Proctor Who? Part Two

Who is the Proctor?

A question central to the latest Evil UnLtd volume.

The Proctor is a conundrum wrapped in an enema and – wait, either we’re getting déjà vu or we’re caught in a chronic hysteresis. We’ve been through all that before.

Today, we’ll be profiling one of the individuals who lays claim to the title of Proctor, cast in order of appearance, ugliest first.

The Second (?) Proctor

(aka Proctor Occam)

Exclusive Time/Space snippet:

Talulah Belle’s eyes roamed so far and wide over the walls and ceilings of the Imperial Palace, why, it was a marvel they didn’t just set off on an adventure of their own. Travelling all this décor, they’d need horses to properly explore the splendor. Or a coach, for avoiding the saddle sores.

(Splendour, she belatedly corrected herself. While her mama had told her to mind her ‘P’s and ‘Q’s, her Gentleman was strangely more insistent about her proper inclusion of ‘U’s in all kinds of words that hadn’t previously shown any use for them.)

She’d been working the Dixie Cleopatra when he’d come and whisked her away and she’d thought that queenly old steamboat was pretty palatial, but she was a tramp compared to this space. Mercy, she could have counted the gentlemen who’d wanted to save her – for themselves – on the beads of one abacus. Her Gentleman was different: he’d promised to show her the wonders of the universe. She’d been real close to saying no, on account of his professing to be a proctologist, but then she figured it must be a big old universe out there, with plenty of call for all kinds of professions, and who was she to judge. It was only later when her misunderstanding came to light, in polite company, that he explained that no, he was a Proctor, and went to some pains to stress the differences.

As the Empress Sabella swept forward, Talulah curtsied, safe in the understanding that her Gentleman Proctor was not here to probe the royal derriere. Discovering any means of access under all those regal skirts would have been no easy feat anyhow and her escort of purple-clad guards looked apt to fend off any attentions too personal.

The Proctor settled for a stiff bow. Formality rooted in gentlemanliness as well as a general stiffness of bones and joints and pretty much everywhere in his body apart from where it had mattered most to the bulk of the clientele on the Dixie Cleo. He cranked his old back upright and smiled. Something Talulah Belle recommended he did sparingly, seeing as how his cheeks were so hollow and his nose more befitting a bald eagle, and stretching his wiry lips to any degree often made him appear creepy. His brow was more furrowed than a ploughed field, topped off with a ghostly frosting of hair like fresh-whipped cobwebs and cotton candy.

“Your Majesty,” he said in his voice that scraped like a fiddle that had mouldered in the grave longer than John Brown’s body.

The Empress, bless her heart, showed no signs of being intimidated. She held her head aloof, nose at an angle to guarantee any errant sneezes an uphill journey. “Proctor Occam, I understand you have a gift for me.”

“Indeed, Your Majesty. I hope you will keep it in an extremely safe place.”

He stood aside and gestured like a showman at their captive.

She was like a caged tigress and she was in no mood to perform. She beat against the invisible walls of her containment field. Talulah did not begin to pretend to understand the technology – walls clearer than windows, hard as anything she’d encountered on the Dixie Cleo – but she’d seen the girl go through similar motions in one of her promotional music videos. Her Gentleman showed her one sequence where the girl appeared in paroxysms of orgasm while sealed in a glass tank that would have been better situated in an aquarium. She had thrashed about, steamed the glass with her breath and imprinted the mist with big fuzzy red kisses. The song was called Love My Brain. A marriage of image and lyrics that struck Talulah like a lot of marriages, leaving her to wonder what in tarnation had united the two together in the first place.

The Empress swanned up to the container, almost gliding in those skirts of hers.

“Careful, sugar,” Talulah warned. She sucked at her pinkie. “She bites.”

The Proctor whipped out his Tool.

The royal guards levelled their fancy rifles. Something folks invariably did when her Gentleman produced his Tool all sudden like.