Welcome to the Wakefield Doctrine (the theory of clarks, scotts and rogers)
This is the Six Sentence Story bloghop.
Denise is the host.
Reputed to hate long Sixes, (anything over six sentences), and, when it comes to stories with five or less sentences, Denise is remoured to exude disdain like Martin Luther hearing Johann Tetzel sing his way into town, with what may very well have been the first commercial jingle: “As soon as the coin in the coffer rings, the soul from purgatory springs.” (Wiki here.)
This is a Whitechapel Interlude week, let’s pick up the tale.
Previously, in the Whitechapel Interlude…
The brilliant, if not emotionally-unstable, Professor Egmont attained a preeminent status in the scientific community of his time not merely for his intelligence and education. It has been said, not only among biographers and psychologists, that ambition, the loose-morals sister of genius, is the difference between ‘great’ and ‘immortal’. Egmont’s genius was to construct a machine capable of transporting a person through time. His ambition was to improve the history of Man. The Order of Lilith, like near-invisible variances in the weft of human history, was created to save Mankind from such remarkable people.
This week’s prompt word:
DISTRAƆTION
“You’ve brought what I’ve asked of you?”
The softness in Mother Schader’s voice, to a random passerby, might be heard as timidity and perhaps, even, a nervous distraction, however, neither condition was possible; having risen to the position of Reverend Mother of the Bavarian chapter of the Order of Lilith made the first, laughable, and given the 3:00 am meeting in an alley off a dead-end street in Brașov, Transylvania, the second, moot.
Night-black shadows, charcoal scrawls on the namesake soot-darkened walls of the city’s famous, Biserica Neagră, became animated, first detaching from the stonework of the cathedral, then to shaping themselves into a man, “I have found what you …requested of me, surely I’ve earned the right to know what causes this, brass-and-ivory clockwork, to be so dear,” glancing down at the burlap bag with red-streaked cord binding, he smiled, “Given how many people were granted their valuation of their lives against my possessing it, I sense a story.”
In the moment between the chase and taking its prey, it is said a wolf hoods its eyes, the better to bank the raging fire within, Count St. Loreto stood, the parcel just out of reach of the woman; were she less focused on her mission, she might have indulged in a smile at such charm, instead, her eyes became the hooded ones, “We are after prey that you, Cyrus, should hope never to take the scent of.”
Hearing his given name, the Count’s posture became slightly less feral and, shaking his head, momentarily curtaining eyes that didn’t quite glow, “I would not be merely the father of my kind, had I even a fraction of the confidence of you and your charges;” growing jealous, the night shadows pulled at the man, who, with the hint of a bow, continued, “May I be of further service to the daughters of Lilith?”
“Were our respective progenitors not so very …intimately acquainted”, while the Mother Superior’s smile provided the italics, her eyes served notice that she remained the dominant half of the transaction, “But, alas, while gods might deign to live as humans, some of us divine from that choice, an insight into the limitations of immortality”.
(Language Advisory for the following musical accompaniment)
About clarkscottroger
According to “How I Met Your Mother,” nothing good happens after 2 a.m, soooo….
Like her “smile provided the italics”. Nice!
surely the worst part of a young person’s day, either too early or too late (depending on the sequence of interaction which another person one finds oneself in)
A “3:00 am meeting in an alley off a dead-end street in Brașov, Transylvania” gets one’s attention from the get go and leads your readers where they dare not go on their own. Well done.
Thanks, Pat
I enjoyed the little ‘aside’ to the main narrative of the Whitechapel Interlude… there’s something extra fun about writing about these two characters. Count St. Loreto being a character from other stories, his appearance here is further evidence that he is not quite the ordinary, successful businessman.
Dark, dangerous… and so beautifully visual. Another little treat!
Thanks, Chris.
(As I alluded to in my Reply to Pat, this side path in the story is fun in a way that encourages indulging in certain characters that might not be available to the other parts of our narrative).
I agree with Pat, it is best not to visit this story alone. This six was very engaging visually. Thank you.
Your prose always makes me a tad envious in its Elizabethan charm and flow. I feel a part of something ‘timeless’ ;-) after reading this.
Your descriptive talent on body language is expert. Always a pleasure to sample. In a novel form, I fear I would be ‘swallowed up’ for days!
I know how you feel, when I go to (yours) and the other’s Sixes… not only to enjoy the fiction but learn (from you and the others)… learn, not so much in the formal classroom sense, rather like playing with other musicians (I’ve used this metaphor with Ford and some of the others) in a small club, in impromptu sessions. Sometimes, like you, I have to ‘stop playing’ and, while remembering to not let my jaw drop, listen/read closely, not so much to learn something new in a technical sense, but to follow a path of the imagination that I hadn’t encountered and, in following it, acquire skills.
dangerously dark and well done. good six. good use of the cue.
Thanks Paul. (That prompt was more difficult than I would have thought, but then again, I have been known to write a whole Six only to realize I didn’t include the prompt and then try to make it look like it was there all along.
Divinely done, as usual.
Thank you, M.
The last is the best :)
I liked the notion that maybe there is something ‘wrong’ with gods (of myth and such) finding it so entertaining to take human form. But then again, their behavior, as humans, often was reprehensible by some people’s standards.
I like this phrase, “a wolf hoods its eyes, the better to bank the raging fire within”. Don’t want to let any fire to escape from those raging eyes.
lol. true.
While Cyrus St. Loreto appears in other of your stories, this Six more clearly “defines” him. Or shall I say “it”. In those other stories, he was more mysterious with the inference of what he might be. Sentence 4 shows us without question, Count St. Loreto is no mere manifestation of man. Cool.
I also quite appreciate the revelation in your last sentence.
(Family – can’t live with them, can’t live without them, lol )
I want to know what’s in that bag!
Does look like we may very well have learned something new about the ‘good’ Cyrus St. Loreto
…as do I!
The reversed C.
😎 very ↄool !!
I like the construction then instant deconstruction of sentence #1.
The final sentence though… kudos… “while the Mother Superior’s smile provided the italics…”
When a character imposes herself not only into the story but grabs the very tools which construct it… is a pretty awesome visual for the reader to see – nicely done!
Ty, AM
the fun (for me) of this ‘writing thing’ is when the result, despite a fair amount of struggle, produces more pleasure than discomfit…at the end of the day, aka when others read it.
…still surprising, after all these years, how we can read something that we spent hours creating and respond, ‘Hey! Not bad! Who wrote this?’