Welcome to the Wakefield Doctrine (the theory of clarks, scotts and rogers)
Denise is Host
Rules: use the prompt word, keep it to six sentences.
Prompt word:
STABLE
Sitting at the bar that divided the lounge from the strip club half at my friend Lou’s place, I lit the first cigarette of the day, prompting my lungs to pick a fight with my brain.
Someone opened the street-side door and early morning sunlight stumbled into the comfortably dim lounge like a high school cheerleader squad dropped into a field triage during the second half of the Normandy Landings.
Dinner with my wife Haley the night before was intended as a quiet discussion of the ground rules for a trial separation. I began to have second thoughts about my pick of restaurants when the newest dancer at the Bottom of the Sea Strip Club and Lounge, a nice enough girl with the imaginative stage name of Kandi Labra, started shouting, “I’m working my way through graduate school, ya jerk, so hands off!”
Seeing my wife’s beautiful left eyebrow move upwards, like the blinding glint of a saber clearing it’s scabbard, I stood up enough to identify the target of Kandi’s impromptu defense as being a full partner at her law firm.
As a conciliatory gesture and to restore a sense of balance to our evening, I refrained from pointing this out and, instead, concentrated on finding a path through an evening that was rife with marital pungi traps and claymore mines, viewing survival as the only true victory.
About clarkscottroger
Great six, and at my age, some body part is always picking a fight with my brain! Well crafted as usual. You are the dude.
Thanks Paul
I love reading excerpts from The Case of the Missing Starr. Ian Devereaux is one of my favorite characters.
Totally engaging 6!
It was good to get back to the Bottom of the Sea Strip Club and Lounge
Yes, a different restaurant would have been better. Great six!
lol
Always look forward to seeing what you will do with the word
Great visuals and yes an odd venue for a trial separation talk.:)
Thanks… this being a WIP makes for different kind of Six, I have a world (or pieces of one) and characters, it’s mostly a matter of finding out if they happened to have encountered the prompt word recently.
Fantastic metaphors and a great “smoky detective story” atmosphere.
With my dumpster fire of an endocrine system, my body and I have been at war pretty much since I hit puberty.
Thanks Cara. (As I mentioned to WestcoastW), the characters already exist and the locations are there, its a matter of stopping by and seeing what they’re up to of late… writing a noir/pulp/’smoky detective story’* is an ambition/goal of mine. Crazy how difficult it can be to write a story in such spare style.
*’cellent term, btw
He should have known, considering the circumstances, that another restaurant might have been a better choice, but how often do people in these circumstances take the time to think about it. It’s stressful enough to dissolve a marriage.
and, the place (not reflecting on Ian, personally) is, for some reason, where he is most comfortable.
What a dangerous path full of traps and mines to tiptoe along the rest of their evening!
This worked in quite well for this week’s SSS!
Thanks, Pat
Good to see these characters and setting again. I think. The song goes well with the Six. This guy is in a battle, well depicted in your noir prose.
Yeah, my project (Case of the Missing Starr) started, as did ‘Almira’ from a Six Sentence Story… doesn’t quite have the legs that the latter does, but it have provided me with a set of characters (flawed, in interesting ways, as all characters should be) if I can ever complete it.
(Not that you asked, but, my favorite ‘noir detective line’ from the book?)
I used to have a dog. I used to have a wife. My wife divorced me and my dog died.
I really miss the dog.
Really bad choice of restaurant, but I do love the name “Kandi Labra” and if I’m ever a stripper, Imma gonna use that.
lol. (that’s a favorite hangout of our protagonist, Ian Devereaux in my WIP ‘Search for the Missing Starr’). The stripper name just popped into my head as I was writing the Six. The name of the ‘restaurant’ ‘the Bottom of the Sea Strip Club and Lounge’ is a real place, besides being in my book. I was researching strip clubs and came across it on the web, what sold me on it was the website mentioning (with no small pride) “We own our own fishing boat!” lol. totally stranger than fiction
Now this one is asking to be told some more. Enjoyed this muchly.
If I was closer to the end of the book, I’d start printing excerpts.. but alas, ‘The Mystery of the Missing Starr’ is still in its first third. An attempt at a noir detective mystery, I undertook it as a writing exercise, ’cause I love the spare prose of them guys (Chandler, Spillaine, Parker). (Just came across a Raymond Chandler line: ‘It was a blonde. A blonde to make a bishop kick a hole in a stained-glass window.‘)
lol. I want to write lines like that!