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.

The ‘hop is hosted by Denise.

We return to our serial story, ‘The Case of the Missing Fig Leaf‘.

When last we saw Ian Devereaux. Stacey Whitelaw and Anton Rilke, they were kinda being held semi-prisoners at the Eibingen Abbey. (Click Here)

Please bear with us this week, as we indulge in a somewhat characteristic ambition, a characteristic distinguished by how much it exceeds our writing skills, as we try to get all Akira Kurosawa on this week’s Six.

Warning! We do not speak (or write German)… we trust Google translate won’t embarrass us too much.

The week’s prompt is:

CONTROL

(Stacy)

I was beginning to worry about Ian and Anton.

I got them out of the Wicked Nun of the East’s office by sheer force of will, as they were both coming down from whatever drugs were in the darts; I had to smile at how easy it was to get all Konrad Lorenz on my two ‘adults’, they followed me like freshmen boys at a sorority carwash for whatever charity known for it’s support of oppressed workers in the bathing suit industry.

“Did you really think it would be this easy?” Sister Mary Mofo was, somehow, standing between us and the outside world as we stepped into the lobby-tourist center; she was beginning to piss me off.

“Listen Sista Sista, these two people may only be guys, but one of them has a gun and the other has the scariest female in the Western Hemisphere on speed-dial; so what say we keep this polite?”

Her smile scared me more than the sudden realization that, despite the fact we walked into her office in the middle of the day, the floor-to-ceiling windows bracketing the main entrance were now half-mirrors, the sun just setting beyond the vacant parking lot.

“No, I wouldn’t dream of trying to force you to do anything, my predecessor made that mistake on your last visit,” She smiled like a roofie salesman at a college bar during Homecoming, “You have talents our Order could use but, by the frowns on the faces of your two companions, they’re both about to try to reassert their God-given roles in the world and their attempts to assert control would only put their lives at peril; we’ll be in touch,” with that, the parking lot floodlights flared on, illuminating our car, but when I turned back to say something to would piss her off, she was nowhere to be seen.

(Ian)

“Control is the key to both beating your opponent and limiting damage to yourself.”

I hadn’t thought about my martial arts instructor since the time I got beat up during a soccer game as part of my freshman gym class prereq; my assailant, a phys ed major, harbored something of a resentment as, being a psych major, I was known to make the occasional reference to ‘the idiot demographic’ of the college.

There was nothing academic about my current situation. Stacey helped me get Anton aimed in the right direction as we left the office of the nun or whatever who was taking issue with our questions; like the outrigger on South Seas canoe, she helped more by maintaining our course than providing propulsion. Our large police companion was surprisingly slow to come around, given his size, our assailants erred on the high side with their dart-trank.

So far, in terms of our field trip, I was underwhelmed by the concern for our well-being exhibited by the Sisters Without Mercy; and even having a childhood of watching the peculiar locomotion of nuns in full regalia, all creepy moving without apparent use of legs like an episode of Buffy, she somehow managed to be standing between us and the door out to the parking lot.

(Anton)

Ich widerstand dem natürlichen Instinkt, meiner Wut freien Lauf zu lassen, und spürte in meiner rechten Hosentasche den eiförmigen Schlüsselanhänger des Fahrzeugs, das ich gemietet hatte, um uns an diesen gottverlassenen Ort zu bringen. Die kluge Wahl meiner Reaktion auf den Versuch der Nonne, die Kontrolle zu übernehmen, als wir ihr in ihrem Büro gegenüberstanden, wurde noch offensichtlicher, als ich die Besucherhalle des Klosters Eibingen durchquerte, meine beiden Begleiter sicher zu beiden Seiten. Als ich bemerkte, dass meine junge Schützlingin, Miss Whitelaw, ihre Hand auf meinem Arm hatte, lächelte ich beruhigend, weil ich wusste, dass sie sich in meinem Status bei der Wiesbadener Polizei tröstete. Ian seinerseits schien durch meine Anwesenheit beruhigt zu sein, er wich nie weit aus, als wir den Kiesparkplatz überquerten. Mit einem hörbaren Atemzug, während er sich gegen einen Überraschungsangriff wappnete, setzte er Stacey hinten im Range Rover SV ab und gesellte sich sofort zu mir nach vorne. Als ich wartete, bis ich uns auf der Autobahn absetzte, verkündete ich: “Nun, das ist das Schöne an Teamarbeit, wir haben alle zusammengearbeitet und sind mit kaum einem Haar aus den Fängen dieser unangenehmen Frau herausgekommen.”

{Resisting the natural instinct to set my anger free, I felt, in my right trousers pocket, the ovoid key fob of the vehicle I’d rented to bring us to this godforsaken place. The wisdom of my choice of response to the nun’s attempt to seize control when we confronted her in her office became even more self-evident as I crossed the visitor’s lobby of the Eibingen Abbey, my two companions safely to either side. Noticing my young charge, Miss Whitelaw, had her hand on my arm, I smiled in reassurance, knowing she took comfort in my status with the Wiesbaden Police Department. Ian, for his part, seemed steadied by my presence, never straying far as we crossed the gravel parking lot. With an audible intake of breath, steeling himself against a surprise assault, he got Stacey settled in the back of the Range Rover SV and immediately joined me in the front. Waiting until I got us on the autobahn, I announced, “Well, that’s the beauty of teamwork, we all worked together and got out of that unpleasant woman’s clutches, with nary a hair out of place.”}