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    Jugular
    Jugular
    Jugular
    Ebook63 pages55 minutes

    Jugular

    By Lori R. Lopez

    ()

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    About this ebook

    What do you do when you meet the mother of all hags and learn she’s your great-great-great-great-great-something-grandmother? But that isn’t Magda’s biggest problem. Her life is going through some major “changes”, including that she just woke up in the morgue. Oh yeah, she’s also a vampire. Told with creative language, a blending of artistic prose and dark humor, this horror-fantasy novelette is the beginning of a trilogy, yet each of the three parts is a stand-alone story. Edgy and gruesome, JUGULAR will take you beyond the grave for an unusual take on a popular mythos. Although rooted in Romanian history, it is a modern Gothic narrative that breaks the mold, rewriting the vampire legend as a hereditary disease where females are the true vamps, coming into their powers or next blood phase at “The Change Of Life”. But, like an insect colony, there can be only one queen.

    WARNING: Some content may be disturbing to sensitive readers.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherLori R. Lopez
    Release dateJul 31, 2012
    ISBN9781476480695
    Jugular
    Author

    Lori R. Lopez

    Lori R. Lopez wears many hats as an Author and Speculative Poet of Horror, Fantasy, Suspense, Humor and more. She illustrates her books and has written songs, while being an Activist for animals and children. Growing up, Lori roamed graveyards and conducted funerals for dead birds, squirrels, insects and spiders. Her offbeat books include The Dark Mister Snark, Leery Lane, An Ill Wind Blows, Darkverse: The Shadow Hours, Odds & Ends, and The Fairy Fly. In 2023 Lori won Third Place in the Long Category for the SFPA Poetry Contest for "Wake Unto Death". Her Poetry Collection Darkverse was nominated for an Elgin Award and a Finalist in the Kindle Book Awards. Her poems "Crop Circles" and "Nocturnal Embers" were nominated for the Rhysling Award in 2020, "Social Graces" and "The Whistle Stop" in 2021, "Biting Sarcasm" in 2022, "The Whippoorwill" and "If Houses Could Talk" in 2023. Poems "The Maw" and "creatures of the macabre" received Editor's Choice Awards among other honors. Stories and verse have appeared in The Sirens Call, The Horror Zine, Space & Time, Spectral Realms, JOURN-E, Weirdbook, Bewildering Stories, Dreams & Nightmares, Impspired, Altered Reality, Aphelion, and anthologies such as California Screamin' (the Foreword Poem), HWA Poetry Showcases II, III, V, VI, and IX, Journals Of Horror, Grey Matter Monsters, Dead Harvest, Fearful Fathoms I, Terror Train I and II, Trickster's Treats #3, Speculations III (Weird Poets Society), and In Darkness We Play. A member of the Horror Writers Association, Science Fiction & Fantasy Poetry Association, and Lewis Carroll Society Of North America. Visit the Fairy Fly Entertainment Website Lori shares with her two talented sons, and their YouTube Channel @FairyFly. They have a Folk Band called The Fairyflies.

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      Book preview

      Jugular - Lori R. Lopez

      Jugular

      by Lori R. Lopez

      Fairy Fly Entertainment

      All rights reserved

      No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any

      media without written permission from the author, except

      brief excerpts in critical reviews and articles.

      This is a work of fiction. Any and all references to real persons, events, and places are used fictitiously. Other characters, names, places, events and details are fabrications of the author’s imagination; any such resemblance to actual places, events or persons, whether living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

      Copyright © 2012 by Lori R. Lopez

      Copyright © 2018 Revised Edition by Lori R. Lopez

      Artwork by Lori R. Lopez

      Author Photo by Fairy Fly Entertainment

      E-Book Edition (EPUB)

      Table Of Contents

      Jugular

      Table Of Contents

      About the author and artist

      More works by Lori R. Lopez

      Jugular is a novelette about a woman whose life has never been normal, from childhood to childbirth. Her mother locked her in a box. Her son is a serial killer. Then things take a turn for the worse and she wakes up dead. Or rather, undead. From there it goes downhill. Way down.

      What do you do when you meet the mother of all hags and learn she’s your great-great-great-great-great-something-grandmother? But that isn’t Magda’s biggest problem. Her life is going through some major changes, including that she just woke up in the morgue. Oh yeah, she’s also a vampire. Told with creative language, a blending of artistic prose and dark humor, this horror-fantasy novelette is the beginning of a trilogy, yet each of the three parts is a stand-alone story. Edgy and gruesome, Jugular will take you beyond the grave for an unusual take on a popular mythos. Although rooted in Romanian history, it is a modern Gothic narrative that breaks the mold, rewriting the vampire legend as a hereditary disease where females are the true vamps, coming into their powers or next blood phase at The Change Of Life. But, like an insect colony, there can be only one queen.

      WARNING: Some content may be disturbing to sensitive readers.

      DOWNWARD STABS PIERCED HER a thousandfold. That was how it generally went. Encircled by an umbral tide of blackness denser than a total eclipse. Though her eyesight was keen, improved in recent months, it happened too swift to make out the features or distinguish traits and dimensions. Whoever was trying to kill her remained anonymous.

      She heard whispers. Pesky and persistent. As if vicious people were gossipping about her. And then there was the smell, a cloying scent that made her belly lurch. She couldn’t get it out of her head. Along with the steady palpitation that accompanied her thoughts. Sometimes this became maddening, a wild rhythm of abundant beats marching to discordant drummers. Other times there was a single cadence building an urge within — the compulsion to obey a powerful impetus.

      She tossed erratically, her sleep deprived by depraved sensations. Mysterious furtive scritchings on the walls of her fear, clawing to get in. An underlying significance pervaded, groping at the fringes of her semiconscious state. She couldn’t quite grasp the meaning, but it left a foul taste in her mouth. Or jerked her awake, coughing and choking, Acid Reflux scalding her esophagus.

      No no no. She yearned to go back to a placidly dull routine, struggled against the fetters of what felt inevitable. It was like denying what you knew in the back of your mind to bear a kernel of truth. You could shake your head and obstinately rail in contradiction, yet that grain endured.

      Often she awoke wanting to cry.

      A good sob eased the turbulence, unloaded the tensions and torments and scrubbed the soul as a deluge cleanses earth and air. These dreams had the same effect. They purged the ability to oppose her nature. Wrung the emotions and drained her, until she was more exhausted when she roused than she had been when she went to bed. It would be a relief to surrender, an internal voice enticed.

      And always was the nagsome, gnawing, indisputable fact of a hunger she could not control. An inferno searing at her core. Raw meat could appease it, provide a temporary solution. In the depth of the night, however, came the howls: rip-roaring shrieks of primal rage.

      The kettle screeched, a gust of steam ejecting from its spout, the snort of a rabid bull. She blinked, jarred by the racket, and discovered herself perched on a chair at a kitchen table. A familiar tranquil setting, but her mind had been elsewhere.

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