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

This is our weekly contribution to the Six Sentence Story bloghop.

Hosted by Denise every Wednesday.

Reader Advisory! What follows as a Six, while a part of an established story/narrative, is more for the fun of typing words with a common, if not rather scrambled DNA, like, back in the day, when Johnny Carson would have someone on the show who lined up a bunch of dominoes (or playing cards or Carol Wayne lookalikes)… and, just before going to the midnight commercial break, would set off the sequence…. like that, except for the thing about using words and, a vague, mis-remembered article on James Joyce.

This week’s prompt word:

VAULT

“What it is Hunga?”

The tall, thin man looked up from the desk in the office located on the left-wall down the never-quite-light/never-totally-dark hallway that started at the end of the long bar that ran along the right-hand wall on the entrance-end of the Six Sentence Café & Bistro; the bar faced the broad, black-painted-ceiling space of the Bistro, with it’s low stage jutting off the interior brick wall that faced the lagoon of round tables separating it from the opposing exterior wall, which, unlike the interior wall, was a load-carrying wall, the immediate and arguable second most beneficial outcome of it’s design being the presence of intermittent alcoves in the spaces between the supporting columns, which provided certain patrons the promise and opportunity for privacy, discretion and intimacy, this linear series of curtained tables ended at the point the main entrance to the Café appeared, with it’s three granite steps down from the sidewalk that, like a premature chalk outline of an inexplicable death, continued along the the side of the building that contained the Café and it’s brethren in slow, civic resurrection; premature tomb stones of hewn timber beams, hand-laid bricks and cast iron-encased glass that continued to hold up the roof, five floors closer to the sky.

The dog sat on a handcrafted comforter that, draped from the back of the leather sofa and, after a tuck-in between vertical and horizontal surfaces, spread over the seat cushions and cascaded, in the still-life way that blankets and throws and such, have, when compelled by gravity, to hang, softly frozen above the floor; the leather was entirely brown, the dog, only partially so.

Possessed of the quality that allowed it’s kind to complete the other half of a perfect private conversation, the dog looked up from whatever invisible vistas that held his attention and stared at the man sitting at the desk that faced the door that lead out into a hallway where dusk reigned permanently, offering only two choices: to turn right and move towards the light and the relatively uncomplicated life out in the Bistro, the bar being the first sign that a safer land has been entered, the wall behind the long bar was entirely mirrors and rows of liquor bottles leaking color in chaotic prisms on multiple shelves, except, in the one section where glass became wood, and bottle caps, the porthole-like window allowing the kitchen to be observed like some shiny-steel polar landscape or, were one still undecided as to the original binary choice, lingering outside the Manager’s office, a turn to the left offered more hallway but less light and much, much less benign certainty.

The tall, thin man titled his head towards the dog, adding the element of genuine curiosity to his interrogative, a gesture appreciated by all members of the canine family, despite lacking the muscular capacity of pointing and manipulating the direction of his outer ears, the man retained the free use of his tongue which, combined with a grinning, panting expression, conveyed both agreement (as to the importance of directly regarding the other lifeform), and gratitude for his unalloyed attention; satisfied he had secured as much backup as could reasonably be brought to bear, the man stood up and faced the office door that remained in it’s minimally functional state of being closed; his canine companion, being blessed with a more direct, action-oriented relationship with the world-at-large, coiled his hind legs as the last stage prior to a vault over the back of the sofa to a position at his human companion’s side.

With the soft click of a felt-and-cork clockwork, the door-handle began to rotate.

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