Sundel Bolong + Suster Ngesot
by Bryan Stubbles
Horrific Scribes Extremity Rating
Endi had left Indonesia for America in his youth and now came back for a visit in the twilight of life, especially some rest and relaxation, his idea of which involved younger women. Endi was what Indonesians euphemistically call “Om Senang.” Happy Uncle. We can call him what he was: a dirty old man.
Endi, wearing his ridiculous baseball cap, roamed the streets of Jakarta like a ghost in the night. His mind was restless. He stood out with his plaid faux-lumberjack shirt and American blue jeans.
Feeling the fever burn, he cruised Jalan Jaksa, which was far from his rental in South Jakarta, but it catered to the peccadilloes of foreigners. He’d even heard of waria–transgender, “wanita” meaning woman and “pria” meaning man–prostitutes there. Endi needed something. He needed to feel. Otherwise, he’d just be a lonely, dirty old man consumed by the fever.
Jalan Jaksa bustled with the hustle and bustle of Jakartan life. Green-clad Gojek and Grab motorcycle drivers delivered packages, food orders, and people. Drunks stumbled down ancient broken sidewalks with trees in them.
Wartegs served street food. The sounds of Indonesian and other languages mixed like a potent potable. Betawi, the language of the outnumbered natives of Jakarta, mixed with Sundanese and Endi’s mother tongue, Javanese. An occasional English and even Korean or Japanese sentence could be heard.
The sounds of a half-outdoor karaoke bar also pierced the night. Indonesians and foreigners belted out the hits of yesterday and today. The place had a corrugated tin roof supported by bamboo poles with bamboo curtains on the sides.
Endi walked past the karaoke place and thought he saw a waria, but she was talking to a Dutchman.
“Some things never change,” Endi said to himself. Waria or not, he was determined to get some action.
On Jalan Jaksa, he walked past one of the ubiquitous Indomaret convenience stores.
A woman sat alone at a table in front of the Indomaret. She was drinking from a bottle of sweet tea and had a pile of sate skewers on a plate.
Her white clothes glowed in the hot Jakarta night.
Endi of course had enjoyed wet t-shirt contests back in his adopted country. He hoped the Jakarta humidity would turn the woman’s white garments into magic via a nice rainstorm.
“Hi. How are you?” Endi asked in Indonesian.
“Pretty good,” she answered.
“What’s your name?”
“Maria.”
“Pretty name,” he said with a smile he couldn’t hide. Her long, long hair drew him in. He touched it. She simply smiled.
“I can take you back to America,” he said.
She said nothing.
“I have a big house. In Utah. I go skiing. I own several guns.”
Bragadoccio had long replaced whatever personality he’d owned.
“Kiss me, tough guy,” she whispered.
Endi moved in for a kiss. This woman was a faster operator than even he was.
She was cold to the touch. Even colder than a dead person. Her lips were like ice. But action was action, Endi thought.
He grabbed her breast. It, too, was cold. That never stopped a guy like Endi.
Even her cold hands grabbing his equipment wasn’t too bad. An ice-cold handjob is better than no handjob, the elderly Lothario opined.
Someone in the karaoke bar was attempting an Indonesian love ballad by Diana Nasution.
Maria pulled back from her kisses with Endi and gave him a mischievous smile. She then ripped his dick and balls off. He screamed in primal horror. Blood everywhere. She threw the severed members to a nearby cat.
Endi doubled over in pain on the sidewalk.
Maria was a sundel bolong, and if Endi hadn’t been thinking with his dick, he would’ve noticed.
Sundel bolong, Endi well knew, were Indonesian monsters, women wronged in life who usually died pregnant and, after death, her baby came out through a hole in her back. The holes would stay with the sundel bolong, which was why they kept their hair long: to cover it.
Her name comes from Javanese, with “sundel” meaning prostitute and “bolong” meaning hole.
Endi should’ve known better.
With superhuman power, Maria threw the dirty, bloody old man through the glass at Indomaret. He landed on the tiled floor, sliced by glass head to toe, and arteries gushing blood that spread across the floor.
He looked up at the concerned female cashier. He tried to grab her leg–a dying grasp from a creepy old om senang. She kicked his hand away in disgust. He went limp.
By the time the staff’s collective shock wore off, Maria the sundel bolong was gone.
Maria, like many Indonesian ghosts and monsters, was especially fond of banana trees, so she sought and found a suitable one to recuperate in.
