PRO SE PRESENTS
NEW AUTHORS - NEW VISIONS - NEW PULP FICTION FOR A NEW GENERATION
AUGUST 2011
Copyright © 2011, 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
proseproductions@earthlink.net
www.prosepulp.com
“Art Imitates Death” copyright © 2011 Sean Taylor
“Andar and the Farmer” copyright © 2011 Don Thomas
“The Scandal of the Bohemian” copyright © 2011 Ken Janssens
Front Cover Art by Sean E. Ali
Back Cover and Interior Art by Pete Cooper and Sean E. Ali
Book Design, Layout, and additional graphics created by Sean E. Ali
TABLE OF CONTENTS
by Sean Taylor
by Don Thomas
SHERRINGFORD BELL AND THE SCANDAL OF THE BOHEMIAN
by Ken Janssens
DEDICATION
In memory of all the great contributors to the detective mythos.
ART IMITATES DEATH
By Sean Taylor
“LOVE, any devil else but you
Would for a given soul give something too.”
—John Donne, “Love’s Exchange”
“No really. I’m fine,” Mark said, putting the cell phone in the empty passenger seat. “You don’t have to come up. I’ll be perfectly fine.”
“I worry about you.” Melinda’s warmth was evident even over the lousy connection. “You’re all alone up there. It was one thing to be on the mountain when you and my sister…” Her voice fell away, then grew warm and strong again. “Well, when there were two of you… But now that you’re all by yourself, it’s got to be a little creepy.”
The road twisted ahead, with only the lights from his BMW to help him follow the serpentine mess of roughly paved gravel paths. Like something from his past, growing up in southern Georgia, only with gravel instead of red clay. Drive for miles and see nothing but woods and fields, and then—boom—suddenly a bed and breakfast or a fishing lodge jumps out at you from around the next tight curve. Any minute now, his home away from home, his two story art studio would do the same, where she would be waiting for him.
“I’m a sculptor, Melinda.” He grinned at the phone, even though he knew she couldn’t see it. “I’m supposed to like solitude. Remember? Besides, I’ve got a new project to keep me occupied for several weeks.”
There was a long silence.
“Okay, but you call me at least once a week, and if you get lonely, just know that I can be up there in about an hour and a half. We could grab some dinner at that mom and pop seafood buffet.”
“Bill and Vera’s Seafood Shack.”
“That’s the one.”
“Yeah. That was one of your sister’s favorites.”
Melinda coughed and cleared her throat. “Well, we don’t have to eat there.”
“ No,” he said, picking up the phone from the seat. “It’s fine, really. But not for a few weeks. I really want to finish this new project and then I’ll call you up for a weekend and show her off to you. I think you’re going to love it. It’s my most personal work so far. I’m really putting a lot of love into it.”
“Okay, if you’re sure.”
“I’m sure. Don’t worry about me.”
A deer ran in front of him and he hit the brakes, dropping the phone and sending it careening into the floor. “Hold on,” he shouted.
Melinda’s voice suddenly sounded like a fairy stuffed under a pillow. The phone had probably been jostled under the seat. He could still hear her but couldn’t make sense of the muffled squeals and squawks.
“Just a minute,” he yelled, and spun the car to a stop.
Mark leaned over and dug under the seat until he found the phone and held it up to his ear. “Got it. Sorry about that.”
“What happened?”
“A deer.”
“You okay?”
He laughed. “After what we’ve been through the past year, you’re worried about a deer crossing in front of my car? Talk about a loss of perspective.”
He heard his sister-in-law laugh too. “But you are okay, right?”
“Yeah. Wasn’t even close.”
Something rustled loudly in the bushes a few feet away, and Mark jerked his head sideways to get a look. But it was too dark and the headlights were facing the wrong direction. “Damn,” he said and leaned over to open the dashboard pocket. Groping blindly, his fingers searched for the flashlight he kept there. When they didn’t find it, he remembered leaving it in the trunk after using it down at the cemetery when he had visited the gravesite a few days earlier.
“Mark?”
“Hang on. There’s something in the bushes.”
“One of them?”
“Probably not. But after everything, it’s just got me jumpy, that’s all.”
“Then get the hell out of there and come home.”
He shook his head. “No. Until I get my head around all this and finish my new project, this is home.”
Melinda’s silence told him how frustrated she was at him. But she wouldn’t understand.
“Really, I’ll be fine,” swore Mark. “I’m sure it’s just rabbits or something.”
He listened for the rustling again, but there was no sound at all. Just eerie silence.
“See, it’s gone already,” he added.
