Pro Se Presents: January 2012

By Pro Se Press

Pro Se Presents #6 Kicks off the Year with 'The Hand of Yogul' From James Palmer and continues on with supernatural mystery from Ken Janssens, masked avenging from PJ Lozito, and the introduction of a brand new character by brand new writer Ashley Mangin! Also, A Comic written by Don Thomas-The Origin of the Rapier! All of this and more this month in Pro Se Presents #6! Puttin' the Monthly Back into Pulp!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Pro Se Press
• Release date: Mar 6, 2012
• ISBN: 9781476371382

Pro Se Press

Based in Batesville, Arkansas, Pro Se Productions has become a leader on the cutting edge of New Pulp Fiction in a very short time.Pulp Fiction, known by many names and identified as being action/adventure, fast paced, hero versus villain, over the top characters and tight, yet extravagant plots, is experiencing a resurgence like never before. And Pro Se Press is a major part of the revival, one of the reasons that New Pulp is growing by leaps and bounds.

Book preview

PRO SE PRESENTS

NEW AUTHORS - NEW VISIONS - NEW PULP FICTION FOR A NEW GENERATION

JANUARY 2012

Copyright © 2012, Pro Se Productions

Published by Pro Se Press at Smashwords

The stories in this publication are fictional. All of the characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead is purely coincidental. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage or retrieval system, without the permission in writing of the publisher.

Edited by- Lee Houston, Jr., Nancy Hansen, and Frank Schildiner

Editor in Chief, Pro Se Productions-Tommy Hancock

Submissions Editor-Barry Reese

Publisher & Pro Se Productions, LLC-Chief Executive Officer-Fuller Bumpers

Pro Se Productions, LLC

133 1/2 Broad Street

Batesville, AR, 72501

870-834-4022

[e-mail]

www.prosepulp.com

The Hand of Yogul copyright © 2012 James Palmer

A Night at the Plaza copyright © 2012 P.J. Lozito

Fire in the Ring copyright © 2012 Ashley Mangin

Mercy Rule copyright © 2012 Ken Janssens

Introducing the Rapier copyright © 2012 Don Thomas, Christian Navarro, & Kuen Tang

Cover and Interior Art, Book Design, Layout, and additional graphics by Sean E. Ali

Additional Interior Art by Christian Navarro & Kuen Tang

E-book design and layout by Russ Anderson

TABLE OF CONTENTS

THE HAND OF YOGUL

by James Palmer

A NIGHT AT THE PLAZA

by P.J. Lozito

FIRE IN THE RING

by Ashley Mangin

MERCY RULE

by Ken Janssens

INTRODUCING THE RAPIER

by Don Thomas, Christian Navarro, & Kuen Tang

THE HAND OF YOGUL

By James Palmer

Oh, to be safe in the knowledge that we are born once upon this Earth and after strutting briefly upon the stage of life, are seen no more. I do not know how the vast sweep of time was made known to me. I can only use what I have been given, be it gift or curse.

During most of this life I was a slave; now a prisoner, but I am not perturbed. For in my new found awareness I know that I have been a slave before, and a conqueror, and a poet.

I have loved and fought and died thousands of times, stretching back to the first appearance of mankind upon this planet. I have stood in animal skins, shivering from the frigid air and gawking at the first sight of our cousins, the brutish Neanderthals, that greeted us as we pushed north about our Mother Africa.

I have ran yelping with delight through the streets of Rome as it burned, my bronze sword bright with blood. I have killed alongside Hannibal and Genghis Khan. I have chased mammoths across the frozen wastes and slit the saber tooth’s throat with a chunk of knapped flint.

All my visions are basically the same. Always of some dim, unknown age, always fighting, sword or bludgeon in hand, covered in gore and shaking with the rush of the kill. And in each vision of a bygone age, I know without doubt that I am the person in my vision, even as I am now David Ashley, merchant sailor and one time opium addict, who was freed from that heartless taskmaster only to be lashed to one even more cruel: the monstrous fiend from Hell, Lao Fang.

How long I have been his servant I cannot say, for time itself seems to bend and tear in the fiend’s presence. My existence has been one of bowing and scraping and running strange errands in the dead of night.

A few nights ago I scaled the wall of an estate to place a deadly spider in the bed of a high ranking member of the House of Lords. For three hours one late afternoon I stood in wait for an elderly gentleman carrying a gold tipped cane so that I could slit his throat and leave him gurgling in an alley. I was never told who he was or why I was doing it.

Each assignment was more outlandish, more blood soaked, more blasphemous than the last, and yet I carried out each and every one without question. And Lao Fang would smile upon me and place his long, thin hand upon my shoulder, and send me off on another barbaric task. Always with the promise of greater glory down the road.

And I went out as one dazed, forsaking food and sleep if need be, for I was about my Master’s business and in that I could not falter. The punishment for failure was worse than getting apprehended by the authorities. This I knew from bitter, secondhand experience. So I took to my new stock and trade with reckless aplomb, my new tools the shadows, the cudgel, and the garrote.

This is how I found myself in a new position within the Master’s shadowy organization. Mine was now a more important task, that of guarding Lao Fang himself.

There were always two of us seeing to the mummy case. On that particular night when my new awareness came upon me, it was myself and Sahim the Mohammedan, a slim little troll of a man who sat on a little wooden stool in the back of the lorry, right next to the sarcophagus. He steepled his thin fingers, and looked at me suspiciously. Every now and again, he would mutter something under his breath and chuckle.

I tried to ignore him, focusing instead on the fog shrouded, nighttime streets of London that flew past as the truck moved toward some unknown destination. My job was a simple one: carry the mummy case into a house or other building and place it where the driver tells us. Then we get back in the lorry and go back whence we came.

We fulfilled our duty without incident, carrying the strange sarcophagus into a derelict manor house with lavish appointments that looked as if it had not been entered in ages. A man armed with a .45 in a shoulder holster came to the door and let us in, while the driver instructed us on the proper placement of the case.

Once our strange work was finished, we climbed silently into the back of the lorry and waited to be carried back to the subterranean apartments of the hell fiend who was our lord and master.

The hour was late, being sometime after two o’clock in the morning, and on the way back I must have fallen asleep, for I began to have the most vivid of visions. These were more than dreams, more real even than the delusions I enjoyed beneath the shroud of hashish, opium, or laudanum. There came with them the overwhelming feeling of déjà vu, the sense that I was not seeing these incredible sights for the first time.

There were sounds and smells too. The dull roar of people shouting in an open marketplace, none of whom spoke English. The hot, musky scent of animals. The smell of meat cooking. The coppery tinge of human blood.

This was like nothing I had ever experienced before. Such a jumble of sounds, smells and images. And what images they were too!

I have already alluded to them, but this was before I understood them. To be watching a priest holding a wooden chalice filled with human blood ascending a ziggurat, muscled warriors hacking each other to death with bronze swords, and all seen as if I were one of the participants!

It was enough to make anyone question their sanity, and I wondered if Lao Fang’s strange rejuvenating drought had found me too late to stave off the brain damage the opium and hashish had obviously caused.

I told no one of these visions, and kept to my grisly duties. What free time I had was for sleeping, which I could do instantly anywhere, and with sleep came more dream visions.

After two weeks of this, I was convinced that these were no ordinary dreams. I reasoned this was so because every vision was framed in some exotic locale long ago in time. I had never been a student