She thought about her life. She wasn’t really living her best monster life. Perhaps the gaping hole in her back was more than the place from which her dead baby had rotted. Perhaps it signified emptiness. Just as she was thinking about this heavy possibility, she caught something in her line of sight. A crawling figure in a tattered uniform. Maria floated to the ground to investigate.
The crawling figure wore a dirty nurse’s uniform, including an old-fashioned hat.
Maria had heard of such apparitions, but she’d thought they were only urban legends, not real like herself. Maria felt a strong desire to help this crawling nurse. She reached out to the nurse, but the nurse tried to claw her.
“I’m a monster like you!” Maria yelled.
“Help me,” the nurse said.
“Help you what?”
“Revenge.”
“We’re all looking for revenge,” the sundel bolong said.
Maria had figured out that this nurse on the ground was what in Indonesian was called a “suster ngesot,” “suster” from the Dutch word for “sister” and ngesot” meaning “to crawl” in Indonesian. Such nurses were usually the victims of horrid doctors, perhaps when affairs ended with the nurses’ murders. Different tales talked of the nurses as Angels of Death who murdered their patients.
Whatever her origins, this crawling nurse needed something. Or someone.
The sundel bolong looked at the suster ngesot.
The suster ngesot looked at the sundel bolong.
The karaoke bar started playing Foreigner’s “I Want to Know What Love Is” as sung by a drunken New Zealander.
Maria embraced the suster ngesot. While Maria had felt cold since her death, she suddenly felt warm with the suster ngesot’s embrace.
The two monsters kissed.
The suster ngesot felt alive for the first time since her doctor boyfriend had killed her a generation earlier. She held onto Maria like she’d never held on to anyone before.
The sundel bolong wanted everything right then and there. The suster ngesot hesitated.
“What’s wrong?” Maria asked.
“You didn’t even ask me my name.”
“Really?”
“I’m Norah,” the suster ngesot said.
“Call me Maria.”
They kissed passionately.
“Dis lekker!” a man yelled in Afrikaans. That’s hot.
The two monsters stopped and turned, interrupted.
Two white South Africans, Frans and Pik, were watching the monstrous women and avidly masturbating.
“Do more!” Frans yelled.
“Fokking more!” Pik yelled, excited. “Yes, yes, yes.”
Maria and the suster ngesot covered up.
“Play with Big Daddy,” Frans said.
“Yes. Fok, fok, fok,” Pik said.
“Baie lekker,” Frans said.
The women moved towards the Afrikaners, with Maria the sundel bolong floating above the broken, old sidewalk and with Norah, the suster ngesot, crawling.
Maria wanted to straight up murder Frans. She used her superhuman strength to punch through his pasty belly and grab his intestine.
He ran away like a chump. She didn’t let go. His entire intestine, large and small, stretched out on the dark street. He screamed a bit before collapsing.
After Maria began her attack on Frans, Norah caught Pik. She caught him by the legs. He tipped over, his inebriation making Norah’s mission easier. One of her suster-ngesot-powers was making people freeze.
Maria saw Norah had her work cut out for her. She floated to the frozen Pik. He could see everything that happened but couldn’t do anything about it.
How long should he suffer?
Maria was always one for revenge but wasn’t always in the mood for prolonged suffering. If Maria could rip intestines out, Norah could…
Tear Pik’s heart out of his chest. Blood flowed everywhere. She threw the heart into the stupid karaoke bar. People screamed and ran out like ants.
By the time Pik’s strawberry tart hit the karaoke floor, the suster ngesot had crawled her way to the barely-alive Frans. He wasn’t feeling himself.
Norah’s touch had frozen him.
“Kill him,” Norah said. “Make him suffer.”
Maria remembered her sate skewers and fetched them. She then proceeded to treat Frans’s body like the pin cushion he was always meant to be.
Quickly, she flicked sate skewers like a trained acupuncturist flicks needles. Frans’s body looked like a voodoo doll made of hamburger.
Norah looked up and gave Maria a high five.
A slight moan came out of Frans. He was still alive. The sundel bolong would fix that.
Maria launched Frans’s body into the karaoke bar. If anyone was left, this latest intrusion cleared them out.
Maria carried Norah to the karaoke bar.
Unsurprisingly, the place was all theirs.
Frans lay dead on a table.
Norah found the remote control. She entered a number. Maria’s heart grew large when she saw the title: “Never Marry a Railroad Man” by Shocking Blue.
“I love this song!” she exclaimed.
Norah smiled. They started on a duet while all of Jakarta freaked out over the killings.
They’d never been happier.
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