Melinda still said nothing, only heaved heavy, angry breaths into the phone.
“I’ve got a shovel, and I know where my towel is,” he said with a smirk.
“You big geek,” she said with a giggle. “We never could change your mind when you had it made up.”
“What can I say? I’m stubborn.”
“Listen, Mom and Dad would like to see you too. They wanted me to tell you that you’re still family regardless.”
“They’re sweet. Tell them I love them too.”
“You tell them.”
He sighed. “I will. But I’ve got so much to do first.”
“Mark?”
“Yeah?”
“I wasn’t kidding about dinner. I’d really like for you to take me out when you’re ready.” She took a long breath he could hear over the phone. “I know it’s forward and after, well, after my sister’s illness, most people would think I’m some kind of whore to even bring it up.”
“Not now, Melinda.”
“Okay then, when?”
“Please.”
“Okay. I’ll give you more time, but if you don’t invite me up within the next month, I’m coming anyway, whether your project is finished or not.” She laughed, and he thought it sounded forced. She was so much like her twin sister, and he had certainly been able to read the truth behind her laughs too. “Deal?”
“Deal. Let me let you go. I want to focus on these nightmare curves up here so I don’t end up in a ditch.”
“Be careful. I’m serious.”
“I’m hanging up now.”
“’K. Bye.”
“You’re nuts.”
“Runs in the family. Be careful.”
“Will do. Bye.”
He pressed the red button and tossed the phone in the passenger seat again. Melinda had been good to him after the funeral, but even as comforting as she had been and would like to be, he could not be distracted.
Not now.
The woman Mark loved waited for him in his studio. And he had already been waiting months to see her again.
***
The stitches were barely visible.
Melanie’s legs were gone, that was true enough, but the skin had still been intact enough to make the cuts almost seamless. Only a faint red line, covered by the criss-crossed black thread gave any indication she hadn’t been born without them. Body paint and makeup would cover even those marks. She would be perfect again soon.
Mark traced his fingers along the stitches like he had once traced them along Melanie’s lips when they were making love—as though time were limitless and to rush the act of skin touching skin would taint the act and reduce it to mere sex.
“ Mmmm.” Melanie was stirring from her sleep. She’d probably wake up cranky again as well. He wasn’t sure if her increased irritability were an after effect of losing the limbs or from the degeneration of tissue, but it didn’t matter. She was his wife, and no matter what she had gone through, whatever nightmare has sought to claim her, he would steal her from anything that dared to take her—even death.
“Mark.” Even as softly as it was said, it wasn’t a question.
There were still traces of the voice he remembered. Something in the timbre, if not the texture or the octave. That and the quick way she ended the ‘k’ at the end of his name when she was angry.
“Right here, honey.”
“I can’t feel my legs. I can’t feel my fucking legs.”
He stroked the side of her face, ignoring the roughness caused by the dehydration of her skin. “We talked about this, remember?” he asked, pulling his hand away as she angled her head toward it and sniffed to get his scent.
“What the hell did you do to me? Where are my damn legs?”
He continued stroking her, his fingers working into the matted mess that was left of her hair. “I cut them off. They were no good anyway, all rotten and malignant from the sickness. We talked about this before at least a hundred times. It was the only way to save the rest of you.”
“You cut off my legs?” Melanie sounded as if she were about to cry. Even with her mangled voice, he could still tell. She was his wife, the other half of his soul as they had promised in their vows, and if anyone could tell she was going to cry, he could tell. She was still his goddamn wife.
“I had to, sweetheart.”
“All of them?”
He smiled at her. “Yeah, honey. All of them. All the way up to the joint.” And he had done a damn fine job he thought to himself, a damn fine job indeed.
“Did you… D-did you have to —” He could hear the anger in her voice starting to subside, fading into a sad sort of curiosity.
Mark lifted her head to face him, eye to eye, but by the temples, not by the jaw—not yet. She wasn’t ready. “We talked about it, all of it, but I’ll tell you again, sweetheart, a hundred more times if I have to. The disease ate away your legs so bad that they were dead. There was no saving them. I would have if I could. You know that.”
She shook her head and opened her eyes wide. “I know that?” Then she nodded. “Yes. I know that. I’m sorry. I know that.” She blinked once, twice, then shook her head again and smiled at him, a lopsided motion that revealed the torn muscles of her jaw line that showed through her shredded lower lip. “I just have so much trouble remembering things lately.”
Mark leaned in and kissed her forehead, her perfect and soft forehead, the first of the skin he had managed to rehydrate and return to life. “It’s okay, baby. We’ve got all the time in the world.”
