The Legend of Sum

SUM

Dri­ving home from the local red neck bar one moon lit sum­mer night, Roy swerves his pick up toward a dark shape that is slowly mov­ing along side the road. A loud CRACK shat­ters the dark­ness as the front tire breaks the giant snap­ping tur­tles’ shell in two, right down the cen­ter. The great snap­per rolls down the embank­ment into the stream and Roy’s laugh­ing fades as the truck turns to cross the bridge to his shabby farm house across the stream.

The tur­tle, float­ing belly up is car­ried down­stream to the other side and is swept into a quiet eddy where he sinks watch­ing the moon fade from yel­low to blood red through the dark­en­ing water.

SUM

This small pool cut into the bank of the stream was at the back Roy’s prop­erty and he used it as his per­sonal dump site. The water caught in this hole became a ter­ri­ble toxic soup of motor oil, fer­til­izer, bro­ken toys, bones and entrails of many slaugh­tered ani­mals, rusty tools and who knows what else.

Over the next few months, a strange trans­for­ma­tion took place in this evil chow­der as it baked in the sum­mer heat. A crea­ture of revenge, born of cru­elty and neglect slid its way out of the sick­en­ing mess one dark Sep­tem­ber night.

Roy’s body was never found, nor could any­one explain the slime trail from the bed­room through the field behind the house.
Over the years that fol­lowed, other neglect­ful farm­ers van­ished on moon­less nights and folks reported vague sight­ings of a crea­ture that seamed to be cob­bled together from a col­lec­tion of garbage, an old doll, bone, rot­ted skin, and bro­ken tools, with a large snap­ping tur­tle skull for a head. They call him “SUM”.