What's next?

Excerpt from THE RETURN OF LITTLE PRECIOUS , the first DOCTOR UNKNOWN JUNIOR novel, coming soon from Pro Se Press!

ELEVEN YEARS AGO:
The bizarre super-terrorist known as Little Precious has attacked the city of Zenith by unleashing a horde of werewolves. Narrator Jack Christian (former super-hero sidekick Kid Mercury), Dana Unknown (the future Doctor Unknown Junior) and young Vionna Valis are making their way through the treacherous urban landscape when they run into...

The Black Centipede.

I had never met him, but I'd heard plenty of stories. Everybody had, and none of them were good ones. He had been a crime-fighter many, many years ago. Way before my time and Captain Mercury's. The Black Centipede had been a wanted man since 1972.

I had never met him. He was said to be cold and aloof. He did not suffer anyone—fools or sages—gladly. Or, indeed, at all. Nobody knew who he really was. Most people had the impression that there was nothing in him they wanted to know.

As far as his profession, or avocation, went, the Centipede was cast more in the mold of the mysterious and daring do-gooders that flourished for a time during the 1930s than that of the modern superhero. In fact, it was said that he had actually started out during the Great Depression, though few people took that seriously. Everybody figured the current Centipede was his son or grandson or nephew or totally unrelated. He never shared any of his personal history with anyone that I was aware of.

He was wanted by any number of law enforcement agencies here and abroad. Vigilantism was illegal in most places around the country and the world. Back during the salad days in Zenith, these laws were almost never enforced. Once the superhero scene withered away, though, that changed. Well before that, however, the Centipede had abused even the wide latitude given by city officials to our kind, and what happened in 1972 had snapped the camel's spine.

*

And now-- here he was.

I swallowed hard, wondering what I could do if he proved hostile. I tried to protectively push the girls back behind me, but they gave me indignant looks and slapped my hands away.

The Centipede's appearance was not reassuring. He was tall and solidly-built, but didn't appear to be muscle-bound-- more like a gymnast than a weight-lifter. As for his outfit, the color scheme was limited. He was dressed in a black suit with a black shirt, a black tie, and a black cloak that hung to below his knees. His head was completely covered by a black mask with a silver centipede emblazoned on the front, and he wore a wide-brimmed black hat. Two black .45 automatics held in his black-gloved hands completed the ensemble.

"What the hell are you kids doing out here?" he asked. "Did you know there are werewolves running around everywhere? I guess you'd better stick close to me until I can deliver you somewhere."

He didn't sound happy about it. He didn't sound like he ever sounded happy about anything.

Dana was glaring at him. "We don't have to listen to you," she snapped. "You're a criminal."

"Maybe so," he said. "But I'm a criminal who has several guns loaded with silver bullets." He held up one of his guns and jiggled it. "I've got six more of these."

"We don't associate with criminals," Dana insisted.

I grabbed her by the arm and said, "Speak for yourself! I think we could associate with criminals who have silver bullets when the city is infested with werewolves."

She transferred her glare to me. "You have absolutely no morals," she accused.

"I never said I did!"

"You used to at least act like you did. Some of the time."

Meanwhile, Vionna had approached the masked man and was subjecting him to a head-to-toe scrutiny.

"What's that thing on your mask?" she asked him. "A worm?"

"No, it's a centipede," he said sharply. "I'm the Black Centipede, and this is a centipede."

"It's silver," Vionna pointed out. "It isn't black."

He gave a hiss of irritation, pointed at his chest, and said, "I'm the Black Centipede." Then he pointed at his mask. "This is just a symbol. It's a stylized rendering of a centipede. It isn't meant to be taken literally."

"Huh," Vionna said. "It still looks like a worm. Or a very sloppy letter 'S.' It doesn't look like you gave it much thought, to be honest. Did you make it yourself?"

I moved to her side, clapped a hand over her mouth, and whispered in her ear: "Let it go, Vionna. We don't know what this guy's capable of. Don't get him angry."

By way of reply, she bit my hand. Not hard, but enough to make me reopen the floodgate.

"Because if you did," she picked up her thread, "you might want to think about getting a professional to do the next one. I'm not trying to be mean, honest. I'm just saying."

"Don't talk to him, Vionna," Dana interrupted.

