Pro Se Presents: August 2012

By Pro Se Press

Punching its way into its second year, PRO SE PRESENTS keeps on Puttin' the Monthly Back Into Pulp! PSP 13 is chock full of old favorites and new faces! Chuck Miller brings a new chapter in the world of his psychedelic Pulp character, The Black Centipede! Noted writer H. David Blalock introduces readers to 'Kelly's Beast'! And Joshua Reynolds returns along St. Cyprian, Pulp's favorite Royal Occultist! Magic, madness, murder, and more! Featuring Cover Design and Art Work from Sean E. Ali, Pro Se Presents 13 comes out blazing from Pro Se Press!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Pro Se Press
• Release date: Sep 9, 2012
• ISBN: 9781301074518

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

AUGUST 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.

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 Abominable Myra Linsky Rises Again copyright © 2012 Chuck Miller

Kelly’s Beast copyright © 2012 David Blalock

The Unwrapping Party copyright © 2012 Joshua Reynolds

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

E-book design and layout by Russ Anderson

TABLE OF CONTENTS

THE ABOMINABLE MYRA LINSKY RISES AGAIN

by Chuck Miller

KELLY'S BEAST

by H. David Blalock

THE UNWRAPPING PARTY

by Josh Reynolds

THE ABOMINABLE MYRA LINSKY RISES AGAIN

A Doctor Unknown Junior Adventure

By Chuck Miller

ONE: AND BESIDES, THE WENCH IS DEAD

CITY OF ZENITH

THE HOME/OFFICE OF DOCTOR DANA UNKNOWN

Aka Doctor Unknown Junior

"What the hell kind of name is Myra Linsky?" I asked, shaking my head.

I think it’s Irish, Jack, said Dana. I know it sounds Eastern European, but it has a ‘y,’ instead of an ‘i’ at the end.

We were in the ground floor office of an old brownstone house in downtown Zenith. The house is owned by Doctor Dana Marie Laveau Unknown and serves her, and me, as both residence and workplace. My name is Jack Christian. That’s the one I was born into, but I’ve had several others at various times.

I was sitting behind my desk, and Dana was standing in front of hers.

That’s not what I meant, I said, refolding the newspaper I’d been reading and tossed it in her direction. I mean, what kind of name is Myra Linsky for an arch-enemy? An evil sorceress called Myra? It doesn’t strike much fear into the heart, does it?

Dana caught the newspaper and shrugged. I’m sorry your aesthetic sense is outraged, Jack, but it is what it is. And I wouldn’t necessarily call her evil. I never thought of her as diabolical. Misguided, maybe. She certainly chose to abuse her gifts. But I would stop short of calling her evil, and I would also hesitate to use the term arch-enemy. She’s just somebody I never got along with.

Were you ever friends?

No. We always hated each other. I always kind of wished we could have been friends, but there was something about her that put people off. It wasn’t just me. I don’t think she ever had any real friends at all.

Uh-huh. That’s really kind of a shame. It would be a lot more poignant if you had been best friends to start with, then something awful happened. But that’s as may be. You said you fought her almost to the death on three different occasions. That’s an arch-enemy, whether you like it or not.

"Why do I even have to have an arch-enemy? Did you have one back when you were running around in a cape and tights?"

They were leggings, and yes, as a matter of fact, I did. Do you remember Mackie Messer and the Three Penny Gang? They had this so-called ‘mascot’ named Pirate Jenny. She was about my age, and I scrapped with her on several occasions. The Gang treated her like a baby, but I knew there was something in her that she kept hidden. And, sure enough, when she turned 14, she murdered the whole Three Penny Gang and took off with their accumulated loot. Hasn’t been seen since. I often wonder where she ended up.

Yes, well, I may have exaggerated a little about our battles. The first time Myra and I fought ‘almost to the death,’ we were both seven years old. It was a playground spat that got out of hand.

"Whatever, she’s the only person I know of who has enough of a history with you to qualify for arch-enemy status. And it doesn’t reflect well on you to have a mortal foe with such a pedestrian name. ‘The Diabolical Myra Linsky.’ It just doesn’t track."

