Inkling

1.4 The Trick of the Thing

March 9th 1:30 A.M.

It was more difficult than anticipated, discreetly keeping a toad in one's pocket. Though, to be fair, Lincoln Locke was just as surprised with his current condition as Max was. With the exception that he had the unfortunate opportunity to actually experience being a toad. Nonetheless he was squirming and croaking like a toad out of hell and people were starting to notice.

In the grand scheme of things, a brightly dressed man in a bowler hat from whom vaguely distressed toad noises seemed to be coming from was not the oddest thing the good people of New York would see in their day. Nonetheless, there was something about the hurriedness with which he walked. If a New Yorker was ever drawn to anything, it was a man carrying a secret in the wee hours of the morning.

"I am so, undoubtedly, fucked." He murmured to himself, over and over with varying degrees of certainty. As if there was a scale of fuck ups and he was wavering between slow agonizing death and a very tedious but fixable pile of shit. Either way, when he stepped into a heaping pile of horse poo it seemed only the universe's way of trying to rebalance the scale.

For a moment, Max stopped walking. He realized sadly that he had been headed for the residence of Miss Sophia Jennings, whose father would have him strung up if he attempted to visit his daughter at such a time, dressed in such a way, and carrying a toad in his pocket. Besides, he simply refused to bring her into his madness. Max spun in an unhappy circle. In such a populous city, a fellow ought to have more friends.