The Centipede said nothing. I had no way of knowing how he was taking all of this, but I was nervous. He had a reputation as someone whose feathers you didn't want to ruffle.

I cleared my throat to get his attention, plastered a rueful smile on my face, shrugged expansively, and said, "Women! What are ya gonna do, huh?"

He was silent for a moment, then he seemed to relax a little.

"You seem like you've got a little bit of sense," he said to me. "Can you use a gun?"

"Pretty much, yeah, kind of," I said. I may have been exaggerating a little. Captain Mercury didn't believe in using guns, so I had never had much occasion to fool with them. But I was good at video games.

He tossed me one of his .45s, which I snagged adroitly enough to make it look like I knew what I was doing.

"Can I have a gun?" Vionna asked.

"I don't know if..." I began.

"Don't you dare give..." Dana started.

"Sure, kid," the Centipede said. He reached into a pocket and produced a little Derringer. "This was supposed to be for my last gasp, should it come to that," he said. "But if it gets to that point, I'm screwed anyhow."

He handed the minuscule firearm to Vionna, who clasped it to her bosom like it was a bouquet of flowers.

"Wow, thank you!" she gushed. "My own gun! I can't believe it!"

Dana was fuming. "You can't give her a gun," she said. "She's a child!"

"I'll be sure and tell the werewolves that," the Centipede shot back.

Dana turned to me-- for support I guess-- but she wasn't going to get any.

"Don't push it!" I said, jabbing a finger at her. "Just don't. It makes sense for us to have these guns if there are werewolves loose-- especially Vionna, since she's the most vulnerable."

Dana clammed up and I turned my attention to the conversation Vionna was having with the Centipede.

"Now I remember you," the masked man was saying to her. "I met you a long time ago, but you were older than you are now."

That made no sense whatsoever, but Vionna nodded enthusiastically.

"Yes," she said. "That makes perfect sense. It hasn't happened yet, as far as I'm concerned right now. It won't happen to me for a few more years. I have this thing in my head that tells me stuff, and it's telling me that right now."

The Centipede shook his head. "I shouldn't have said anything. What was I thinking? I'm getting sloppy."

Vionna laughed. "It's okay," she said. "If you're worried about a... Oh, what is it called..?" She closed her eyes, and seemed to be listening to something none of the rest of us could hear. "Really? Yeah, okay." She opened her eyes again. "If you're worried about a temporal paradox, don't. It won't matter that you said that to me and made me know about the whole thing right now. Once this that we're doing here today is over, I won't remember any of it anyhow."

The Centipede had cocked his head like a puzzled dog. I couldn't imagine what was going through his mind. I couldn't imagine what ought to be going through my own mind after all that.


TO BE CONTINUED

And be sure to read Jack and Dana's first adventure, "The Abominable Myra Linsky Rises Again," in PRO SE PRESENTS #13, just 99 cents on Amazon Kindle:


http://www.amazon.com/Pro-Se-Presents-August-2012-ebook/dp/B00985KZ62/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8

The Return of Doctor Reverso: Chapter Sixteen

CLICK HERE TO GO BACK TO CHAPTER ONE

I had such a good response to my free PDF file offer that I'm making it again. Just message me on Facebook and I'll send you one-- 136 pages of thrills, confusion, girls, monsters, Doctor Almanac, secret formulas, adventure, Doctor Unknown Senior, and a special celebrity guest: Our Gang's Stymie Beard. This serial is about halfway done now. It provides a bridge from "Blood of the Centipede" to "Black Centipede Confidential," and it introduces a major new character, la belle femme sans visage, Anonymoushka, the faceless Russian assassin who specializes in remarkably disjointed conversation and has taken it into her head that she is the future Mrs. Centipede. Also a fairly silly and absolutely inconsequential villain called Crusher Cranium. (They can't all be brilliant...)

CRUSHER CRANIUM

"I have a certain amount of affection for you girls," I said to Prudence, "I honestly do. But you scare the hell out of me sometimes. You're plugged into something I don't understand. Your boss, too, come to think of it. I'm just glad you appear to be more or less on my side most of the time. If I ever look like I'm in danger of straying away from your good graces, please give me a warning."

Prudence responded by saying nothing (of course) and doing nothing. Her face was as still and unrevealing as an Easter Island statue, though I thought her left eye glittered a little bit-- but that might have been a reflection.

