Suco

A Story by Opie

A quick story I wrote for my son for Halloween this year.

Suco

A Halloween Story for Robyn and Adam.

“I swear to God he tried to kill me!” the woman said.

Suco felt, more than heard, the voices around him. He hadn’t moved in what seemed like hours. Blending to his environment came easy to him. It was also necessary in his line of work, not that anyone was paying him. He clung to the shadows, his demeanor as calm as ever. He looked, and waited.

The stillness gave him time to think. His mind wandered to his youth as it often did in times like this. He came from a big family but he never knew his parents. His family memories all involved fighting with his brothers and his sisters. Especially with his sisters. They were so much bigger than him it was a miracle that he had ever got anything to eat. Suco didn’t really remember where he came from, but he knew if he stayed, he wouldn’t have lasted long. They would eat him alive.

Maybe that’s where it came from, Suco thought. This compulsion he had, this burning need. Maybe all the women he had preyed on were surrogate sisters, there to take what he was never able to give to his real sisters. Doesn’t matter, he thought, I enjoy it too much now. The power he held over them, the sound of the screams they let out, the panicked look in their eyes when they finally knew he was there all along. These are what nourished him now.

“Where did he go?” the man asked.

Suco smiled to himself, such as it was. The men he had come across in his life were less than enthusiastic to meet him. Some came after him with mock heroics, or lied outright about the encounter afterwards. Some made a halfhearted attempt to seek him out on orders from those who didn’t dare. When they thought they had put in enough effort to satisfy the attempt, they explained their failure with a practiced patience. This one looked no different, the predator thought.

Suco wanted to return to the task at hand, the woman, the target. She had taken no notice of him, unless you counted the hairs on her neck standing on end. He had made his way behind her. Biding his time he crept silently closer. Suco lusted for action, but he hesitated, a stutter step, then froze in place again.

The man was moving now. Get closer, Suco seethed, how dare you! You will never see me coming. I am the stuff of nightmares! I am death from above! You will know terror! I am Vampire! I am the blood sucker! I AM SUCO!

Suco never felt the fatal blow. One moment he was the embodiment of fear itself, the next moment he lay broken. He couldn’t move but he could still see, for the moment. His two legs jerked and twitched as if trying to get away from his body. Three other legs didn’t move at all. Three more still were gone altogether. His last thoughts escaped without sound. I was Suco. I was the spider.

“Did you get it?” the woman asked, her eyes pleading desperately. “It’s like they are out to get me sometimes!”

“Well, this one isn’t anymore.” He said rolling his eyes as he showed her the magazine he hit the spider with. A smear of arachnid legs as his evidence.

“Gross.” was all the woman could muster as she walked away shuddering.

Under the radiator, in the shadow of a crumpled and long forgotten shopping list, eight tiny eyes burned with vengeance.

For you, Suco, she thought, I will have vengeance my brother!