Eleanor was despondent as we left the office of the behavioural neurologist. The doctor referred to me as ‘a most unusual case of late onset Tourette’s syndrome.’ Given that it usually manifests in early childhood, it could be, in my case, ‘a purely functional disorder.’ He surmised we had problems in our marriage. The utterances might be my way of giving voice, involuntarily of course, to suppressed anger. Eleanor rolled her eyes when he suggested we consider seeing a marriage counsellor. I remained silent, hung my head. Then a guttural ‘Barry White!’ burst out of my throat. It seemed the doctor was not familiar with the mating call of bufo marinus. Nor was Eleanor particularly impressed. She shook her head and frowned at me. The neurologist opined that, if I was not prepared to take my own malady seriously, there was little he could do to help. I paused at the receptionist’s desk to pay the account. I declined the offer of another appointment. Then we walked out.

        It might have been the next morning, or was it the Thursday after, when Eleanor, reaching affectionately to stroke my back on waking, recoiled as her hand encountered a sticky mucoid substance that had, overnight, begun to exude from swollen glands just below my shoulder blades. ‘Whatever you do,’ I said, instinctively protective, ‘do not lick your fingers!’

         The changes progressed rapidly from there. I received strange looks when, in the midst of my working day, my thickening neck burst my shirt collar button. I stopped coming into the laboratory. Soon I was hopping around the house on all fours. This was too much for Eleanor. She expelled me to sleep on the front porch. I spent the night hovering around the fairy lights in the garden, jumping to gulp at the insects they drew. I devoured several small skinks. I sat plaintively on the steps with their entrails dripping out of the corner of my mouth and down my double chin, hoping that Eleanor would open up and be suitably impressed. I pined for her.

         The epigenetic revolution that wreaked its anarchy upon my outward form made havoc also of my mind. My capacity for human speech was gone, but memories of wilful vengeance against the toad remained, nuanced with fresh loathing of my now much less than personal self. All those times I’d deliberately swerved a vehicle to flatten a specimen on the road came back to me, savage remorse blending into the nausea that accompanied the awakening of strange erotic imagery and compulsions to violent coupling with amphibians. I remembered experiencing something like this when Eleanor and I had a strange night after we each took a couple of puffs from a toad skin spliff that was being passed around at the Nimbin Roots Festival. I wondered was that where all this began?

         My awareness of the cries of other males grew increasingly acute. I recognised some at lower pulse rates and more dominant frequencies than my own, despite the failure of my new form to shrink itself down to a normal cane toad size. I also noticed the response calls of several she-toads in close vicinity but found these to be of little interest. On the contrary, my preoccupation remained jealously territorially defensive. I decided to mount guard at the top of the steps, preventing access to any rival suitor that might emerge from his burrow with amorous intentions, hoping that his mellifluous vocalisations might steal Eleanor away from me, leaving me bereft.

        So that was how I spent the night, too hypervigilant to dig myself a burrow of my own, with the intense humidity, the gingers rustling in the breeze, the scent of leaf rot rising from the fertile garden beds, the cane flower pollen drifting in from not-so-distant fields. Before the dawn came, I must’ve fallen asleep on the front doormat. I woke to the rumble of Eleanor’s Jeep crunching on the gravel of the drive as she left for work. I let out one desperate cry, but to no avail, as her taillights disappeared beyond the front gate.

         I noticed that the air was now free of the calls of other toads. A primal terror rose in me at the raucous cry of the sulphur crested cockatoos and the mocking kookaburra chorus. I hopped down the steps and took refuge in an upturned terra cotta urn. I trembled as a fat spotted python slithered past my lair. I slept as best I could, dreaming predatory amphibian dreams, praying for sweet Eleanor’s return.

        The last rays of the sun were dipping below the western garden wall when a little tremor in the ground woke me. Although I was not consciously aware of it at the time, there were now only three chambers of my heart left to leap. Eleanor was coming home. I poked my head out of the urn to watch the wheels glide past as the roller door rose and then fell after the Jeep disappeared into the garage. I hopped back up the steps onto the porch and sat myself firmly on the welcome mat. A strange vibration travelled through the floorboards on the other side of the door and out into the boards of the porch. It was no longer the footfall of a biped, but rather a thump, as though generated by a heavy creature hopping on all fours.

         The vocal signalling of the other toads was just beginning. I summoned all the love I had and released it all in one low pitched bellow. I thrilled to the response that came from the other side of the door: ‘Barry White!’