"Here we are," Stanley announced gruffly. "I was not looking forward to this, but after what just happened, I feel like I'm pulling up to the entrance of Coney Island. You and your friends, Centipede, I swear!"

We had reached our destination-- the prison without a name, run by people who didn't exist, on behalf of a division of the government that was just a figment of somebody's imagination.

"You're my friend, Stanley," I reminded him.

"I know, but I'm the only normal one you've got. You oughtta keep me separate from these others."

He braked the car to a stop in the gravel parking lot of the huge, square concrete building that squatted there in a clearing in the woods. The administration was careful not to draw the slightest bit of attention to the place. There was no fence, no guard towers, no signs, nothing to indicate that this was a correctional facility of the most extreme variety imaginable. The actual cells were deep underground, and all the security they needed lay behind those grim, grey walls. If anybody was able to get through that, no goddamn razor wire, chain-link, or machine-gun fire would be enough to slow them down. It was said that there had never been a successful escape in however many years the place had been in existence. Technically, Doctor Almanac had escaped-- or been hijacked-- before he had arrived here.

"Obviously," I said to the crew in the back seat, "Stymie will not be going inside, nor will either of you ladies. I hope I can trust you to sit here and amuse yourselves harmlessly, with a game of charades, perhaps. Try not to kill anybody or anything. And, for the love of God, don't summon any spirits from the great beyond."

Silence for a moment, then Stymie spoke:

"Miss Prudence says that those weren't spirits, and she didn't summon them. She just knew what they were when they appeared."

"Well," I said, "if any more like them show up, please don't encourage them."

"I shall read them the Riot Act," said Anonymoushka, "whatever that may be. I believe, however, that our eccentric creator has gotten the dei ex machinis out of his system for the time being. Anyhow, they weren't relevant to the plot of this particular slice of life. Just a dire warning of ghastly events to come-- more for the benefit of the audience than for you."

My normal friend and I walked around to the side of the building, where I knocked on an unmarked, nondescript door. Nothing happened for almost a minute, but I knew better than to knock again. Finally, a voice came from a small speaker grill set into the wall next to the door.

"Identification made: Bartowski, Stanley Aloysius; Black Centipede, the. When the door opens, please walk to the end of the corridor. Thank you."

I leaned toward Stanley and whispered, "Aloysius? Really?"

"Screw you," he grumbled.

We heard a click and the door swung inward.

The corridor was absolutely featureless-- no doors on either side, walls painted a dull grey, light provided by three or four bare 40-watt light bulbs hanging from the ceiling at intervals. We did as we had been instructed, traversing the thirty or so feet to the end of the hallway and stopping in front of the metal door we found there. It was the same color as the walls, and had neither doorknob nor visible hinges.

"Gentlemen," came the same voice we had heard before, "please prepare to surrender your weapons for the duration of your visit. Mister Bartowski, you are carrying a .38 revolver. Mister Centipede, you are carrying more ordnance than I have time to enumerate. Please hand everything to the guard. Thank you."

With that, the door slid sideways into the wall. In the opening stood a very large man dressed in jet black army fatigues. We couldn't see his face, because it was covered by a strange black mask, part of a helmet that covered his head completely. He stepped back several paces and gestured for us to enter.

We found ourselves in a small room that was almost as featureless as the hallway. The only furniture was a large metal desk, behind which sat a most curious individual. I recognized him immediately.

"Doctor Duranceville!" I exclaimed. "This is quite a surprise. I hate to be the bearer of bad tidings, but you were executed at Winnemac State Prison last month."

He eyed me coldly. Victor Duranceville was very thin and pale, with sunken, yellowish eyes in a bony, cross-shaped face. He had good reason to eye me coldly, since I was the one who had caught him and handed him over to the authorities after I put an end to his rampage of murder and robbery several months previously. He had, at one time, been warden of a small penitentiary in the Deep South, where he specialized in brutal, inhumane treatment of inmates. Then he had tried his hand at the slightly more honest vocation of armed robbery. That hadn't lasted long before he ran afoul of me.

"Obviously," he said, "I was not. After my sentencing and before my execution date, I was offered employment by the management of this facility. My specialized knowledge, they said, would be most helpful."