I can’t help that. Actually, she called herself ‘Lady Diabolique’ for a while. This was one summer when we were teenagers. She was going through a Goth phase. She had this truly horrible costume, with a sort of...

Doctor Dana Unknown is my partner in an agency whose mission cannot be summed up in just a few short words. Just looking at her—an unassuming young brunette, just a shade over five and a half feet tall, dark, slender and bespectacled—you’d never guess she was so incredibly formidable, but Dana is probably the most powerful sorceress in the world. She’s a Level Twelve Magus, whatever the hell that is.

Or she was, anyhow, until she lost a huge chunk of her power helping me fight a monstrously evil ghost that was trying to make a major incursion into our world. The ectoplasmic fiend was screwing around with me, my sister Vionna, and my friend the Black Centipede. It’s a very interesting story, but we don’t have time for it here. The bottom line is, we saved the day—more or less—but it cost Dana dearly.

I kind of felt responsible for bringing her into the whole mess—mainly because I was responsible for bringing her into the whole mess. So, once the dust had settled, and Dana had come to terms with her diminished capacity, I—out of the goodness of my heart—had offered my services to her, at a very reasonable rate, as a right-hand man, able assistant, bodyguard, and jack of all trades. Not that I ever got a proper acknowledgement of any of that from her!

I should mention here that Dana’s father is Raoul Deveraux Unknown, the famed sorcerer/superhero/certified public accountant. The old man had retired several years earlier, after a traumatic incident in which a spell of his had gotten out of control and destroyed the planet Earth and a large portion of the solar system. He and Dana had successfully rebooted the time stream, more or less erasing the episode from history except for their memories, but the experience left him a shattered man.

He currently resides in a retirement village in Florida, where his hobbies include drinking, wallowing in guilt, drinking, watching soap operas, and drinking. Dana took over his role as the mystical defender of the earth, or whatever the hell you call it. Which had been a cakewalk for her, up until her path crossed mine.

And now, six months into our partnership, things were so not rosy. I was thinking seriously about ending our arrangement. I hated to do it, but the fact was, Dana Unknown was driving me crazy.

Her attitude toward me, so it seemed, was supercilious and arrogant on a good day, and close to contempt on a bad one. And for the past month or so, the bad days had far outnumbered the good ones. I supposed I was staying on with her because of the guilt I felt. Why Dana let it continue, I couldn’t fathom.

Though I considered our arrangement a full partnership, Dana, for some reason—no doubt psychological—felt the need to maintain the fiction that she was actually my employer and that she hired me out of pity because I had no direction in life, was virtually unemployable, and would certainly drink myself to death within six months if I didn’t have something to occupy me. Which is absurd, because I could have gone another ten years at least before hitting a bottle that seriously.

And Dana, in the time honored manner of everyone who spends a lot of time with a person who drinks to a degree that a layman would find excessive, nagged me about it incessantly. The universal bane of the dedicated drinker, these Carrie Nation types.

Actually, I had, by this time, cut back considerably, but I still indulged when the mood struck me—which it had been doing more and more of late. It seemed that Dana and I were constantly at one another’s throats.

So, I continued, overriding her fashion commentary, you two grew up together and attended Hogwarts, or wherever you people go.

Something like that, yeah. Her father and my father were friends. They had hoped their daughters would carry on that tradition, but things didn’t work out that way. Myra always had a rebellious streak, and she never took her education very seriously. She started hanging around with a bad crowd. Got into some seriously forbidden practices. I found out much later that she had secretly apprenticed herself to Sikorski, the Dark Necromancer.

"Are there any light necromancers?"

Shut up, Jack. She ended up going down a very dark path.

"But you did fight almost to the death the other two times?"

Yes, yes, she replied sharply. As I say, she went down some very dark paths, and on two occasions, I felt the need to step in. I imagine she hated me even more after that.

And now she’s dead.

Yeah. Maybe.

This conversation had begun when I mentioned to Dana that I had just read an obituary in the Zenith Orator’s early edition for one Myra Linsky, and wondered aloud if she was the same one I had heard mentioned once or twice or a hundred times when Dana had been in a nostalgic and/or maudlin mood. I warmed quickly to the subject because it took the focus off of me and her. We had not actually