Welcome to the Wakefield Doctrine (the theory of clarks, scotts and rogers)
This is the Six Sentence Story bloghop.
Denise is the host.
She maintains only one rule to the writing of a Six Sentence Story: a) the length of your story come out to exactly six sentences and 2) to involve the week’s prompt word
This week we return to the Whitechapel Interlude for our next installment, disguised as a Six Sentence Story. If you haven’t been following along, you would enjoy this week’s Six more after reading at least the previous two chapters.
Another bonus! The last walk-on we did, (courtesy of our guest author, Ford at (the) Atomic Mage), was so much fun, I asked our host, Denise, if she would grace us with her rhetorical presence this week for a walk-on. Go on over to her Six. Enjoy.
The prompt word:
PAWN
“If the Devil is chasing you, run as fast as you can, however, have you cause to stalk Satan, run only as fast as he can,” once again, the teachings of the Order manifested as a memory of Brother Abbott singling me out in a room full of acolytes, “Brother Anselm, your face tells us you don’t believe you can outrun the Great Deceiver, this is a failure of faith, not ability; look up Isaiah 40: 29-31 this evening and bring your thoughts to us on the morrow.”
My assignment this day: to confirm the whereabouts of a time traveler of whom I had no memory of a face, appearance, or voice, only a single, still image of the ceiling of a room in St. Pancras hotel; nevertheless, I now stood on the sidewalk, opposite the gilded and carved entrance to Chiltern Court, on my right, the trees in Regent’s Park bloomed an anemic russet, mute reminder that summer had abdicated it’s palsied reign and winter approached under false grandeur of blue skies.
Marylebone Road was every bit a moat to cross, lacking only a watercourse full of clinging vines and predatory animals, there were, however, an excess of dark-blue uniformed men standing around the entrance to the building I needed to access; the very practical wisdom of my teachers whispered: “The secret to stalking lies not in hiding yourself from your prey, rather, it is to become an innocuous feature in their everyday world.”
As I crossed the cobblestone roadway, I saw Sarah standing to the left of the grand entrance, speaking to a man who was easily two meters in height and fourteen stone, if an ounce; he was scribbling in a notepad, while looking at everything other than my friend, which made him a policeman or a journalist.
Folding my scarf over a discarded box I’d recovered from an alleyway off Porter St., keeping it close to my side, every bit a messenger’s satchel, I crossed Marylebone Road; as I approached the marble-and-gilt facade of the residence of my quarry, Sarah laughed loudly and, pointing at something further up Baker Street, moved her companion’s attention, two spaces in the opposite direction of my approach; of course, the pawn is never aware of the player’s hand.
My own focus, as hostage to my friend’s gesture as the other pedestrians in the area, failed me as I stepped into the lobby at the same moment as another; I collided, mid-threshold into the building, with a woman, small in stature, religious in dress.