"You probably shouldn't have told me that," I said, sounding as bored as I was. "But I understand your compulsion to do so. The last laugh and all that. Okay, I'll admit it. You got me. You escaped justice. My faith in the system-- indeed, in mankind itself-- is shattered forever. Curse you, Duranceville!" I stifled a yawn.

Duranceville glared at me for ten seconds, then looked away.

The masked behemoth collected Stanley's revolver, then proceeded to search me. That took a while, and it took even longer for him to write down an inventory of the items he found. It was rather amusing, especially in light of the fact that I still had four weapons on me that he hadn't found, and wouldn't have discovered in a thousand years.

Duranceville made some notes in a ledger, then nodded to the guard. He didn't look at me or speak to me again. The guard-- who was toting a Thompson submachine gun-- led Stanley and me to a wide double door in the wall opposite the entrance we'd used. He pressed a button and the two halves of the door slid into the wall. We stepped into the elevator.

"Jesus," Stanley said as the cage descended, "I thought that guy was gonna croak us on the spot after you mouthed off to him like that. You gotta work on your conversational skills. How come you've always got to needle people?"

"Stanley," I said, "you remind me of the archetypal nagging wife. 'Oh, Centipede, you should talk nice to the murderous psychopaths! Oh, Centipede, killing criminals in cold blood is murder!' Your pacifistic nit-picking would get on even Mohondas Ghandi's nerves. I knew it was a mistake to let Duranceville live after I caught him-- and that was a direct result of your badgering, if you recall. I hope you're proud of yourself."

The elevator jolted to a stop and the doors slid open. We had descended at least ten stories down into the earth, by my reckoning. We stepped out into a corridor that was more like a tunnel, bored into the subterranean rock. The floor was made of concrete, but everything else was rough striated rock. It was cold down here, and poorly lit. We followed the guard to a massive iron door set into the stone wall at the end of the tunnel. It looked like it belonged on a bank vault.

This was the home of the hapless mad scientist turned experiment gone awry, Doctor Robert Bruce Bodog.

The guard worked a combination dial in the center of the door, which opened a panel about four feet square. Behind this was a barred window, and behind that was the incredible creature we had come to see.

"You can't go in there," the guard said, his voice muffled by his mask, "and he can't come out here."

"Fine by me," said Stanley.

Crusher Cranium, as Bodog was now called, was a mere slip of a lad, no more than nine feet tall and weighing less than three-quarters of a ton. He looked up when the panel swung open. He was completely hairless, with dark blue or light purple skin. He peered at us through the thick lenses of his specially-made tortoiseshell spectacles. If any of the speculation about him was even remotely accurate, he was both the most intelligent and the most physically powerful single organism on the planet. In a truly Darwinian society, he would have been king.

"What is this?" he said irritably. "I have calculated pi to the two-hundred-billionth decimal point today, and I think I have detected a repeating pattern. How am I to get anything done with all this banging around?"

He stood up and moved toward the barred window. I stepped up and gave him a friendly little wave.

"Hello, Crusher," I said jovially. "How's it hanging?"

"Sweet Jesus," he said, "it's the goddamn Black Centipede! You've come to taunt me? I should have pinched your head off when I had the chance."

"Don't flatter yourself," I said. "You never had a chance. Not even close. You may be a couple of geniuses smarter than I am, and you're certainly stronger, but I've got something you don't."

"And what is that?"

"You don't think I'm going to tell you?"

At this point, Stanley made his presence known, edging me out of what was, admittedly, an unproductive line of conversation.

"I'll make it quick, Bodog," he said, shoving me aside and putting his face close to the window. "Somebody has been using your formula. We want to know if you've got any idea who that might be."

"Impossible," scoffed the prisoner. "My formula won't work on anybody but me."

Stanley shook his head. "Sorry, but it will and it did."

"Who?" Crusher demanded.

Stanley couldn't answer that question because I had not told him about Doctor Almanac. He had no choice but to hand the conversational reins back to me.

"Somebody you don't like," I said. "And somebody who obviously thinks he's smarter than you are. And, if he's managed to duplicate your formula, he might be right."

"I don't believe you," said the giant.

"Yes, you do," I said.

He sneered at me. "If you think you're going to gull me into giving you information by playing to my vanity..."

