Welcome to the Wakefield Doctrine (the theory of clarks, scotts and rogers)
This is the Six Sentence Story bloghop.
Denise is the host and does one thing each week: a) provide a prompt with which we might ground our stories and 2) remind us to be precise in our sentence length: Six.
We are in a Whitechapel Interlude week. What follows is the next installment in this serial story.
And…and! we have a guest contributor/writer joining us. Ford, over at Atomic Mage, has consented to join us in what we refer to as a ‘walk on’ in our story world. (Basically taking the elements of the story/characters/world and finding something that we didn’t know was there. It’s a lot of fun.)
So head over to Ford’s Six Sentence Story, ‘The Calling of Molly Jane Hardy‘ and get yourself an extra serving of ‘the Whitechapel Interlude’.
This week the prompt word is:
WALK
The aroma of soup trailing the food cart as we made our way to the Order of Lilith’s soup kitchen on Thrawl Street produced an effect like Winter turning into Spring: human forms, large and small, stirred in the most fundamental of stimulus/response; in comparison, the most alluring perfume of a lover held close after a prolonged separation was less than a sprig of lilac thrown into the North Sea.
Brother Abbott had ended the morning’s meditation oddly, citing Isaiah 11:6-9, all the while staring at me with am expression suspiciously similar to the one on my face when confronting an especially long line of starving children, weaving a line like pale lichen, trying to cling to the storefront we now approached; reaching for my keys I felt a pull on my arm.
“From Brother Abbott,” Sarah’s face, ordinarily simple to the point of elegant beauty, held an expression frightening by the strange alchemy that occurs when the familiar is juxtaposed in an uncanny way, like empty windows in an abandoned house at the onset of evening, “You need to check on the status of the time traveler, do not delay, I brought an acolyte who will help me finish serving the food.”
“No, Mr. Egmont is no longer a guest,” The desk clerk let his words find their own way, staring at the linen and cord of the robes of the Order I wore, as if his non-interaction was sufficient to communicate his disapproval at my dress; there was a pause in his voice, “Our former guest has been quite popular this morning, you’re the second of your kind to inquire; I’ll repeat myself: he left instructions to forward any mail and all visitors inquiring after him to Baker Street, Chiltern Court, I believe, to be precise.”
Running out through the grand entrance of the St Pancras hotel, scanning the distant sidewalk, I caught a flash of golden hair disappearing into the river of pedestrians flowing slowly towards the green-on-granite of the Regent’s Park; despite the distance and the incongruity, I knew it was Sarah.
Stopping myself from sprinting down the granite stairs, I managed to avoid being trapped by intellectual indignation at the world not conforming to my expectations, courtesy of Brother Abbott, “Trying to reconcile the impossible with the everyday world is God’s most effective subterfuge, know your heart and your mind will follow along,” I embraced the effects of his words and, with the address on Baker Street as a focus, began to walk.
About clarkscottroger
Always. You always bring it
Thanks, man
I can so totally relate to the last paragraph. The rest of the story is rivetting, but a build-up.
My pleasure, Reena
Brother Abbott is emerging for me as quite the “mystery” character. Like the 3rd sentence characterization.
The last sentence – excellent.
ty yeah, he’s a case of less is more in a character, I think
So well written. the intrigue is almost unbearable. I’m enjoying this!
cool
I’m really enjoying how this is shaping up! But hold on, Regent’s Park, are we going to the zoo?? – (childhood memories).
Worse! Brother Anselm is on the trail of a person who may (or may not) be Sarah (at least in terms of dominant personality) while following orders to visit Chiltern Court on Baker Street and see if he encounters the time traveler.
Is a side trip to the Park a hopeless delay in his mission or a canny strategy to sneak around his impromptu quarry?
Nice description: “trapped by intellectual indignation at the world not conforming to my expectations”. I like the thought of reconciling the impossible with the everyday as a “subterfuge”.
Thanks, Frank! It (the line) kinda morphed itself out of the need to describe Anselm being in a state of shock at the idea that Sarah had left the kitchen and managed to get to the hotel before he had and was now heading towards Baker Street, via Regents Park.
