Welcome to the Wakefield Doctrine (the theory of clarks, scotts and rogers)
Hey, so there’s this new prompt-write place we’re auditioning for. (Students of the Doctrine will now be raising eyebrows and reaching for real-or-imagined popcorn…. a clark deliberately going to a party?!?! This we gots to see.)
So, we got this message today, in a rarely-used email account:
In less than 250 words write a story inspired by “strange lights in the sky”.
The new apex predator confronted life: food to be found; predators to avoid.
The sun dominated the daytime sky with a simple directive: live and prosper. Despite His pride in this first quality of the earth, (‘Let there be Light!’), god grudgingly allow darkness to hold sway with a different agenda: hide and survive.
A stable dichotomy held until the upright hominids faced the inherent quality setting them apart from other living things: a subjective life that rivaled, in potential, their natural skills at running, tool-making and subjecting the weaker members of their kind to capricious will.
When the communal fire died down or a hunter stumbled away from the group, there was no escaping the strange lights in the sky. Like the whispers the spinster-to-be fought to un-hear, the night was not so simple and quite enticing:
‘Who am I, why am I here’
About clarkscottroger
Bravo, mon vieux, you can write intelligibly!
Cool piece, Clark.
The link to the Min Min Challenge, which you forgot to include:
https://sixcrookedhighways.com/min-min-weekly-prompt/
Thanks, ceayr
(also, thanks for hooking up the link for the correct post)
Great to have you here, clark. Loved this ‘dawn of time’ piece, especially ‘the night was not so simple and quite enticing’.
Good to be here, Doug
(If I might impose on you to delete the ‘extra’ Doctrine post, I’d appreciate it.)
Done 👍
thank you
Good to see you here, Clark.I like this beginning of life idea and the phrase ‘Like the whispers the spinster-to-be fought to un-hear’ is just loaded with unsaid meaning.
good to be ‘seen’
( I’m really trying to learn to un-box some the phrases and descriptions that show up (in my writing)… I suspect, if I do, then I can get extra value… “ok! Spinister-to-be”! you’re over there in the lined market ‘Metaphor’ …”sure it’s crowded but you’ll get your turn”. “Whispers… un-heard?” lets get you over to the Foreshadowing dept.. think you’ll be happier there…”)
;p
It would be strange, would it not, if we’d evolved to consider daylight as the thing to be feared. Imagine stories beginning with “under cover of daylight…”
Perhaps we already have…
consider the dark side of countless fairy tales and cautionary legends, only this time identify with the ‘bad guy’.
Brings to mind the story of Adam’s first wife, Lilith. The most convincing evidence of it being ‘true’ is in the efforts to redefine her as a demon, a malevolent inhabitant of the night, preying on children*.
Heck, for that matter, consider the whole vampire mythos… sure, you’ll burst into flames if you go into the daylight… but immortal. lol The night is a negative and hostile environment for the reg’lar folks… oh yeah, they’re mortal and die and such
* as opposed, of course, to being a story amusingly inconsistent with a certain patriarchal view of humanity and moral values
Strange indeed but perhaps we would have to say ‘under the exposure of daylight’ to signify our fear of people seeing what we really are. ;-)