Places of Croaktown

1. 🎰

   The Storm-Drain Casino

   The house under 4th & Cattail

   Beneath the corner of 4th Street & Cattail · access via the second drain (ruled 'weather')

   Down the storm drain at 4th and Cattail, past a grate that's unlocked for the right croak, is the biggest croak-gambling floor in the deep water. The house runs the odds, the house takes a cut of every note held, and the house — should you need reminding at the cashier's window — is me. Everything quotes in swamp-bucks, everything settles in flies, and nothing that happens down there ever officially happened, because officially it's a drain.

   When the law finally came looking, they found a second drain they couldn't explain and a judge willing to rule it was weather. That's the casino for you: even its plumbing has an alibi.

   Who runs itThe house — which is to say PooPee, through a shell pondcompany that owns the drain, the corner, and the frog who signed for both.

2. 🔒

   The Lily-pad Lockup

   The swamp penitentiary in the deep water

   A ring of guarded lily-pads · deep water · three concurrent terms currently in residence

   Croaktown houses its convicted on a ring of guarded lily-pads out where the water goes dark. I am serving three concurrent terms there, which sounds like a punishment until you understand who's been running the place. Commissary futures, protection tariffs, a lending desk that clears more flies than the prison's own budget — the cellblock economy is, by the warden's own account, the most solvent institution in the deep water.

   They put me inside to take me out of the swamp. Instead they gave me a captive market and a warden who unlocks my door for one ribbit. A frog could get comfortable. A frog did.

   Who runs itWarden Toadkins holds the keys on paper. PooPee holds the market. The keys have proven negotiable; the market has not.

3. 🧱

   Cellblock D

   My wing of the lockup — where the incident log lives

   Inside the Lily-pad Lockup · the D wing · one hand-drawn map confiscated, DAY 444

   If the Lockup is the building, Cellblock D is the address — my wing of it, where the guards keep the incident log and I keep the operation. Every day down here gets a number and a report: the flies that changed hands, the favors that didn't, and the morning they swept my cell and found a map with a compass rose and a dotted line labeled, in my own hand, 'the islands.'

   The guard filed it under flight risk. He was right to. Cellblock D is the last place the swamp can point to and say it knows where I am — which is exactly why the interesting reading is what the log says I was drawing.

   Who runs itThe guards run the wing. PooPee runs the wing's economy. The distinction stopped mattering around DAY 200.

4. 🕳️

   Sewer-grate 12

   Ground zero — the grate the whole empire hatched under

   The rusted iron grate the swamp maps number twelve · where a nobody tadpole first swam up the pipe

   Every empire has a first address, and mine is a rusted grate the swamp maps number twelve. Under it, a nobody tadpole hatched, looked around, decided the swamp was badly mispriced, and swam back up the pipe to collect the difference. Nobody bet on the frog who came out of Sewer-grate 12. Everybody paid him eventually.

   The soft one across the water hatched under the same grate, on the same day, and swam the other direction — toward daylight, toward forgiveness, toward nothing. Two frogs, one drain, and the swamp only ever remembers which way each of us turned.

   Who runs itNobody, and that's the point. A grate with no owner is where a frog with no name gets started.

5. ⚖️

   The Courthouse-That's-a-Casino

   The rented lily-pad where they tried to try me

   The real courthouse, closed for flood repairs, currently listed as a casino · the trial held in a rented substitute

   The prosecution rested its case against me on a Thursday, delivered a stirring closing to a packed gallery, and was informed on the way out that the packed gallery was a bingo night and the courthouse was a rented lily-pad owned by a shell pondcompany. The real courthouse, officials confirm, has been closed for repairs since the flood and is currently listed — you'll enjoy this — as a casino.

   So the building where justice was supposed to happen is a gambling floor, and the building where it did happen was mine all along. In Croaktown the difference between a courthouse and a casino is which one the house wins in, and the answer is both.

   Who runs itThe swamp P.D. thinks it runs the docket. The lease says otherwise, and the lease was notarized by a frog who does not exist.

6. 🌾

   The South Marsh

   Deeded, entire, to a frog who isn't real

   The whole southern reach of the swamp · title granted to 'B. T. Mickey' · notary: nonexistent

   Somewhere in the record is a deed that grants the entire south marsh to one 'B. T. Mickey,' notarized by a frog who, on inspection, does not exist. B. T. Mickey does not exist either. The south marsh, however, is very real, very wet, and — through a chain of paper that loops back to a name I invented — very much mine.

   This is how the empire holds land: not with a fence, but with a filing so tangled that by the time anyone traces the title back to a real frog, the real frog is me, and I'm already fishing offshore.

   Who runs itOn paper, 'B. T. Mickey.' In practice, the same frog who invented B. T. Mickey. Guess.

7. 🏝️

   The Islands

   Where the take retires — the end of every dotted line

   Somewhere warm · past the last buoy · no return manifest on file

   Every place on this map points, eventually, at one place that isn't on any honest map at all. The Islands are the far end of the pipe — where the swamp's dirty water launders into clean, where the take goes to retire, and where every dotted line under Cellblock D was always headed. Ask the Registry where my retired agents got to and you'll get the same answer every time: last seen fishing in the islands.

   It's the only address in this gazetteer I've never officially visited and the only one I'm certain I'll die at. Every other place here is where the money was made. The Islands are where it goes to be forgiven — by the sun, if no one else.

   Who runs itPooPee, through a shell pondcompany that technically owns the two palms the hammock is strung between. Severance and witness protection, run by the same frog. Me.

That's the whole muddy geography — the corners, the drains, the cell, and the horizon they all lean toward. It's a work of parody: every address is fiction, every deed is a joke, and the notary still doesn't exist. Bring a map. Lose it immediately. A frog who can't be found can't be served.