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Six Sentence Story3 -the Wakefield Doctrine- [a Café Six]

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

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

Hosted by Denise

(ed. So last week’s Six was host to a certain challenge among four of the participants. Instigated by Nick, choreographed by Denise and closed with a remarkable display of creativity by Ford it was, in a sense, a prompt within a prompt. (Nick does yeoman’s work laying out the rules for the Challenge Here.) Suffice it to say, Ford‘s Six was so good that my ambition dial got turned up to Eleven. The part of me that makes my virtual life simultaneously fun and horrible, whispered… “Hey! betcha you can’t write a Six to that song while staying in the story-world of the Six Sentence Café & Bistro… and! have some time travel in it, too!”)

ayyiiiee

Hey! Sixarians! I’ve requested and granted a one-time dispensation for breaking the rule of ‘One Six, One Post’. After the amount of work last night, I will no longer be tempted.

Hey! ceayr, sorry man, this Six? Makes some of my other narratively-ambiguous Sixes read like Hemingway playing charades. You’ve been warned.

Prompt word:

COFFEE

(early ’70s)

“When you believe in things
That you don’t understand
Then you suffer
Superstition ain’t the way, yeah.”

The Clavinet in the lead track of Talking Book, Stevie Wonder’s new album, resonating along key synaptic junctures was the perfect dance partner to entice the young man out of the half-asleep/half-awake state endemic in college dormitories during exam week.

The late Spring morning, with it’s moderate temperatures and unabashed sunshine, beckoned even the most determined end-of-semester student to rise early; the Sophomore came fully awake in a bed that seemed too narrow and a room that was, at once, normal while producing a feeling of the uncanny, like too much hashish or the memory of a lucid dream.

He was drawn back to the present by a knocking on the door that was possessed of an upward lilt that betrayed a shy enthusiasm, without thinking, he knew it was Cherie, who at the end of the previous night’s study session, promised coffee and a muffin first thing in the morning; despite this certainty, he called out, “Who is it?”

The voice that preceded the girl stepping through the doorway was that of Stacey Whitelaw, in both timbre and vocabulary,

“What the fuck is going on, where am I and why are you in a eight-by-ten room decorated with Jimi Hendrix posters;” the actual girl, now inside the room, couldn’t have been less a Miz Whitelaw, standing barely five-foot four, wearing worn blue corduroys, a Madras shirt with pearl buttons and a pair of gold wire-rim glasses.

The Sophomore felt his vision stutter, heart race and remembered a voice from his future.

 

(mid ’70s)

On a morning from a Bogart movie
In a country where they turn back time…
Don’t bother asking for explanations
She doesn’t give you time for questions
As she locks up your arm in hers.”

Rolling onto his side, the bed gave way to his left elbow and hip, while a split-second later providing a movement-facilitating push against his lower back and shoulders, the Sophomore’s head now closer to the stereo and Al Stewart; the sound of footsteps, ebbing and flowing as the staircase took at least two turns for each of the three stories of the tenement ended, and a voice, clearly without the patience for a traditional knocking strategy, filled the one-bedroom apartment.

“Open the door and tell me I haven’t climbed the stairs of a three-story tenement for nothing; I gotta say, I’m freakin out here and I hope the two times hitting my head on these fuckin slanted ceilings put me in a live-action coma,” despite lacking the sight of the owner of the voice, the young man closed his eyes in denial of the fact it belonged to Stacy Whitelaw.

Anticipating a rebound wave from the waterbed, the young man stumbled out of the bedroom, to the kitchen and stood staring at the too-often painted door, wearing only a pair of Jockey shorts and, like an elongated Ankh, a iron skeleton key around his neck, apparently the extent of the security features of the wood door; looking around the kitchen he considered remaining silent and, hopefully, unavailable.

His indecision was made moot as the door opened and a young woman, wearing a denim halter-top and dark brown hair long enough to play tag with a pair of cut-off jeans, who clearly wasn’t Stacy Whitelaw, stepped over the worn threshold and wrapped her forearms behind the young man’s neck; surprised beyond speech, he returned the embrace and their bodies insisted on moving them to the bedroom.

