Rose by Rami Ungar Book Tour and Giveaway :)
Rose
by
Rami Ungar
Genre:
Fantasy-Horror
Rose
Taggert awakens in a greenhouse with no clear memory of the
past two years and, to her horror, finds her body transformed into an
unrecognizable form.
Paris
Kuyper has convinced Rose that they are lovers and as Paris
could not bear for her to die, he has used an ancient and dark magic
to save her from certain death.
But
the dark magic Paris has used comes at a price. A price which a
terrible demon is determined to extract from Rose.
As
Rose struggles to understand what is happening to her, she must
navigate Paris’s lies and secrets; secrets that Paris will
do anything to
protect.
Okay, this is weird. Where the fuck am
I? I look around. I’m surrounded by a
sea of vegetation: flowers and shrubs in hundreds of varieties,
sitting in pots and trays atop a grid of workbenches. Surrounding the
workbenches is a ring of trees that tower over everything, their
upward growth halted by a glass ceiling. A literal glass ceiling, not
the one taught in my classes. Past the trees I spy more glass,
through which nothing can be glimpsed but total darkness. I’m in a greenhouse. Why am I waking
up in a greenhouse? I try to think back but I can’t remember
anything about how I fell asleep. In fact, I can’t remember how I
got to the greenhouse in the first place, or where this greenhouse is
located. Am I supposed to be here? If so, why? The questions make the pounding in
head hurt worse. I force my thoughts to quiet long enough for the
pain to subside to a dull throb. Able to think again, I try to
remember what I was doing before I found myself here. Nothing comes
to me. Okay, no problem. What’s the last
thing I do remember? Walking home. Yeah, I was heading home
after meeting with my advisor. I had my textbooks and lesson plan for
the coming semester in my bag. I crossed the street, turned the
corner at Potbelly’s, and approached my — What kind of home do I live in? I
strain, but there’s a gray fog in my memories, obscuring
everything. Not only that but the word for the kind of building I
live in is missing. Why? I should know this. It’s a word thrown
around in everyday speech! I push, but the gray fog doesn’t go
away, and the word doesn’t come. I try skipping forward to when I
got inside but that’s also a wash of gray. Concerned, I rewind
instead and get as far as the building where my department is housed,
but I can’t remember the name of the building. That can’t be!
I’ve been taking classes there for — I can’t remember how long I’ve
been taking classes there. At least four years, because I was
accepted into the graduate program. The exact number eludes me. So
does the building’s layout, the people in my program, my teachers,
and my advisor. It’s all gone. I can’t even remember any of the
classes or projects I’ve done past undergrad, though somehow, I
remember the information I’ve learned since then. My breathing quickens, and I put a
hand over my chest. Why can’t I remember anything? Okay, slow down. What do I remember?
Let’s see, my name is Rose Taggert. Last I checked I was twenty-one
years old and I’m a…sociology grad. Yeah, I’m a sociology grad,
specializing in criminology. And I remember the stuff I’ve been
learning in my classes, statistics, theories and social constructs,
plus the work I was doing on gun violence. I’m a graduate at The
Ohio State University, the second in my family to attend this
university. I also have two sisters, Hope and
Madeleine, and a brother, Brian. Brian and Hope are older than me and
Maddy is younger. Hope is my other sibling to go to OSU, while Brian
betrayed all that was holy and went up north to the University of
Michigan. Maddy’s in middle school. My parents are Roger and
Barbara Taggert. My dad is a — I can’t remember what my parents do,
which is insane because it’s why I’ve had to work to attend
college. Why can’t I remember any of this? What’s happened to me?
I must find someone who can explain to me what’s going on. A doctor
preferably, or the greenhouse caretaker. I slide off the table I’m lying on.
As I do, two things come to my attention: I’m wearing a pink,
strapless dress, which I can tell at a glance costs more than I’m
used to spending on clothes. The other is the dress and table are
covered in roses, red, pink and yellow ones with long, thorny stems,
some of which fall to the ground as I swing my legs off the table. I
bend to pick one up, careful not to prick myself on a thorn, rolling
the blossom between my fingers, admiring the beautiful pink color and
the soft velvet sensation of the petals. I normally don’t care for
roses—too many people have made jokes about my name for me to like
them — but right now I’m curious. Who sees a sleeping woman in a
dress and thinks, sure, let’s put roses on her? Abruptly, the rose dies in my hand:
the pink fleshy petals turn black and crinkly, while the stalk
becomes brown and brittle. I drop the rose and stand, alarmed. On the
workbench and on the ground, roses wilt and die before my very eyes.
What the hell? As the flowers die, my eyes light on
something lying at the foot of the workbench that’s not a rose. I
lean forward to take a closer look, only to jump back in horror.
Lying in a pool of its own blood is a large brown cat, its stomach
slit down the middle, its intestines hanging out like the contents of
some grotesque piñata. The cat’s face points in my direction,
frozen in an eternal expression of surprise, as if it too can’t
understand what has happened to it. My hands fly to my mouth, my heart
pounds against my chest, and my stomach heaves. I step back, tripping
on the hem of my dress, falling onto my back. I cry out, my stomach
gives another tremendous heave. Dead roses crackle underneath me as I
heave myself onto all fours, my red hair tumbling past my shoulders.
I wait, feeling something moving up my esophagus. Oh God, I’m going
to be sick. I’m so going to be sick. Something’s wrong. It doesn’t feel
like normal nausea. It feels like…like snakes are moving through my
chest and into my neck, around my esophagus rather than inside it. This isn’t vomit.
