the Wakefield Doctrine

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.

Hosted by Denise.

(Hey, a little shout-out to Paul and ceayr in this week’s impromtu-’cause-the-primary-Six-was-a-little-less-than-we’d-hoped’ ya know. Thanks guys!)

Prompt word:

SIN

“I don’t know, Lil, they’re mostly your friends and as much as I love the ocean…” glancing sideways enough to see her denim shorts and dangerous tan, but not enough to establish direct eye contact served to renew his flagging enthusiasm, “You do, I trust, appreciate how unfair it is to have such power over a part of me that I haven’t been on speaking terms with since puberty.”

As the boy and the girl climb-walked up the parking-lot-side of the dune, the sand, as fine as inedible sugar, seduced bare feet into sliding backwards a half a step for every one gained; as effective a non-verbal statement of anticipation as any shout of, ‘Hey, we’re almost there, can’t wait to join the gang at the beach’.

The  late-morning breeze off the ocean blew through the reeds growing in startling abundance on the leeward side of the final hill, making a sound like papier-mâché hair; the air was perfumed with the scent of desiccant (with a hint of iodine) and caressed their faces as they looked down over the shoreline. The beach, surely the most primordial of boundary disputes, continued its endless victim/stalker relationship; often at peace, occasionally embraced in destructive passion, neither the ocean nor the earth ever surrendering entirely.

The girl’s face was young and thoughtful, her smile dangerous and her body made most everything else moot, as she walked next to the young man over the last sand dune with the easy stride of a child, her body accepted the minimal covering of a bikini, both innocently graceful and SINfully willful.

“OK, but those two exchange students, if they get rude or out-of-hand, just let me know and I’ll have a talk with them,” but the girl was already halfway between the boy and her ragtag group of friends, so, laughing to himself, ran to join them on the last day of Summer.

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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.

For this week’s Six, we invite Readers to join us as we return to the London chapter of the Order of Lilith. Located in the city’s Whitechapel neighborhood, the headquarters was missionary outpost and a node in a network of those committed to keeping Mankind from straying too far from the path before wisdom might tame appetite, c. 1885. To re-establish that wonderful Victorian vibe, here’s a link to Chapter 24 

The prompt word is:

SIN

LOVE / SACRIFICE / SIN

I pretended not to notice the dusting of yellow on the back of my hand standing in front of my first class as principle instructor of moral philosophy; first day nerves tricked me into mistaking the piece of chalk as the Adversary, as I wrote the three words with letters as bold and clumsy as a young man’s first night with a woman.

The backgrounds of the seventeen young men and six young women was as varied as always, acceptance as a novitiate in the Order being as non-specific as were the criteria for continuing beyond the first year; among them was a group of young men, heirs to a common advantage of name and social ranking and there were one or two students who hid their way through admissions and watched everyone else; I’d been such a student myself not that long ago.

“Who can tell the class how these three very human attributes are not merely related, but might actually be interdependent?”

“Clearly the prima facie evidence can be found in the New Testament, with God sacrificing his Son, condemning Jesus to die on the cross to atone for the sins of Mankind,” Nestor Beckwith, the son of a cousin of an earl with an estate on the outskirts of Cambridge, threw a smile around the classroom like a wreath of fig leaves and poison apples.

“Seth, you look to have another view,” I addressed a young man beginning to frown as soon as Nestor ceased holding forth; he was clearly focused on something not in the room and said,

“Could there be a love so pure to not only accept a person with their sins, but accept the sins themselves?”

A hungry laughter, fed by whispers in the air between the more self-assured students, like the tentacles of a Portuguese Man ‘O War, grew passively though quite deliberately; I raised my eyebrows in encouragement and, deciding to not leave experience the only teacher in the most personal of martial arts, restated,

“A love not merely strong enough to acknowledge the sins of another but to incorporate them, the pride and fear, the avarice and envy and, in doing so create a truly shared humanity.”

 

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