“Mark?”
“Yeah, sweetie?”
“I’m really cold.”
“I know.”
“Aren’t you?” she asked.
He grinned. “Not really. I’ve got the heat up and the fire going in the living room. I’m actually sweating a little bit.” He pulled up his shirt to show her the wet stains soaking his chest.
“Oh.”
“Yeah.”
“I’m so cold though.” She coughed, and a bit of dried blood dropped onto the oak floor.
“It’s okay. You’ll probably feel like that for a while.” He stepped toward the door separating his studio from the living room. “Want me to add another log on the fire?”
“Please,” she said, then added weakly after another cough. “I’m so tired.”
“Take a nap then, sweetie. I’ve got some work I need to finish anyway.”
“When can I see it?” Melanie lifted her head and looked up at the ceiling. “Something’s different.”
Mark leaned against the door frame. “When I’m done. You know the drill. Nobody sees any new project until I’m happy with it. Artist’s prerogative. We’re all pretentious bastards that way.”
She didn’t respond but kept staring up at the ceiling, an angled frame of pine posts that gave the studio the look and feel of a wilderness cabin retreat to set it off from the rest of the house. “Something’s different.”
“I took out the skylight and roofed over it.” He tapped on the door frame. It gave a dull wooden thunk for each tap. “Didn’t feel safe after all the bad weather lately. Thought we needed something more solid.”
“Oh.” She didn’t look down.
“Besides,” he said as he felt along the wall for the light switch. “We get plenty of light from the windows.”
She craned her neck to see outside but found the curtains drawn, covering the windows and cutting her off from the world outside the house. “I can’t see the trees.”
“It’s night, silly,” he said and flipped off the light. “There’s nothing to see out there anyway, and keeping the shades closed keeps out the cold.”
“Mark?”
He touched his finger to his lips. “Sleep for now, honey. I’ll check on you in a little bit.”
He turned and pulled the door closed behind him. As he heard it click, Mark slumped back against it and let himself fall to the floor in a heap. He stared ahead at the fireplace. Nothing burned in spite of what he’d told her.
Her chills were something he could never repair. Not even if he burned the whole damn house to the ground around them. No matter how beautiful she might eventually become again.
His heart pounded in his ears, no longer confined to his chest. He hated lying to her, but she’d never understand that it was all necessary. If he hadn’t had the courage to… alter her, then they’d have never been able to be together again like they had promised. Without his work to perfect her, she’d have been corralled into a facility like the others. No. It was the only way. And after he was done, no one could ever tell that she had been something foul, and unclean, and murderous.
He was an artist, and she would be not only his bride again, but his greatest work.
***
The morning coffee had sat too long while he showered. It had grown cold, but he drank the oversized ceramic mug of it in a few long draws anyway, and then set the mug down again on the breakfast table. It sat beside the five piece set of pottery chickens—one hen, a rooster, and three chicks—that occupied the center of the table, a gift from Melanie’s parents during a surprise visit. The mug itself was a gift from Melanie, an oversized one with Frankenstein monster on the side. The creature’s arms joined together at the hands to make a handle that even Mark’s thick fingers could fit through comfortably.
“Shit,” he said and pushed the mug away. “What are you doing, Mark? You’re crazy to think this will work, you know that?” He tapped his forehead three times and pressed against it hard enough to feel the pressure against his skull. Then he grinned before answering himself. “But what choice do we have? Really, what other chance in hell do we have?”
He grabbed the mug again and filled it up with cold coffee. “Shit. I suppose I could move on and make a new life, but a promise is a promise, right?”
He lifted the coffee to his lips and took a long swallow. No cream. No sugar. No anything. Just cold black ooze hitting the back of his throat and draining down thick and slow.
He downed two more mugs of the murky stuff before working up the courage to enter the studio.
Melanie was awake and waiting for him. She smiled instead of asking about her legs. That, at least, was a good sign. Perhaps they’d have a good day today. No slip ups. No reversions. No descents into what the sickness had done to her before he cut away the infected parts.
“Good morning, sunshine,” he said, making his way to the curtains to open them. As he did the sunlight spilled in, bathing Melanie’s form in a glow not unlike that of a Renaissance Madonna. Her torso hung suspended on the rack he had made for her weeks ago. Limbless, her body resembled a dressmaker’s dummy more than a human being.
The thick cotton gown he had draped over her only made the resemblance more complete. There was no sense in freaking her out if she saw all the changes to her body. Soon though, soon she wouldn’t need the gown to hide her.
“You look happy,” Melanie said, craning her neck to follow him around the perimeter of the studio.