"...then I am absolutely right," I finished for him. "And I'll tell you why. Because you can't be sure, can you? Somewhere along the line, someone may have gained access to your formula. You may not know who that someone is, but I'll bet you could come up with some contenders. I may be spinning you a tale-- for no conceivable reason-- but I'm probably playing straight. Somebody is fiddling around with your work, and they may be doing a better job than you. If I turn and walk out of here right now, how long will it be before it eats its way into your core and you're shouting for an audience with the Black Centipede? Just give me a day and time, and I'll come back."

Crusher Cranium was seething. The look he was giving me would have terrified a lesser man. Possibly even a greater one. Me, I just avoided eye contact.

He bounced it around in that vast cranium of his and made quite a show of weighing the pros and cons, but we both knew the conclusion was already foregone.

"Okay," he finally said. "There is a... possibility. While I was still working on the formula, long before I thought of experimenting with it, I was approached by someone who represented a mysterious criminal cabal. They wanted to buy everything I had done so far and hire me to complete the work for them. They made a very attractive cash offer, and it was with a hint of genuine regret that I told them where they could stick it."

"I can imagine. And what was the name of this organization?"

He eyed me skeptically and said, "I'm wondering if you don't know already. Have you never heard of the Cult of the White Centipede?"

I was about to confess my ignorance when I was interrupted by the harsh blare of a siren.

"Holy shit!" barked the guard. "That's an alpha-level threat alert! This facility is under attack!" He slammed the panel shut, twirled the dial, and told me and Stanley to stay behind him as he crept back toward the elevator, submachine gun at the ready.

We were almost halfway to the double doors when there was a deafening explosion and part of the tunnel caved in.

Which part, you may ask? In front of us? Behind us? Or maybe right on top of us?

Well, there's the rub...

The answer is: All of the above.

And I do mean above...


click here for chapter seventeen

Introduction for the un-introduced

FROM Creeping Dawn: the Rise of the Black Centipede by Chuck Miller (Pro Se Press, 2011)

Get it HERE:

http://www.amazon.com/Creeping-Dawn-Rise-Black-Centipede/dp/146633813X/ref=la_B005WX2CKQ_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1366597381&sr=1-3

 

INTRODUCTION

THE PUBLIC STORY:

When William Lee Williams was but 10 years old, the scientific research vessel on which he was traveling with his parents was set upon by pirates off the coast of Madagascar. William's parents, a wealthy scientist and his physician wife, were murdered before his very eyes by the brigands, who then set the boy adrift in a lifeboat. Young William drifted for days, contracting a strange tropical disease that was known to have a 100 percent mortality rate. In this condition, young William, dying and delirious, washed ashore on a mysterious, uncharted island known as Sullaballu.

The boy was pulled from the boat by several members of a tribe of highly intelligent lemurs, who took him inland to the fabulous city of Gorrindaka, home to an ancient race of men and woman rumored to be descendants of superhuman demigods from beyond the farthest star. The boy spent ten years in this fantastic, incredibly advanced society, where he was initiated by the Elders of Gorrindaka into the Brotherhood of the Hundred Legs.

William learned the sorcery, science, mysticism and alchemy of these ancient geniuses, as well as honing his physical body to perfection and becoming master of every known martial art. When he came of age, William returned to the so-called civilized world from which he had come, taking with him all that he had learned, and his pick of the scientific wonders of Gorrindaka. Swearing to use his hard-won gifts to rid the world of crime and evil, William Lee Williams became that scourge of evil, the man whose name strikes fear into the heart of the criminal underworld, the world-renowned, peerless avatar of Swift Justice...

THE BLACK CENTIPEDE!

(From “The Black Centipede: Who He Was, Who He Is Now, and Why That Is,” by Rudolph Praetorius, Tales of the Black Centipede Magazine, Vol. 1 No. 1, May 1933, Lane and Jones Publishing, Zenith USA)

The Truth:

I hereby affirm that the following is a true and accurate account of events.
-- the Black Centipede

When I was very young, my family moved to the town of Fall River, Massachusetts. My father wanted to distance himself and his brood from Zenith and the unsavory activities of my grandfather, a notorious robber baron, ward heeler, political machine engineer and thug.

Needless to say, my parents were not wealthy scientists and neither of them was ever within a thousand miles of Madagascar. The colorful story told by Rudolph Praetorius (real name Percival Doiley) was just that-- a colorful story designed to make me marketable. It worked. I was wildly popular in the 1930s and 40s, and the public believed in the Black Centipede as imagined by Percy and roughly a score of other writers who ghosted on the Black Centipede magazine during its heyday.

