Welcome to the Wakefield Doctrine (the theory of clarks, scotts and rogers)
WARNING! This story will be a semi-one-take story. (The ‘semi’ to allow for spelling and word-count adjustment. Once each only.)
There is a good reason for this approach, this week: we might be getting a cold. And, as everyone who approaches learning to write fiction like they learn to sing, i.e. spending hours on the highway with Professor Radio will tell you: the first take is always the hardest (but usually most creative).
Irregardless*, what say we head over to jenne and ceayr‘s soirée and see what’s up at this week’s Unicorn Challenge.
*
“Come on, Seth. Hurry the hell up!
Seth looked at the wall of the bus tunnel. Doubling his resolve, he shook the metal cylinder in his left hand. The ball inside of the can of spray paint made a sound that always made him think of roulette.
“What was that? Did you hear something?”
Regretting his decision to be peer’d into accepting the demands of the fraternity, he made the decision to withdraw his pledge. Almost immediately, his inner critic intoned: ‘She’s right, you know, there’s something missing in you, you don’t ever want to be ‘a part of’. His girlfriend Samantha’s suggestion he join her sorority’s brother frat, Bro-Tu-Bró, was arguably more social anodyne than bromide. He was pretty sure it was an ultimatum, offered with a midnight smile.
The bus tunnel maintained legendary status among students in the city’s colleges. Ranging from the cautionary: ‘The kid tried to run for an access tunnel. The bus got there first. Dental records were required to ID him,” to the intriguing, “Lovecraft, that’s his house on the corner there, held a seance inside the tunnel. Once.”
In recent years, the local tagger community, brought their aerosol-oeuvre; filling the tile walls with proclamations of love and misogyny.
Bathed in the halo-luminescence of the approaching Brown University-DownCity Terminal bus, Seth ran, leaving behind a plastic-capped thurible; on the wall his offering: “ChatGPT is the second bite of the Apple. Fool me once, shame on you, Fool me twice…”.
About clarkscottroger
You’re a man of your word, Clark – you said last week it wouldn’t happen again that you were late, and here you are!
With a story of the first half of life: the need to be an individual versus the need to be accepted, especially when his girlfriend gives him the ultimatum ‘offered with a midnight smile’. Wonderful expression, that.
Seems to me he made the best of both sides with his tag.
And I’m with him on that: ChatGPT is the second bite of the apple.
yeah… setting aside everyone how makes up stuff in writing because they have to… where is the appeal for those who do so because it’s both satisfying (sometimes surprising) and always (‘after ‘the End’) fun?
At least he got that part right.
yes ’em
:)
icon/emoji for gratitude: Here
Fool me twice, get hit by a bus?
I wasn’t previously aware of that quaint colonial aphorism, but I’ll put a pin in it for future reference.
PS Loved your story, lots of good stuff there
ayiiee!
(I will assume that you know the expression, however coloquial. However as any good host, seeing a certain look on the faces of the other guests at the … afternoon tea, steps in and makes the inquiry.*
“Fool me once, shame on you; follow me twice, shame on me.”
*thanks, c Sometimes I forget the global nature of this… place
Nice! I think you win the Challenge with this one.
Thankee Miz H