Welcome to the Wakefield Doctrine (the theory of clarks, scotts and rogers)
This is the Wakefield Doctrine’s contribution to the Unicorn Challenge.
Hosted each week by jenne and ceayr, we brave few, we band of bloggers are provided a photo, an image if you will, and charged with creating a story of not more than 250 words.
[ed. thx out to ceayr. as we mentioned last week, developing our action-writing skills was a new priority and so, with appropriate appropriations, we borrow the scene/setting of his ‘Corn this week.]
I almost threw up.
“The desires of Man too-oft gang agley,” Brother Abbott, while lacking the birthright claim of most of the initiates in the classroom, was inordinately fond of Burns. I had accompanied him to establish the Order’s first chapter in Glasgow. I sat with the young men and women, arm tensing ahead of his request for a volunteer. “While I won’t say I believe a certain ‘Leather Apron’ has moved to your fair city, the current murders here will allow you all to see the Order in action.”
Straightening my spine, the first step to disarming the vomit-coil of my esophagus, I stood between the young woman and the two men. Their carnal embrace continued five yards back beneath the shelter of a rowan, berries all the more red as a knife opened veins and arteries. The girl’s face, in sodium vapor-relief of a early-morning streetlight, is alive with emotion. Every one of them.
With a hand to her shoulder, I continued my turn, the heavy cloth of my robe adding an acoustic dampening of the thud-splash of the two men’s deadly congress.
“I won’t let them take you down into their hell,” she leaned against my arm, I lead her to my car.
Behind us the man crouched over his victim. Blood covered both, tribal paints of the Fallen taken up when Man became human.
The sirens doppler’d towards us, twin shrieks of horror and triumph. I started the engine and drove out of the night.
About clarkscottroger
Atmospheric and tense!
ty, M!
Well, Grasshopper, it seems you are a fast learner.
A grippingly gruesome tale draped in your inimitable word pictures: ‘heavy cloth of my robe adding an acoustic dampening of the thud-splash of the two men’s deadly congress’.
But perhaps an occasional tense confusion, Clark?
tryin’ boss, tryin’
(thanks)
now to the second-but-equal fun thing about bloghops in general and the ‘Corn in particular.
Funny you should mention ‘tense’ I caught what I thought was one or two on a semi-final edit but that, in turn made me think, maybe my ‘flashback scene’ was throwing me off, i.e. the Brother Abbott scene (2nd paragraph). I thought I re-read sufficiently, any specific instance on the confusion.
Funny about how, though a difficult enough task, this fiction-writing, how we sometimes contribute to it, the process, not the fiction. I have a weakness for existing; those who have achieved a certain degree of reality in stories past. Brother Abbott and the MC (Brother Anselm) somehow they make a story easier to picture especially in the early drafts.
The story started in my head as a challenge to write an action-centric one and seeing how I’m using your style as a mold (from my jewelry manufacturing days, ‘lost
factswax investment casting) lol anyway, I’ve always had trouble with ‘flashbacks’, how to let the Reader know something is out of chronology without the clunkiness of ‘Brother Anselm remembered when Brother Abbott asked him to….’anyway, thanks for the feedback/input, I find it useful and is fun
Delightfully bloodthirsty story, Clarke, peppered with you signature descriptions.
Personal favourite this week: ‘Straightening my spine, the first step to disarming the vomit-coil of my esophagus…’
Excellent story, Clarke.
The irony of the fact that the two men’s carnal embrace takes place under a rowan tree, the tree that is supposed to protect from evil, disease and death.
Or is it to make their bloody fight seem even more heinous?
thanks, j
damn! I didn’t know that about rowan trees (Full Disclosure: I did look it up and got the berry color from what I read)… that was one of two elements I grabbed directly from ceayr’s story… in fact, not that I scan too quickly sometimes, but it was only on the, like, third re-read that I got a sense of the setting of his story…(deleted a sidewalk)
Don’t tell ceayr, but my ambition was to meld the two characters (the father and the stalker) in some manner, leaving the Reader to reflect on the full implications of violence (or something)… didn’t quite get there
So of course I told ceayr! And we had a discussion…
The bit I didn’t get when reading your story was who the two men were – I was reading it as a stand-alone story and not connecting it to ce’s.
Yes, I know – even although you set out quite clearly in the preamble that this is what you were doing.
Now that I realise that, everything has fallen into place, including the invitation to reflection on the ‘full implications of violence’.
Dare I say, a scary scene no matter how you slice it?
I enjoyed how you qualified your opening statement with the first sentence of the second paragraph.
Excellent outro.
Mission accomplished, I’d say. Both within the story, and in your stated goal. Plenty of action here. Drama, conflict, obstacles overcome, fair maiden rescued – and all with a backdrop of a mysterious Order of Brothers. Not to mention wonderful images: ‘sodium vapor-relief of an early morning streetlight’ (my favourite).
Gruesome and bloodthirsty – and some of the language escaped me! But a heck of a good story!
Bloody hell, but that was a tale of skulduggery! Engaged allbthe senses!