the Wakefield Doctrine

Welcome to the Wakefield Doctrine (the theory of clarks, scotts and rogers)

This is the Six Sentence Story bloghop.

Denise is our host.

Hey! Let’s jump back to the serial story, ‘the Whitechapel Interlude‘ for a break from our moving-in/redecorating chores at the Six Sentence Cafe & Bistro. To help you get caught up, here’s the link to Chapter 38. While the over-arching narrative is focused on the Order of Lilith’s mission in the Whitechapel neighborhood of 1880s London and a mysterious Count dwelling in an eastern Europe city, there is a branching plot line, (beginning in Chapter 38), that has Brother Abbott returning to a life he would have preferred to leave in his past. Now, as a top-billed performer on the vaudeville circuit, he renews old acquaintances.

Prompt word:

INGREDIENT

“I wasn’t talking to you, I was talking to the dummy.”

“Who are you calling a dummy?”

The late-morning interior of the Théâtre du Vaudeville was empty in the curious way of public buildings, a darkness that seemed possessed of an appetite for any and all sound, only the stage was protected by artificial light; being late morning, when performers were allowed time to rehearse on the broad stage, the sounds of Saturday on the Boulevard des Capucines whispered like an audience before curtain rise, ingredients of a feast lacking only the skill of the chef.

In the center of the stage, two men stood: one adjusting the balance of the one-third-scale man sitting in the crook of his left arm, carved wooden limbs wrapped in a miniature tuxedo and glistening-button eyes; the other, Brother Abbott, remembering one of the reasons he did not regret leaving behind ‘the life’, when he joined the Order of Lilith, even as a pair of glass eyes sought his own.

Nodding towards the card on the tripod left of center stage, vermillion ink, executed in 84 pt Didot lettering, shouted:  ‘Monsieur Magnifique and Petit Pierre’; Brother Abbott smiled and pulled at the sleeve of his tailored waistcoat,

“Still not giving the true talent top billing?” after a pause, both men burst into laughter.

Angelique Déchue, polishing the brass rail marking the empty edge of the mezzanine, heard three voices: one thinly enthusiastic, a most wary of welcomes, another raucous and barely-restrained joy and the third, a measured confidence with a subtle undertone of a mature predator; watching only the convex reflections of the two men on the stage below, she crossed herself and clutched the small crucifix resting protectively over her heart.

Welcome to the Wakefield Doctrine (the theory of clarks, scotts and rogers)

This is the Wakefield Doctrine’s contribution to the Six Sentence Story bloghop.

Denise is the host.

The prompt word:

CANVAS

Life, it has been said, is the blank canvas of a talented but immature god, beauty layered over pain, an opaque complexity that patrons seem to find irresistible.  (unknown)

“What the fuck”, seeing the Beanie and Cecil shadow sliding up the street in his direction, pushed the young man into motion, a stuttering run caused by staring at his left wrist while moving fingers in a chaotic, but deliberate manner; that he no longer walked across the quad of his college was unimportant, getting away from his pursuer while wearing a heavy overcoat in 36° C was; a double-twist of his index finger ended his growing regret at accepting a job at a small café in the city he spent his sophomore year.

“Jeez Louise, dude, relax,” rhetorical admonitions, coming from a place so close to home, always lack a certain power; recognizing the casino in the distance, his confidence grew as he found he could ignore the cars speeding past at well-above the posted 90 km/h limits; a memory scene, super-imposed over the 21st century skyline, of standing before a bearded man in a down-city bar that appeared out of nowhere, insisting on being given a part-time job, the sky blinked.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Jumping up off the cobblestone street, barely avoiding the dark, gray Audi traveling at the speed-of-unobstructed, the young man in the old coat, sat at the sole empty table in front of a coffee shop; the temperature was more appropriate to his dress, but the buildings were too low and the trees too green, “Come on now, you can do this,” searching the street for suspicious shadows, he remembered the confident man who, while he was asking for the job, interrupted, ‘Sure, Nick, he looks like he’ll fit right in”; without thought, his fingers moved again.

Seeing the white canvas canopy, wine-and-bus-diesel air corrugating his nose, a sense of relief slowed his breathing almost to normal, until a memory montage seized his visual cortex. The woman who sat alone, in the second darkest spot in the Bistro, exhibited the serene concentration common to young mothers and old martial arts instructors; demonstrating the complex hand motions involved in accessing the google-verse, she  smiled at his frustration, “Think of it as partly a dance and, in a very real sense, a prayer; to draw on your musical training, imagine your hands hovering over the keyboard of a piano”, the young man beamed in an unaffected display of pleasure at her reference to one of few things about himself he imagined deserved pride, “…but the keys are all floating in the air and get close only when you can hear the song in your head.”

“Thank God!” spotting the blurred section of the city block fifteen feet ahead on the right, the young man dove without hesitation into the two dimensional chaos, long blond hair and trailing overcoat pulling the brick wall together behind them, half-a-heartbeat before the tall, serpentine shadow of a google street monitor could capture his presence; “…almost home!”