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 each Thursday (link in becomes available Wednesday at 6 pm ET) if you have jones for writing or a hankerin’ for reading short, little stories, this is surely the place to be!

This week’s prompt word:

KNOT

“I don’t fuckin’ care if you’re closed, any more than I give a shit it’s Christmas Eve, I just spent twenty-three minutes in the creepiest empty hallway on the planet,” in a voice both intimate and devoid of emotion, like the rote deceptions an obstinate child might rehearse while sitting alone in a time-out, Sybil Trainor stared at one more man in her way, “So tell me where I can find the Sophomore and I’ll leave you people be”.

The tall, thin man compressed his lips, not so much in sympathy as empathy, much the self-reassessment observed in infants and puppies when first encountering a mirror and being forced to come to grips with the true story of the Garden of Eden: ‘I am’ becoming ‘We might be’. The cold calm in his eyes obscured by the light to his back, in something between a sigh and an assurance, “While I cannot, in all honesty say I know where your friend is at the moment, I assure you that I will know when he returns and, at that point in time I will be in a position to facilitate your reunion.”

In alien benediction, the soft yellow light from the office bathed both the man and the girl, who now wore: bell-bottom jeans that were a patchwork of deliberate, if unnecessary mending; an intricately-knotted macramé belt and an off the shoulder peasant blouse, the perfect framing of the face of a girl fluent in non-verbal intercourse.

The sound of voices to their left drew Sybil’s attention and she turned away from the man without the slightest hesitancy and walked towards the long bar, behind which liquor bottles, neon letters and mirrored reflections created a 2D representation of the nearly empty café; gliding along the reef of barstools, Sybil felt her anger pulse into life at the sound of confident familiarity, but then, her anger was never, ever, too far away.

A voice, at once sure without need to convince, anchored the form of a woman on a stool, and Mimi smiled, “Tonight, strangers are friends-by-default, shair, jess tell that rahdoht voice in your head to leave your heart alone.”

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