonized in despair welcomed us. The rains that once dripped from the jungle field’s beauty shook with rapture as Persephone graced her merciful hand upon us. Bobbing skulls of the lake continued to surface hunting us with stalking eyes. Reflective irises glimmer while skimming the stagnant pool. The Bat-Thing ascends, barreling through bodies tossing them as rag dolls where black liquid begins pouring. Embraced by a loving Nyx, her misty cloak swallows them into the mouth of a cosmic palace. The sonorous shrieks dined on carcasses as the Lethe dripped on the eternal House of Hypnos.
The fiends retreat and dive from their cascading holes in peril from the violent thrashings of the vulturous monster picking them off. Bodies are hurled into stones with gurgling Russian roulette cries plummeting into the leaky lake which was flushed by the fissures from the horrific ascent of this Living Terror. Pulling a flare gun from my pack, I signal to the sky — triggering a burst of Alkaline heat slicing through the dark mist dousing the chamber in a vibrant red unsettling aura. The jungle shelf around us collapses near the westward boundary pulling the winged horror with it as the flare floats into a deadly pit.
The lush vegetation once standing upright crashes into the vast bleakness. The burning red orb inches itself further into the darkness. Giant slate slabs fractured and sloped reveal a covered passage to an immaculate temple tympanum. The passage pediment was a relief of outreaching hands. Statuesque humanoid bat creatures predating thousands of years stand erected below. Some of the hands from the ornate pediment pointed towards a fallen monolith soaked in the creek stream’s fallen brush. The remaining botanical shelves clung above the doorway from the massive drop near the Temple's face. Small holes were carved through the temple's wall housing small fires and foreign icons inside their miniature cubbies which could be observed at a distance. Illuminations blaze lit from ancient oils flickering around the tympanum entrance engulfed in an amber tone. Cave walls with artistic reliefs wrapped with friezes crested on four pillars. This place must have been created over many millennia! Its forgotten past was unearthed, further masked by moss in a lost age of existence.
Fleeing the insipid blood lust on a ravenous warpath, I hear a roaring chisel its way through the inner sanctum. The icy frequency of clicks blares triumphantly from the temple door. Screams penetrate beyond the building's entrance in a familiar mortal tone. The missing team attempted to traverse their way back to our group through the portal, but they would not make it through the night. As mud oozed a new path out of the ancient doorway. Bats sputtered out from the temple's path in breaks of small colonies. Just as the muck seeps below me… The surrounding grounds fracture and quake as the missing team races toward me. While the chattering raises in volume, the disembodied murmur of summer toads almost deafens our surroundings. I peer back into the sinking lake as my colleagues reach out to grab me as the pale-clawed hand grips the frame of the temple entrance.
Lurching slowly through quicksand-like waters, The Dark One’s leer. Slimy fingers sprawl out their welcoming gestures of hunger. Dark heads bobble from the murk. Their coronal gaze was aimed and fixed. Splashes from the drying lake take steps on the hardened chert. Emerging from the muddied tides, the fiends add their numbers from the mystic void. Their hands press firmly on stereobate stairs, grabbing me and sloshing the lake upon the pillars.
Can one do nothing but run from the tide?
I jump, letting go of all control to the answer of holding on.
Wide-eyed into the darkness, I descend into the mouth of the monster.
Stalactites grow larger, from masseter to mandible.
Its stalagmite teeth crimson in ooze, welcoming.
With every step taken, the light falls dimmer behind me.
Pale light flickers down the throat of the beast.
The Cavernous mouth closes, swallowing the depths behind me.
Traversing beyond the trails of the couloir abyss, the cavern chews.
It is a primordial living rock feeding on the echoes with every inch, dissipating.
The Bat-Thing gnaws fibrous tissue, tossing it onto the Gaian floor.
Fallen sounds inaudibly deafen to death.
Lifeless, in the belly of the beast.
A last whisper of terror adorned in heraldry.
“For they were the first to enter, as one.”
The leftover remains of thirteen corpses were sprawled near the docks of the temple at Charon's Pass.
A primordial civilization welcomed the offerings dragging them against a bone-littered path. The Ravenwood operatives observed pale entities stowing away the expedition team within a stygian fluyt. Pattering ripples interrupted a darker substance supporting the vessel’s buoyant underbelly as milky eyes heaved a strange ghostly ship from port. Releasing its webbed sails into the open waters underground, the vessel proceeded along a colonnade of monolithic spires that jettied into a cosmic sea of dread. Operatives later recovered a distressed travelogue near the temple site after a pallid chiropteran creature retained a decollated head purported to be the last surviving member of the initiative while a putrid mist dissipated surrounding the area. A final directive had been given to the exfiltration team:
"The only way back was forward, in Tartarus."
Bio
Frogg Corpse is a poet, vocalist, actor, and photographer from Louisville, Kentucky residing in Clarksville, Indiana. Frogg has written a plethora of poems whilst fronting metal bands around the Louisville area. Select highlights of a rich career in the arts include auditioning for American Idol and The Voice, providing a background role in The Hangover III, writing a guest blog for 48 Hour Books, performing spoken word with artist Suli Breaks, and reading with poet Brandon Leake from America’s Got Talent. From 2014-2016 & 2023 Frogg has performed at Gonzofest, a Louisville event celebrating the life and work of Gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson. Recently, Frogg’s poem “The Night Two Lovers Leapt” placed second in Louisville’s 2023 Literary edition of LEO Weekly. Frogg’s book “Poetry to Die By” with artwork by Russian artist Vitaly Ilyin is published by Cajun Mutt Press.
He was an MC and performer at The Last Insomniacathon in Louisville Kentucky, July 26-28 2024, and is currently working on his followup to Poetry to Die By, called Anathema & Dogwood.
