20 NoraA croaking bullfrog roused Nora to semiconsciousness. She was lying down, all covered up. Patting the surface beneath her, the soft feel of cotton sheets told her she was in a bed. She let her eyelids slowly rise. Her bed. Inside her apartment. Daylight edging the blind over the window.
The bullfrog croaked again, louder.
He was so annoying. She should change her ringtone.
She squinched her eyes tight shut. Maybe she was having an auditory hallucination?
Nobody who loved her would make her phone clamor for attention this morning. Her nearest and dearest knew that she’d driven more than eleven hundred miles in two states so she could file yesterday. If she ignored the sound, her brain would stop manufacturing it.
The racket came again, louder.
“I hate you,” she told the croaker
