Welcome to the Wakefield Doctrine (the theory of clarks, scotts and rogers)
Each week Denise provides a prompt word and invites us all who would participate, to write a story of six (and only six) sentences.
I was talking to Denise the evening before last about the ‘writing of Six Sentence Story(s)’ and we got on the topic of ‘how to’. I mentioned how enjoyable it is to see others write…maybe not prologues as much as ‘asides’ (for would that, more properly be ‘before’) to their Sixes. Val and Pat have been writing ‘intros’ that not only are interesting insights into their ‘process’, but for me, an additional way to learn-by-imitation.
In any event I said that if I have an idea (for a story) I still need to decide on the outcome, i.e. how would I have the Reader react to my story. Do they laugh or frown, smile and look around in the hopes of finding a clue or simply click on the next …Six Sentence Story.
This week the word is:
WAKE
The doctor, trying to find the balance between urgency and routine said, “It’s called ‘sleep paralysis’ and, unfortunately, it’s increasingly common among men of your age; this is for Ambien but what you really need to do is exercise more and worry less.”
Trevor Eldridge, smiling as men do at the end of a doctors visit that did not involve further testing, thought, ‘I didn’t get to where I am today by spending my days in the gym and I wouldn’t be next in line for manager if I didn’t love my wife so much’, stood up and shook the doctor’s hand with one hand and accepted the prescription with the other.
The soon-to-be-promoted to Manager of the Eastern Seaboard Division lay in bed unable to open his eyes; with a hot flash of fear he failed to recall in any in his recent bout of nightmares, eyelids being paralyzed with the rest of his body. Remembering the doctor’s prescription sparked a short feeling of relief as he remembered the end of his evening adding a few over-the-internet sleeping pills while thinking, ‘I can’t afford to nod off at the board meeting tomorrow’.
Resigned to waiting out the dream, he heard distant voices, growing in volume, if coming closer to his bed and thought, ‘Thats odd, usually it’s just me frozen in my bed; no lights, no people talking in the dark.’
“Trevor hated the idea of a wake, much less an open casket; although, the undertaker did a wonderful job, he looks like he’s sleeping.”
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Excellent!!
thanks, Paul
Well, just WOW. I guess you were figuring on STUNNED as the emotion elicited from your reader. Really good six sentence story. Sleep paralysis, huh? I seem to run marathons each night as I sleep.
thanks, Val… yeah only had it one one or two occasions very strange sensation.
EEEWWWWWWWWW!
lol (what a nice thing to say… thank you)
Wow! He took Ambien (I had to see what that was.) AND a few over-the-internet sleeping pills. Big mistake turned this into a story where one doesn’t nod off.
The watch is a good beginning — “time for another SSS” or “time is ticking, better get more exercise and worry less.”
What a nightmare come true!
Brilliant!
thank you, Reena
A six sentence horror story! Stephen King could not have done it better.
thank you
Wow of the highest degree! Didn’t see that ending coming. My father always held a fantasy of getting his best friend, the town’s mortician, to assist him with faking his death just so that he could lay in an open casket and see which friends turned up to mourn him… and maybe groan or twitch a bit! :-) We’ve all heard stories of people being buried alive in earlier times where medicine was less advanced and embalming wasn’t done. What a horrible way to exit life!
Good story Clark. You and I went down the same path this week but you nail it for description as always. I’ve had a few examples in life of the dead not being dead – and it always comes as a shock (and an embarrassment when you have called in the relatives telling them their mother has died). Lets hope your character comes too either before the sods of earth or the furnace are applied.
thanks, question is: is he a dead man remembering his minutes or a living man watching the approach of death? lol (you have? surely a most disquieting occurrence)
Absolutely. That is a bit like the chicken and the egg. Only the egg or the chicken knows.
Guess he might have tried the exercise idea. I was going right along and did not see the ending coming. Ya got me!
Funny how abstract future health-risk can be, no?