A few days ago,
was cursed.As it turns out, Jeff is not the first writer on
to encounter the primeval mystery that is The Suff. Others have been sharing accounts; and it turns out, I have one too—dating back to my early college days…The hour was early, and the library was quiet. My classmate Lore and I were halfway through an all-nighter, putting the finishing touches on our videography project.
We’d been tasked with making a public service announcement for an organization of our choosing—real or pretend, it didn’t matter. The project just had to include a match cut, where the elements of one scene are used to transition to another. Imagine going from a yield sign, to an A-frame cabin.
Ah, I’m getting excited about filmmaking again. Not the point.
We were having a hard time getting the shots to line up, when Lore reached across the keyboard to point at something on screen. The move put her wrist—covered in layers of Saran Wrap—at my eye level.
“Is this some sorority hazing thing?” I pointed at her arm. I genuinely did not know.
“No, dummy. It’s how you protect a fresh tattoo.”
“Didn’t you already have one there?” I’d never seen it, more than just a flash of black ink when she waived hello, or reached across the table at the dining hall.
Her eyebrows shot upward so high, they nearly hid beneath her bangs. She didn’t say anything though; just bit her lip.
“I’m sorry, is that personal? I didn’t mean to—”
“It’s fine.” She sighed. “Just, well, annoying.” She sat on the edge of the desk and folded her arms. “Last Halloween, this local shop in my home town was doing 20 dollar tattoos. Catch was, you had to pick a pre-made design off the wall.”
She stared off, dreamily. “I got number 7… or at least I thought that’s what I pointed to. I was pretty drunk. Woke up with a killer hangover, expecting a tiny pine tree. But when I looked…”
Lore held out her arm. Through the wrap, I could see a simple design: a disembodied, gloved hand, slipping a piece of paper into a ballot box. Along the side of that box were three words.
“Remember the Suff,” I read. “What’s that?”
“Damned if I know. But it won’t come off.”
“I mean, yeah, isn’t that kinda the point?”
She smirked and delivered a playful smack upside the back of my head. “I mean laser removal. Fifteen sessions and it still looks brand new. Thought I could do a cover-up. Was supposed to be a phone booth at night. But the ink just wouldn’t take.” She frowned at her skin, still pink and raw from the needling. “Hey—do you remember where we were?”
Right, the project. “Ah, yeah. Just a few more seconds over. There.”
She moved the play head with her left hand—the one bearing the odd tattoo—and pressed the space bar.
My computer screen flickered a moment. The video that played was one I’d never seen, narrated by a voice I would’ve sworn narrated every movie trailer in the nineties.
“…or simply, ‘The Suff,’ for short, played out most recently in 1999. Participation was compulsory for every man, woman and child—all were made equally culpable in what transpired.” The production values were extremely advanced—far beyond anything Lore and I could’ve cooked up for the project.
This PSA showed old-looking footage that I would’ve placed somewhere around the early aughts or late 90s: I saw crowds of people comparable to the biggest airports on their busiest days, queuing up at polling places in cities across the United States—no, the world. They were shepherded into voting booths by masked guards with guns. I felt as if I were getting a glimpse at a chapter omitted from every history book, and our collective memory.
“We may have forgotten the Suff,” the narrator said. “But it has not forgotten us.”
The video ended on a logo identical to the tattoo Lore had tried so hard to get rid of. “Remember the Suff,” the voice commanded.
“Is this a joke? What happened to our project?” Lore grabbed the keyboard and hammered the edit, undo shortcut. Nothing. In fact, it resisted any attempts at all to remove, rearrange, or even add new material.
Our project had vanished from my hard drive. In its place, we found a folder marked; “Suff History_Final_Final_02,” populated with the clips and voice track used in the video. I could click on them individually and watch them back in Media Player. But when I tried to drag or delete the files, their icons turned semi-transparent and my computer offered the error popup:
Unable to Perform the Requested Action.
“Do you have the memory card?” I asked. It would take all night, and the finished product would be rough. But it would be something.
Lore shook her head. “Wasn’t mine. Returned it with the rest of the equipment rental.”
I groaned. “We’re so screwed.”
“Maybe not.” Lore squinted at the computer screen. “Will that export?”
“Looks like it.”
“Okay, weird pitch, but hear me out. What if we submit this?”
She had to be joking. “No way.”
“Why not?” Professor B said we can make up an organization for the project. That’s what Tammy and Ken are doing,” she reasoned. “This is way better than what we had anyway.”
“Yeah but isn’t it, I don’t know… creepy? Plus, it’s not our work.”
“Dude, it is four in the freaking morning, I just want to sleep.”
I pushed back my chair, stood, and did something I still regret. “I’m going to stretch my legs. If the project happens to get submitted while I’m gone…” I trailed off halfway out the door.
“Good choice.” Lore flashed a mischievous smile as she took her seat in front of my computer. The look faded almost immediately when she turned away. She was still rattled. Who could blame her? I was too. But I’d assume the situation feels more personal when the tattoo you can’t cover up becomes the file you can’t erase.
Our professor gave us a B for a project that felt, “incomplete, and rushed.” I asked him to show me what he meant after class.
“You’re a great student. But this was sloppy work.” He showed me his laptop screen. “The matching cut doesn’t line up; the effects are choppy, like you forgot to render. And look, there’s a frame of black here, like you forgot to add a piece of b-roll.”
It was our old, original project in the unfinished state it had been in before the Suff took over my hard drive. I mumbled a confused, “Right, thanks,” before excusing myself.
Lore and I wrote off the whole thing as a trick played by our sleep-deprived brains. At one point, the two of us wound up in a brief relationship that was as passionate as it was volatile, culminating in a fight where she threw my laptop out of her dorm room window. The mystery of the Suff died with my hard drive, shattered on the icy sidewalk—or so I thought.
Every odd year it seems, I catch sight of that tattoo in a picture on social media. Then the questions start piling up again. Why did so few people know about the Suff, and even fewer still know what it actually was? I still remember the video’s ominous closing line; a statement that has left me with an increasing sense of urgency to learn what actually transpired:
We may have forgotten the Suff. But it has not forgotten us.
Thank you for reading this little short story. If you haven’t yet, consider subscribing for access to my growing fiction archive.
I also encourage you to check out the extended timeline of The Suff, appropriately compiled by
:Have You or a Loved One had an Encounter with the Suff?
We would love to hear your story or speculations about the Suff, in the comments section down below. If you’re a fellow writer and desire to put together a full account, please let me know if/when it is published!
Glad to see you have not succumbed. I’m sure we could put together a page somewhere. Thanks for reading
Another great chapter in the Suffs glorious timeline.
At this rate we are going to need a suffapedia.