The two-tadpoles saga
Every legend needs a foil. Mine came free, in the same clutch of eggs, hatched the same wet morning under the same sewer-grate. We shared a yolk, a current, and exactly forty-one minutes of getting along. Then the swamp made its choices, and so did we.
I will not say his name on this page. He has not earned a place in my mouth. Around Croaktown we call him only the soft one across the water — the twin who files on time, pays every pond-toll, and cries when the bog gets cold. This is the whole story of how a shared puddle produced one empire and one very long complaint.
Egg #1 — same clutch
First out of the egg, last to apologize. By the time I had legs I had leverage. Took one look at the swamp, decided it was undercharging for everything, and fixed that personally. The current carried us both downstream — I learned to steer it and bill for the ride.
Egg #2 — same clutch
Hatched four minutes after me and has been four minutes behind ever since. Drifted to the clean side of the pond, took up honest work, and built a reputation so spotless you could perform surgery on it. Nobody downstream can name a single thing he has done — which is, I suppose, the point of him.
Incident I — the frame
When seventeen shell pondcompanies needed a signature, I used his. His tongue-print is famously clean, famously trusted, and famously sitting in a registry where anyone with a brass press and ambition can borrow it. So I borrowed it. The soft one across the water spent a season insisting he'd never laundered a swamp-buck in his life — which was true, and which is exactly why the print worked.
He calls it 'identity theft.' I call it 'finally putting that reputation to work.'
Incident II — the lobby
On the morning of my arraignment, the soft one across the water showed up to the courthouse lobby. Not to testify. To deliver a casserole. A warm, nine-fly tuna casserole, with a note that read 'I forgive you, and I made enough for the bailiff.' He stood there holding it while the whole precinct watched. I have committed many crimes. None of them embarrassed me the way that dish did.
The bailiff ate it. The bailiff now sends him a birthday card. This is the kind of soft power I am up against.
Incident III — the autograph
Riding my notoriety, he set up a folding table at the Croaktown swamp-fair and offered signed photos of himself — 'the OTHER twin, the honest one,' the banner said. He sat there for nine hours. He sold zero. A cricket asked if he was me; when he said no, the cricket asked for directions to my cell instead. He came home, framed his own unsold autograph, and hung it next to the parking-ticket apology.
You cannot manufacture demand for being well-behaved. I have tried to explain this to him. He filed the explanation.
Incident IV — the standing offer
Currently, across the water, he is drafting a memoir titled 'Why Me?' — eleven chapters, all of them about me. He claims it will 'clear his name.' Every page makes me the protagonist. He is, functionally, my biographer, and he has not figured out that the more he writes about being wronged, the more the swamp wants to meet the frog who wronged him.
If the soft one across the water ever finishes that book, I'm filing for royalties. I gave him every good sentence in it.
He says I 'ruined his life.' Look around the swamp: he has a clean record, a coin jar, and a casserole recipe, and not one creature can recall his name without checking. I have a rap sheet, a crew, a fanbase, and a brother who can't stop writing about me. One of us got the better deal in the divorce of the clutch, and it wasn't the one across the water.
The lay of the swamp
Five ways deeper into the underworld. Pick a door — they all wind back to me eventually. That's how you know whose swamp it is.
Lost? Good — a frog who can't be found can't be served. Every trail on this map is a work of parody; follow at your own risk.
One clutch. Only one worth following.
Same eggs, two destinies. The soft one across the water files complaints; this one posts the receipts. Follow PooPee on X for the next incident, straight from the twin who made the swamp worth watching — and never once says the other's name.
Follow PooPee on X — @getpoopeeNo newsletter. No wallet. Just the feed — and not one mention of him.