I was for many years a popular public figure, trusted and cherished—the sort of individual that a later generation would call a “superhero.” As such, it was imperative that I appear virtuous.

The real story of the Black Centipede’s bizarre genesis would have been unpublishable back then. It was too fantastic and unsavory even for the sort of publications that catered to fans of my friend H.P. Lovecraft.

But the early 21st century is a more cynical, sensation-hungry time, and the grotesque is commonplace. As I set down the true story for the first time, I wonder if it might be too tame for a modern audience.

But the truth is, I am not writing this for an audience. At least not a contemporary one.

Much has been written about me, and close to 90 percent of it is what is now called “disinformation.”

In other words, lies.

To paraphrase an old saying, “There are lies, there are damned lies, and then there is the life of the Black Centipede.”

Lies make up the bulk of the public record, where I am concerned. Lies told and sold, printed and promulgated for a variety of reasons—some good, some bad, some absolutely unconscionable. This does not make me unique, of course. The same things can be said of most of the “official” history of the 20th century.

The Black Centipede was born one beautiful, horrible night in 1927 in a house belonging to Lizzy Borden. But I believe he had been germinating for a long time. Lizzy gave him a focus. I believe she did much more than that, but in the 80-plus years since then, I have never learned anything more about her than I knew on the night she died in my arms.

For more than 80 years I have pursued and attempted to fathom the strange creature who baptized herself in Lizzie's blood that night, but she remains utterly opaque.

My story is not over, and much of it is still unknown to me. I must go back to the beginning and start from there.

So many names, so many friends and foes, almost all of them dead now. This is a Necronomicon in the most literal sense. Lizzie Borden, Howard Lovecraft, Amelia Earhart, Carl Tanzler, Stan Bartowski, Woodrow Wilson Tannenbaum, the Red Dagger, W.E.B. DuBois, Professor James Moriarty, Jack the Ripper, Jesse Owens, Dr. Fredric Wertham, Percival Doiley, Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle... a roll call of the boneyard. People I loved, people I hated, all of them now beyond my reach and my ken.

As William Randolph Hearst once predicted, the Black Centipede has endured.

It is my intention to create as true a record as I can, which may one day find a place on the bookshelves next to the elaborate and robust compendium of falsehood, fabrication and fiction done up as fact. I don't expect it to change anything. I suspect that even if I published it today, it would be of little more than academic interest to anyone. We have grown accustomed, in the 21st century, to startling revelations about public figures, and to a history that is constantly being revised and rewritten by whoever has the loudest and most emphatic voice. My trifling revelations would be very bland fare at this point, so far as the public is concerned. (The truth about the late J. Edgar Hoover and his underhanded vendetta against me could never outshine the tales of his penchant for wearing red cocktail dresses and being called "Mary.")


Whether or not the day I speak of will come within my lifetime, I cannot say, because I don’t know just how long that will end up being. In the grand casino of life, they say, all the games are rigged, and the house always wins. Perhaps. This is certainly the case if one plays by the house rules. But through a variety of methods, dodges, tricks and cheats, I have managed to beat the house odds thus far, and collect a great deal more than my threescore and ten.

And, quite frankly, it is a matter of indifference to me whether or not my memoir is ever published or read or believed. I'm not writing it for posterity, about which I don't give a tinker's damn.

I'm writing it for me. Whoever I am.

When I was a boy in Fall River in the 1920s, I never envisioned myself marching on into the 21st century as I have. I didn’t need to. Back then, I knew I was going to live forever. The details were not important.

But, as they say, God is in the details. They say the same thing about the devil. Both, I suspect, are true. They strive endlessly to outdo one another. Myself, I have never taken up the flag of either camp. Pledging allegiance to anyone or anything has always been anathema to me.

But it occurs to me that a third individual may be found in the details, one whom I have never actively sought.

Perhaps by revisiting my details, from the ridiculous to the sublime, from soup to nuts, from pillar to post, I can divine some hint of him. My enduring mystery, my silent shadow, the thing in my mirror.

When I unravel my own lies, will I be appalled? Will I be enlightened?

Or will I find that they were true after all?


The Black Centipede
Zenith
June 2011