Proctor Who? Part Four

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 another of the individuals who lays claim to the title of Proctor, in an eternal struggle between order and chaos.

The Fourth (?) Proctor

Exclusive Time/Space snippet:

Bibi broke from the path and barged through clumps of ornamental shrubbery. Where the plants resisted, she gave them a blast of her hairspray which doubled as an excellent defoliant.

She burst through and almost teetered into a pond. She veered left, hopscotching around its banks. Just as she reached the stone path, she hit a wall of sound. Or it hit her. Or both.

It was a horrible, grating sound like the braying of an asthmatic iron donkey with rusted lungs.

The sound gave birth to hazy blue light. The light sketched angles and lines in the air, tracing the outline of a box. Intersections glowed sapphire-bright before spilling their colour, flood-filling the surfaces with deep, metallic blue. The accompanying din terminated in a solid thunk, as though the donkey had keeled over and died, leaving only the solid confirmation that the object was indeed a box.

Beyond that, the unseen artist who had deposited this curio might as well have been snickering to himself and gleefully challenging, “Can you tell what it is yet?” Because Bibi still had no idea.

It boasted a chamfered lid like a toolbox. It even sported a carrying handle, although you would’ve had to be something of a giant to lift it given its coffinesque dimensions. Assuming it was as heavy as it looked. The thunk with which it had finally materialised could have been a sound effect, Bibi supposed. But it had sounded heavy as a falling star.

She looked at it, wondering what it would do next. Boxes tended not to do very much. Except contain stuff.

She glanced over her shoulder. On the far side of the pond, Mr Quiggs staggered after her, one hand still clasped over his eyes, the other waving wildly. He splashed blindly into the water, started wading across.

She should run.

But her legs wanted to stay rooted. As if her knees wanted to stick around and stare at the box. Despite her very human lack of eyes in either patella.

From out in the water, Mr Quiggs whined: “Please! Please, come back! I just wanted to talk!”

Bibi stared and stared at the box, willing it to do something. Anything. “Do something!” she urged it.

The box hummed.

A seam parted along its top. The lid opened like an oblong clamshell. Folding back to reveal an impossibly dark interior. And locking into place as a pair of tiered trays on either side.

In one of the trays lay a man.

Well, lay was too leisurely a word. He was squashed up in a cramped foetal position, the tray being nowhere near long enough to accommodate his tall, wiry frame. He wasted no time in leaping up and springing free from the box.

He aimed his head this way and that, his eyes darted everywhere – although hardly ever in the same direction as his head. He whipped out a very phallic silver tool, sized somewhere between pen and truncheon, tipped with a glowing purple knob. He thrust this bulbous end at Bibi.

What the hell? Two attackers now?