“I am.” Mark stopped and took a deep breath. “Being around you always makes me happy.”
“Guess what?” she said.
He opened the last of the curtains with a wide flourish that almost slipped into a flirty bow. “What’s that?”
“I remembered this time.”
“Remembered what?”
“About my legs. Not at first, but after a minute or two. I didn’t get mad though. I made myself remember so I wouldn’t be mad at you this time.”
He touched the side of her face, and she didn’t twist to sniff him. “That’s my good girl,” he said. He let his fingers linger longer than usual. “I don’t like it when we fight.”
“You know what though?”
“What’s that, honey?”
She turned toward his hand and he jerked it away.
“Don’t want a kiss this morning?”
“Oh.” He slowly put his hand close to her face again. She kissed it, and he pulled it away again. “That’s nice,” he said.
“Glad you like it. It feels nice to me too. What little I can feel, I mean. It’s like my arms and face are numb.”
He grinned. “Like that Cosby skit about the dentist. Fiber in my mouboth. You remember that one, right?”
She scrunched up her face. He let her think. The last time they’d watched the comedy special had been at least a year before the sickness got her, and a memory that old might be hard to track down quickly. Might be impossible for all he knew. It depended on what the damn sickness had done to her brain.
After nearly a minute though, he interrupted her attempt. “It’s all ri—”
“Four years old,” She interrupted and coughed, but he thought it sounded like she was trying to laugh. He let himself believe that anyway. “That’s the one with the kid who was four years old.”
Mark grinned this time, a full on, warm up the heart grin that he hadn’t let himself feel in weeks. “That’s it.”
He walked up to her, threw his arms around her chest, and squeezed. Only the cracking of a rib beneath him made him remember to relax his grip. She leaned into him and when her face touched his shoulder, he let go and stepped back.
“That was nice,” she said.
“Yeah, but I have to be careful.” He wiped some of her dead skin from his chin. “I might still hurt you if I’m not careful.”
“Oh,” she said and her eyes drooped in disappointment. “Anyway, what I wanted to tell you was that I think I’m getting better. At least my appetite is coming back. I’m starving.”
“That’s good,” he said. “I only fixed some oatmeal and coffee this morning, but I could make some for you, if you want.”
“Got any bacon instead? Or maybe some of the deer sausage we had ground?”
“I think so, but don’t you want to take it easy on your stomach before hitting a big breakfast whole hog like that?”
“I don’t want a big breakfast, just the meat. I’m really in the mood for meat for some reason. Must need protein after resting so much.”
He nodded and stroked her face again. “Sure, but let me check you out first.”
“Whatever you say, honey.”
Her eyes followed Mark’s fingers as best she could while he inspected her face and chest. No more degeneration of tissue, but no real growth either. And the grafted skin was dying too. If regrowing her original skin or grafting new skin wasn’t the answer, he would have to look into other options, even those from his art kit rather than the little surgical remedies he could glean from the Internet.
He lifted the gown and checked the new stitches along the joints of her shoulders. The arms had come off easily enough during the night as she slept, but she hadn’t noticed yet—thank God for that. She must still be feeling phantom sensations, as if the limbs were still there. Thank God for that too. Let her believe they were there until he had to tell her the full and horrible truth.
If he had thought the new Melanie had favored a dressmaker’s dummy before, then now, with her arms removed to go along with her missing legs, he was more convinced than ever. He even corrected his previous comparison.
Before, he realized, she had been a Roman goddess, a Venus whose legs had been ravaged by time. Only now she was a dressmaker’s dummy. Or perhaps she had become a bust. He laughed and she looked at him, her eyes wide and the skin where her eyebrows had been lifted high and arched.
“What’s so funny, honey?” she asked.
He shook his head. “Just an old art joke from college.”
“So tell me.”
“It’s about busts.”
“Like boobs?”
“Well, not the original use of the word, but the boob connection is what made it funny.”
She looked away, still smiling he noticed as she turned. “Guy jokes. I don’t think I even want to know.”
He moved around to her other shoulder and pushed on the sewed skin and tissue beneath it.
Melanie flinched. “Ow.”
“You felt that?”
“Yeah. It hurt my arm. Don’t do that again, please.”
“That’s a good sign then.” He dropped the sheet covering her body and let it flow. It waved back and forth beneath her several times then stopped. Without her legs emerging from inside it, the dummy image seemed complete. All she needed was a few pins sticking out of her.
He pushed the thought aside. It wasn’t fair to her. She was still his wife, damn it, not some joke.
