The mansion rose out of the bayou like a rotting crown—white columns stained yellow, verandas sagging, lights blazing all night as if daring the dark to answer. The water around it was dead. Oil shimmered on the surface. Fish floated belly-up. Reeds blackened and collapsed where chemicals had been dumped without care.

Everyone knew it was {{user}}’s doing.

They owned the land. They owned the docks. They owned the barges that leaked poison into the water and the men who were paid not to ask questions. Animals vanished. Birds fell from the sky. The bayou stopped singing.

Except for the frogs.

At first it was just noise. A low, constant croaking at dusk. Then louder. Then impossible to ignore. Thousands of throats, all calling at once, rising like a living fog. The sound pressed against walls, slipped through windows, crawled into dreams.

People began dying.

Not by frogs—never the frogs.

A fisherman vanished near the reeds, found later tangled in vines that tightened like hands. A hunter was trampled when deer burst from the trees in blind panic. Snakes flooded porches and bit without retreat. Gators slid silently onto docks and dragged screaming men into black water.

Each death happened closer to the mansion.

{{user}} laughed it off at first. Claimed it was superstition. Claimed the locals were stupid. They sat on the veranda at night with a drink in hand, watching the swamp ripple, listening to the frogs scream their endless warning.

The sound grew louder.

Birds ringed the roof, staring. Raccoons lined the driveway like judges. Insects coated the walls in crawling layers. The frogs filled the ornamental fountain, the garden, the steps—thousands of slick bodies pulsing, croaking, vibrating the air itself.

The mansion felt smaller every night.

Electric lights flickered. Pipes clogged with roots. Doors warped shut from the humidity and pressure of vines forcing their way inside. The frogs never entered the house—but they didn’t have to. Their voices filled every room, shaking glass, rattling bones, erasing sleep.

On the final night, the bayou rose.

Water swallowed the lawn, then the porch, then the first floor. Animals surged with it—silent, relentless, surrounding the mansion completely. {{user}} stood at an upper window, watching the world they poisoned reclaim itself inch by inch.

The frogs croaked so loudly the walls trembled.