It’s…things…creatures, long and round and snakelike, dancing
underneath my skin. Images of thin black serpents moving around my
trachea flash through my mind, and my panic rises. What if they try
to bite and poison me with venom? Or strangle me from within? My hands dart to my neck, though I’m
not sure if I’m figuring out what’s under my skin or trying to
claw out whatever’s moving around inside of me. The things in my
neck zoom past my hands , twisting around my windpipe, cutting off
the flow of oxygen to my lungs. I open my mouth to scream, but
nothing comes out except a reedy whisper. The things in my neck are
pushing outwards at the skin of my neck, sharp tips boring through
like tiny drills. There’s eight in total, the points where they
push form a ring around the circumference of my neck, like a
deep-tissue choker of pain. My chest burns. My brain screams. My
strength is fading. Darkness creeps into my vision. I’m not going
to make it; I’m not going to survive. I won’t find out what’s
happened to me — The things in my neck burst free, long
and green and snakelike, each about two or three feet long. They
swish whip-like through the air, blood flying off them, splattering
plants and tables. The pressure on my windpipe vanishes, and I suck
in a deep breath before exhaling a pained scream. God, it feels like
I’ve been stabbed eight times in the neck, only whatever stabbed me
came from inside. Words like ‘freaky’ and ‘unreal’ don’t
even begin to cover this situation. The whips stop swishing and hang still
in the air, furnishing me a moment to think of a real name for them.
Tentacles, I decide. They are tentacles. Like an octopus or a squid.
Though why are they coming out of me? Before I can find an answer, a pair of
tentacles lash out and wrap around the leg of a workbench. Another
pair wrap around the leg of the workbench opposite, and the last two
pairs grab the ground below and the top of the workbenches above me.
Then the first pair unwrap themselves from the workbench, and lunge
for the leg belonging to the one in front of me, wrapping around the
leg and dragging me forward. The second pair do the same thing with
the workbenches on their side, pulling me forward like a ragdoll. I
cry out as the tentacles work in unison, moving forward like some
strange insect and taking me along with them. I futilely try to grab
something to hold onto, but each time I try my frantic fingers can’t
get a grip. After the third attempt leaves my hands raw, I stop and
allow myself to be pulled along, sobbing with pain and terror. The tentacles clear the workbenches
and climb up a short stone wall onto the soil bed where the trees
bask. The tentacles stop and I lay half on, half off the soil bed,
while they hover in the air. I have the impression they are smelling
the air, like dogs. Before I can wonder what they are sniffing for,
the tentacles crash into the soil, plunging deep until only a few
inches close to my neck remains visible. The tentacles begin pulsing,
spasms wracking them from deep within the earth, up their length, and
into me. I shudder trying to pull away, but the tentacles drag me
back and burrow deeper, pinning me against the dirt. I can’t
escape. Tears make rivers down my cheeks. I’m
scared and bewildered. My neck thrums in agony. “What’s happening
to me?” I whisper aloud to the greenhouse. “What the hell?” a voice replies.
“Rose! What happened?”
Rami
Ungar knew he wanted to be a writer from the age of five, when he
first became exposed to the world of Harry Potter and
wanted to create imaginative worlds like Harry’s. As a tween, he
fell in love with the works of Anne Rice and Stephen King and, as he
was getting too old to sneak up on people and shout “Boo!’ (not
that that ever stopped him), he decided to merge his two loves and
become a horror writer.
Today,
Rami lives and writes in Columbus, Ohio. He’s self-published three
novels and one collection of short stories, and his stories have
appeared in other publications here and there. Rose, his first novel
with Castrum Press, released June 21st, 2019.
When
he’s not writing your nightmares or coming up with those, he’s
enjoying anything from the latest horror novel or movie to anime and
manga to ballet, collecting anything that catches his fancy, and
giving you the impression he may not be entirely human.
My Calling Cards
Every author has those little elements
or quirks that they love to include in their stories. Their calling
cards, so to speak. For Stephen King, he often sets his story in
Maine, his heroes are often writers or law enforcement types, there’s
usually a number of rednecks, drunks and bullies who have horrible
things happen to them at some point in their story, and there’s a
twenty-five percent chance one character will end up being psychic or
otherwise paranormally gifted. You put these elements in a story, and
you’re either King himself or you’re doing a pastiche of him.
Authors love their calling cards; they
make the story more fun to write. Readers love them too; they spend
time trying to find each one as the story unfolds, trying to see how
the author uses them this time around in the story. In a way, the
author is like a crook leaving a crime scene with tell-tale signs of
their modus operandi, and the reader is a detective looking for those
signs.
I have my own cards, though my body of
work is not very large. My protagonists tend to be teenage or young
women who don’t fit into the protagonist mold and must be forced to
be heroes. If you ask me, those sorts of characters are perfect for
leads in the horror genre. When I use male protagonists, they are
often teenagers and have some quirk or talent that makes them
unique—great driver, overly quiet, able to learn advanced skills
like getting away with crimes or doing amateur surgery just from
reading or watching a movie about it—and have a girl interested in
them (if they’re straight).
My stories also lean into the
supernatural more often than not, with a dash of weird for extra fun.
What is this element of weird? Well, in my novel Rose, the
protagonist turns into a plant-woman in the first chapter. That’s
what I mean by weird.
Oh, and I like to add ballet to my
stories when I can. I’ve become a huge fan of ballet in the past
few years, and naturally it’s crept into my writing. Characters
could be dancers and ballerinas, or I’ll find some way to reference
ballet in the course of the story.
Those are my calling cards. I’m still
early in my career, so there’s still plenty to incorporate in
future years. Still, if any of the above interests you, you and I
might get along fine. Or should I say, you and my stories should get
along fine.
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