“Let me go fix you up some sausage, sweetie,” he said. “Want the light on or off in here?”
“Can’t you take me in the kitchen with you?”
“No,” he shot back without realizing how quickly he had snapped at her. Mark looked at the floor, counted to five, then braved her gaze again. Her eyes wrinkled as though she would cry, even though he knew her tear ducts were drained and dry. But the hurt was honest, regardless, and it had been his fault. “I’m sorry, sweetie. Not yet. I’ve managed to keep it clean and fairly anti-bacterial in the studio, but if I take you out before I seal up all the wounds you might get infected again,” he lied.
“Oh,” she said, dropping her gaze. “Okay.”
“Soon, I promise. Very soon.”
“Sure,” she said barely above a whisper. “I trust you.”
***
Mark sat at his desk in the living room, watching the newscasts on his computer monitor. The world was gradually coming back under control, it seemed. Most of the infected dead were safely corralled, although some had been allowed to reintegrate into something that faintly resembled a human existence.
But that would not do for Melanie, not for his Melanie at all. She would not just exist as something less than human. He couldn’t let her. Not if he really believed all those things he had promised her during their wedding.
A screensaver slide show scrolled across the screen. Photos from their wedding. Honeymoon. Melanie pregnant with William and Rebecca. Melanie and her twin sister Melinda dressed as vampires for Halloween. The birth. Lillian in her prenatal chamber until her lungs were strong enough to breath air well enough. Melanie and the kids at Rock City crammed into the Fat Man’s Squeeze. Three gravestones topped with marble crosses.
He tapped the space bar to turn off the slide show. The news page filled the screen once again.
No. Some limited limbo existence wouldn’t do for his wife. Not after all they’d been through together. Not even after all she had done when she crawled out of her grave and returned home. Not even that.
But she hadn’t eaten the sausage though. That bothered him. She had tried, then had spit it out onto the floor in a thick mixture of dried blood, partially chewed food, and even some of the deteriorated lining of her throat.
“I can’t eat that shit,” she had yelled. “You’ve cooked all the flavor out of it.”
And he had made more, cooked it less, just enough to make the pink disappear. Too close still to raw for him to dare take a bite though.
But it hadn’t mattered. She spit that out too and demanded something still even more raw.
That’s when he had lost it and yelled at her, smashed the plate into the ground and stormed off, stopping only to flip off the lights and slam the door behind him.
He was losing her. He would have to hurry.
***
It had taken two days of searching the web, but in the end he had the answer. It had been in front of him since the beginning, but he had been too concerned about her humanity to notice something so simple, so beautifully apparent.
Wax.
Sure, she could still feel pain, but not like she had before she had died. And once the brief pain had died down, she would have an alluring new skin, one that couldn’t die. One that would remain gorgeous and lustrous. One that would hide the thing she had become underneath.
A visit to a retail supplies website had shown him how to take away the shame of being a mere torso. With the right metal connectors set in place in the flat skin of her shoulder and leg joints, he could purchase new arms, new legs, and new limbs for lots of poses and occasions.
Melanie could and would be the lady of the house. Someone elegant and enviable, not a monster to be either pitied or hunted and rounded up or destroyed.
She would be perfect again, just as he wanted her to be. Just as he was sure she herself wanted to be.
***
After two weeks, he was finally finished. He celebrated by rehanging all the mirrors he had taken down when she first returned home and replacing all the light bulbs in the rest of the house that he had taken out.
For nearly a month, Mark had been resigned to live in just the studio, living room, and kitchen, but now the time had come to welcome Melanie back into the world, the beautiful world she at last belonged to again, thanks to his hard work.
He had even called Melinda, telling her he had a wonderful surprise for her.
“Isn’t she amazing?” he asked, ushering Melinda into the studio.
“What the fuck is that?” Melinda backed into the living room and nearly fell over the ottoman he and Melanie had bought together in the Smoky Mountains at a consignment shop. “Mark, what the hell is that—that thing?”
“It’s Melanie. It’s my wife.” He followed his sister-in-law into the living room and took her hand. “It’s your sister.”
Melinda snatched her hand away and raised it to slap him. She stopped though, and let her arm drop to her side. “That thing is not my sister. I don’t know what you did, but that is not my fucking sister.”
Mark walked back into the studio and stood behind his wife’s new body. Long, slender legs that reflected the sunlight in the room emerged from beneath a floral print sundress. Matching arms hung by her side, snapped in place on the fixtures that were now a permanent part of her shoulder joints. Even her face was perfect. A combination of makeup and wax gave the illusion that Melanie was as fine a doll of human perfection as had ever existed.