The inclusion of Regents Park and Baker Street could provide some very interesting detours later. I like how the intrigue and tension builds in one at the desk clerk scene: “Our former guest has been quite popular this morning, you’re the second of your kind to inquire.” Bam!
So glad you included Thrawl Street and Brother Abbott – as you know I wanted dearly to touch on these in my walk on. Many thanks again for the invite, and sorry I bombarded you with a ton of questions and what ifs and how sos lol. It’s been a pleasure and delight to ‘take a walk with you along the streets of Whitechapel’.
Ford :)
Totally welcome. This, (your own Six), is why I’m such a fan of ‘walk-ons’. God knows what possessed me to put our time traveler in residence on Baker Street*
Not only did you provide a standalone story in an established world, but you added to an existing character (Brother Abbott). My highest compliment: “I didn’t know that about him!” lol (Denise in her comment was intimating as much, this morning.)
Fun
*’tho you can imagine my delight when, in the process of looking at buildings on Baker St (other than 221b) that I stumbled on the fact that HG Wells lived, on the same block. This kinda stuff is what makes the ‘research’** for stories so much fun
** largely google-walking up and down streets in a city and/or typing ‘antique photos’ in the search bar
I’m glad I added something to the character of Brother Abbott, a compliment right back atcha as he is superbly grounded in your universe of TWI.
Re: ‘research for stories so much fun’ – absolutely! If it hadn’t been for the walk on I wouldn’t have found Wilton’s.
And fascinating to ponder that HG Wells who lived on Baker Street in the 1930s, may have ‘time travelled’ back to 1880 and left some clues here and there – or even had tea with Joseph Merrick (who died in Whitechapel in 1890) seeing as HG was into all that time travel malarkyingabout :)
pleasure was all ours… the more the characters come to life, the easier my job!
that overlapping thing… sometimes I think the Secret Chiefs take a day off and the apprentices get a little sloppy with their work, “The world is a sequence, there is not synchronicity and certainly no serendipity …now leave the curtain be!!”
I also loved the last sentence – thank you.
Such wonderful descriptive writing! “long line of starving children, weaving a line like pale lichen, trying to cling to the storefront “. . . “like empty windows in an abandoned house at the onset of evening,”. . .”a flash of golden hair disappearing into the river of pedestrians flowing slowly towards the green-on-granite of the Regent’s Park”
Well done!
thank you, Pat… always an enjoyable process
It took more than one reading, as it usually does. Almost everything you write takes more than one read to catch it all.
I do know what you mean… the rate of installments doesn’t help… (back in the beginnings of serial stories, I think the interval was, like a month or something)… me and Charles Dickens, easy to confuse us…lol
As always, I have no idea who anyone is or what they are up to, but it makes a fun read nevertheless.
Not to worry. I’ll settle for* your enjoying the read.
*yeah, right. So, and you’re not the first to encounter this problem (our friend Mimi has mentioned it) the problem of who is what and what they’re up to.
The thing is I have two serial stories running. the Case of the Missing Fig Leaf and the Whitechapel Interlude), the problem is they are biweekly. Which, combined with being Six sentences (which cuts down on detail and the room to include ‘Last time on the Whitechapel Interlude… reprise device)… so it is difficult, especially if a Reader has only recently joined in…
Compounding this, I suspect, is the fact that my approach to writing serial stories is way seat-of-the-pants…. as in, I have no idea what is going to happen on the next installment of either story).
There is an advantage to being new to this blog, there is a reasonable amount of story that you can read at the blogs where I keep them.
‘the Whitechapel Interlude‘ (from the Tales of the Order of Lilith) and ‘the Case of the Missing Fig Leaf‘ (an Ian Devereaux mystery) are in order, so they can be read, just like a real book (with the caveat) that they are not yet a real book. To make them real, I will need to go through the whole thing and fill out the details that were sacrificed to make the Six Sentence limit.
Funny story. The whole story, the Whitechapel Interlude, grew out of a Six Sentence Story. Worse, the Six I wrote was in response to a challenge from another Sixer to write a companion (what you see around here referred to as a ‘walk on’… our friend, Ford, recently did one)
Goodness, you can sure spin an analogy. Well done, as always. You milk more out of six sentences than a farmer with 16 milk cows.
Thank you, Lisa