A Southern Gothic Holiday Special: Southern Gothic

By Magen Cubed

YOUR FAVORITE MONSTER HUNTERS ARE ON THE NAUGHTY LIST THIS YEAR…

 

After a rough few months on the job, Cash decides to have a nice, quiet Christmas at home with Dorian. But there's just one problem: Dorian's gift is cursed, and the hunters wake up on Christmas Eve in each other's bodies. Can they break the curse in time for Christmas, or are Cash and Dorian stuck knowing how the other half lives forever?

 

Spend your holiday season with Dorian Villeneuve and Cash Leroy from THE SOUTHERN GOTHIC SERIES. Includes A SOUTHERN GOTHIC HOLIDAY SPECIAL and A SOUTHERN GOTHIC EASTER SPECIAL for a 15,000-word holiday dualogy.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Magen Cubed
• Release date: Nov 28, 2021
• ISBN: 9798201290382

Magen Cubed

Magen Cubed is an Eisner-nominated writer, essayist, and occasional critic, best known for her queer monster-hunting horror-fantasy-romance series SOUTHERN GOTHIC. She has appeared in the critically acclaimed TWISTED ROMANCE comics anthology from Image Comics and has bylines on the award-winning Women Write About Comics. Magen also lives in Florida with her girlfriend Melissa and a little dog named Cecil.

Book preview

The Southern Gothic Holiday Special

The thing about gator-people is that their general anatomical composition was such that one would always end up wrestling them.

Upright on two powerful legs, gator-people were the worst kind of shifter, possessing the long, heavily muscled body of an alligator pulled into a human silhouette. The face, with its massive jaws and crushing teeth, remained all gator. A man—or a vampire, in this case—had to pounce on the gator-person's back to avoid his jaws, reaching around his powerful neck to hold his mouth closed. It helped to have a partner—a human, it just so happened—with a large knife who could get under the gator's jaw and stab him through the mouth. This would disable him long enough to deliver the deciding thrust between the gator's ribs and into his heart.

This was difficult to achieve with a gator-man snapping his jaws and swinging his head as he ran for the water at the end of the dock. If he reached the swamp, he would dive in and drag the vampire down with him. Instead, the vampire, clinging for safety on the gator's back, sank his teeth into the gator's neck. Biting twice to get through the shield of leathery scales, the vampire came back with a piece of the throat.

The gator stumbled into the swamp, anyway.

The vampire let out an indignant yelp and splashed into the muddy water.

Of course, it just had to be a gator.

Soaked and shivering, Dorian Villeneuve climbed into the passenger seat of Cash Leroy's pick-up truck. He had wrung out his clothes and poured the water out of his boots before putting them back on. It didn't help the smell of sludge and pond scum still clinging to him. Cash dutifully took off his leather jacket and draped it over the vampire's slim shoulders. In the truck bed, under a tarp, the gator dripped blood and swamp water.

You want me to put the heater on? Cash asked. It doesn't work that great, but it's better than nothing.

Dorian pouted. He pulled the borrowed jacket closer and said, I'll roll the window down and air dry.

It was a balmy 75 degrees (Fahrenheit) on December 17th. The hunters rode back into Devereux, blue tarp fluttering in the wind and a vampire hanging out of the passenger's window like a sad dog. This was the third case since Thanksgiving, on the tail of a werebadger attack and some skirmishes with the locals down in Devil's Row. The sixth case since Halloween, making it a hectic season even by Devereux standards. Cash had been too busy with work to go Christmas shopping yet. He didn't even have time to pick up a tree for the apartment, going from one case to the next with little sleep in between.

If Dorian noticed Cash's distinct lack of holiday cheer, he didn't say anything about it.

At the 23rd precinct, Detective Fritz met the hunters in the parking lot with a mug of hot coffee and his intake paperwork. Dorian sniffled as he helped Cash drag the gator out of the truck and onto the gurney for Fritz to inspect. Cash wiped his dirtied hands off on his jeans. Exhaustion hit him with a sigh, and he took cold comfort in the knowledge that they were done for the night. No Lola's this time, just home for a hot shower and a long night's sleep.

Then Detective Billie Hasagawa tossed a case file across her desk, along with the envelope of money for the gator job.

Werewolf double homicide, said Hasagawa. She didn't bother looking up from her phone, her feet propped up on her desk as she leaned back in her chair. Merry Christmas. Or happy Hanukkah. Whichever.

Cash sighed again.

***

Christmas wasn't something Dorian paid a lot of attention to. Vampire religious holidays tended to differ wildly from the handful of Christian traditions Cash was comfortable with observing. The grim tone of their calendar aside, vampires didn't have a Santa Claus of their own, let alone a Jesus Christ. Cash understood that he was the only one in the apartment pining for a good Christmas. Even then, a hunter's definition of a good Christmas was different than those who usually celebrated it.

Hunters put up trees and exchanged gifts, but they also marked the somber winter season and the end of the year with a sense of mourning. It was a time to cling