Repugnant is a 2021 horror novella by Judith Sonnet.
On Halloween, Sabra Rockford wakes up in the Cardin city morgue, horribly mangled and mutilated. Upon her reanimation, she learns from mortician Jodie Bellefonte that she was murdered by the Sender, America's most notorious and vicious Serial Killer. Sabra's soul has returned to Earth to seek vengeance on the Sender, but she has to work fast - not only does she have just one night on Earth, but the Sender is still in Cardin, and he's bringing Hell with him.
Repugnant provides examples of:
- Ax-Crazy: The Sender is a savage monster of a human being who lives only for torture and murder.
- Beauty Equals Goodness: Solidly averted with Sabra, who retains the horrific injuries that killed her and looks appropriately grotesque, but is the same good person she was in life.
- Bittersweet Ending: The entire cast is dead, but they are reunited in Hell - which isn't such a bad place - and the Sender is dead too, never to hurt anyone again.
- Combat Tentacles: The Sender is capable of using his intestines, of all things, for this purpose.
- Content Warning: The first edition has one specifically regarding a scene of violence toward children, which Sonnet felt was potentially the most upsetting part of the book.
- Cruel and Unusual Death: The Sender makes sure nearly every person he kills suffers one of these - only a handful are killed quickly. Sabra herself suffered one, with the Sender extensively torturing, mutilating, and cannibalizing her while she was still alive.
- Even Evil Has Standards: Satan is disgusted by Human Sacrifice, or at least non-consensual human sacrifice, which is why they revived Sabra to kill the Sender.
- Evil Smells Bad: The Sender is said to reek like "living roadkill."
- Extremely Short Timespan: The entire story takes place within a few hours on Halloween night, with only brief flashbacks to prior events.
- Facial Horror: Sabra lost most of her lips and cheeks during her murder, leaving her with a ghastly perpetual grin.
- Healing Factor: The Sender has one sufficient to heal from a point-blank gunshot to the head, due to his demonic powers. He is effectively immortal unless Sabra touches him.
- Heroic Sacrifice: Sabra is only back on Earth to kill the Sender, and will die again as soon as she accomplishes this task. Ultimately, both she and Lila are killed bringing the Sender down.
- Horror Doesn't Settle for Simple Tuesday: The entire story takes place on Halloween night.
- Human Sacrifice: The Sender meant his murder of Sabra as one of these. He sacrificed her to gain unholy power from Satan, which didn't quite work out - Satan was repulsed and furious, but many lesser demons answered the call and gave the Sender what he wanted anyway.
- I See Dead People: Lila is a genuine psychic who has had contact with ghosts before. However, a Revenant Zombie like Sabra is totally outside her realm of experience.
- Malevolent Masked Man: For most of the novel, the Sender wears a witch mask he stole from one of the first victims of his Halloween rampage.
- Otherworldly and Sexually Ambiguous: Satan appears as a completely androgynous white humanoid and is never referred to with gendered pronouns.
- Revenant Zombie: Sabra is a fully sentient undead creature who retains her original personality and was resurrected for the purpose of avenging her murder.
- Sadist: The Sender's sole motive is to hurt other people as much as possible, a goal which he wrongly believes that Satan approves of.
- Waking Up at the Morgue: The story begins this way, with an obviously dead Sabra reanimating and piecing together what happened to her.
- Would Hurt a Child: The Sender murders two children during his rampage through Cardin and many more at the Halloween dance. Sonnet felt the need to warn readers about this scene.