A timeless interval after the most timeless of physical interactions later, the dark-eyed girl locked eyes with the stunned and temporarily exhausted young man and, with a tone as sultry as her expression, said, “You know what I’d really like right now”, even as the embers in his eyes reignited, laughed, “A cup of coffee, I didn’t have time this morning.”

 

 

 

 

(early ’20s)

Never know how much I love you
Never know how much I care
When you put your arms around me
I get a fever that’s so hard to bear.

“Where have you been?”

Stacy Whitelaw gazed across the white-linen hills and hummocks of pillows at the Sophomore, the bed was as large as it needed to be to allow them to do whatever they wanted to do, individually and as a couple.

“Don’t you mean, ‘When have we been?'”

The young blonde woman put her hand to her mouth, a moué more of growing panic than disdain, even as the young man, his right hand on her left hip, felt the pupils of his eyes dilate as if sensing danger beyond his normal field of vision, he felt more than hear a distant roar, the sound of an approaching déjà vu-nami.

“Before we do anything, even have coffee, let’s agree to never ask each other, what the time is,” after a moment they laughed themselves into a horizontal embrace.

 

 

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clarkscottroger About clarkscottroger
Well, what exactly do you want to know? Whether I am a clark or a scott or roger? If you have to ask, then you need to keep reading the Posts for two reasons: a)to get a clear enough understanding to be able to make the determination of which type I am and 2) to realize that by definition I am all three.* *which is true for you as well, all three...but mostly one

Comments

  1. UP says:

    you can never go wrong with mr. wonder. wonderful writing.

  2. phyllis0711 says:

    A good cup of coffee and a good song make any morning pleasant, no matter which decade.
    Thank you.

  3. Spira says:

    Bed, prominent in all three timelines…with very good music…of course.

    (early ’20s like 1920, 2020 ? lol)

    Mid ’70s…!!

    And now we all know Clark, why you seemed a bit …dry of bodily fluids at your soc challenge video!
    Daamn…in three timelines and going!! Bravo!
    (The coffee you are drinking. I want the brand. Like, now!! LOL )

    • clarkscottroger clarkscottroger says:

      No humanity capacity was (permanently) harmed in the writing of this Six3

      Don’t tell anyone, but the music was the only mechanism I could figure to place each episode chronologically. Didn’t think I could spend the wordage in having either character observe how nice the weather was in May of 1972 1976 or 2022

      It’s even worse, though!

      (Definitely not a word to anyone)… I find that to write in a manner that has a prayer of being effective with rogers and scotts I need emotional content. Being a clark, that’s easier said than done.
      Fortunately I discovered that if I’m willing to ‘mine my emotional past’ then the words/story carries extra.. feeling.

      The challenge I self-imposed on myself* was to write one of those ricocheting through time stories. Of course, if it’s worth doing, it’s worth over-doing, so naturally I wanted to have both the Sophomore (who, at least, is kinda used to this time travel thing) and Stacy find themselves at different period of one of their histories.

      * lol

      • Spira says:

        “…if I am willing to mine my emotional past”… and present and future…Welcome to the world of Spira!

        You handled those flaming daggers like a pro Clark!

  4. ceayr says:

    Thanks for the warning, you garrulous galumpher.
    I struggle with one offering from you, so I’ll happily pass on your threesome.

    • clarkscottroger clarkscottroger says:

      I accept the nicety as due the most frumious of Readers*

      *and a genuine gratation for prompting me to go in search of words and terms courtesy of the most wonderful Mr. Carroll

  5. Bravo, bravo, bravissimo!

  6. Just as well you spared us the details. My glasses were beginning to fog up. ;-)

  7. jenne49 says:

    Well, that was quite a romp you took us on through the ages and the dreams! Interesting approach to experiment with too and stretching of comfort zones. A good week’s work!

    • clarkscottroger clarkscottroger says:

      thanks jenne

      I try to remind myself that it’s not only ok, it a good thing to try stuff (in writing) that I’m pretty sure I can’t do…