Welcome to the Wakefield Doctrine (the theory of clarks, scotts and rogers)
This is the Doctrine’s contribution to ‘the Unicorn Challenge‘
A photo-prompt bloghop hosted by jenne and ceayr, it has the simplest of rules: keep it at (or under) 250 words.
Something a bit different. (shh, ceayr… I can hear your eyes rolling)…what follows is a continuation of a ‘Corn from a couple of weeks ago; ‘Friday‘ (which, in turn, was an effort to riff off of ceayr’s ‘Attack‘)
My car slid just enough to embed the tyre treads into the tide-compacted sand, just below the line of wave-tossed seaweed. While the safe house could be seen from the road, the exposed granite ledge shielded us from the occasional trophy wife’s morning walk. Favored as an exclusive enclave for the wealthy, it’s distaff constituency was resigned to accepting that form is function.
The girl sitting next to me was staring at her hands. She had been since I drove us away from the failed crime scene outside the Weekapaug Inn. Given the ferocity of the reverse-autopsy conducted by her father on her attacker, she had but a single chevron of dried blood on her right hand.
The Order of Lilith, to which I belong, is many things. A manifestation of the virtue of poverty and subsistence lifestyle is very definitely not among them. Devoted to maintaining the balance between the human race and the Adversary thereby allowing Man to realize his Original potential is our sole raison d’être. And that requires money.
“From the looks of those clouds on the eastern horizon, once the sun sets, it’s going to be a dark and…”
Interrupting myself, I recalled Brother Abbott saying in my recruiting interview, “Brother Anselm, of all the Gifts retained when we left the Garden, humor is surely the most questionable in terms of becoming the apex predator.”
The girl turned in her seat, raised a single finger, streaked with dried blood,
“Please, don’t say it.”
About clarkscottroger
A most enjoyable vignette shown in the movie-house that is the Unicorn challenge.
(as a fan of The Order of Lilith and the Whitechapel Interlude, it’s good to see Brother Anselm once again)
Ah, Clark, I can sense Mr Bulwer-Lytton (and Snoopy) turning in their respective graves.
And to Brother Abbott I say ‘Pah!’
I am delighted to see you introduce some humour into this dark and stormy tale.
PS When is an island not an island
You two gentlemen seem to me the ideal candidates for the annual Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest which looks for inventions of the worst opening line… https://www.bulwer-lytton.com/
ikr?
(rhet-talk: truth be told, my first iteration had something to do with an organization (in Latin, of course) with a name of Death to the Billionaires (or something) then, the famous ‘dark and stormy night’ except I was trying to make the whole story out of it, (punchline, ‘Don’t say it)… still nothing I was enjoying writing. Finally I thought, ‘Hey, you got characters use them.’ Everyone knows when you use established characters, half the work is done for you. The I remembered Brother Anselm and the Order of Lilith from a few weeks ago… on my effort to take off on your story of the week. (Which, btw, was originally a ‘the Stone and the Crone’ story (you and j but keep that between us).
Anyway once I saw the continuation of the previous story, I was almost done and then remembered the dark and stormy thing to provide the ending.
Good sequel, Clark, with a most elegant first paragraph, although I would have you tell Brother Abbott from me that he’s havering.
I think an apex predator with a sense of humour is exactly what the world needs.
I guess that blows my chances of ever making the Order of Lilith!
thanks, j
no! don’t give up on the Order!
They are the good guys (in my stories) or, at least what passes for good guys in my rhetorical world… (Originally they were the theme of a long-running Six Sentence serial. Brother Abbott was the teacher and main male character. Brother Anselm was my protagonist, new recruit and all. The Order is, of course, grounded in the alternate Genesis chapter wherein God created a man and a woman at the same time, Adam was way a roger and Lilith was not, leading to the famous, flipping off the Creator and walking out of the Garden. (The amazing thing about this story is, as far as I understand it, literally contained in the Bible and when it dawned on someone that it wasn’t consistent with the desired patriarchy, the best the Powers-that-Be (at the time) could come up with was to (one of my favorite semi-current expressions) throw shade at the Lilith character. oh man, she’s a scary-owl-demon, she’ll kill your kids! how awful! don’t think about her’)
…anyway. The Order is a shadow organization dedicated to off-setting excessive effects of (referred to as ‘The Sons of Adam’) efforts to dominate the world with capitalism and politics and popular culture and such. oh, yeah and the whole series begins in Whitehall in Victorian London and what’s not fun about writing about that era.
so… if’n you’re ever in the mood to write a shadowy group with a cool image (the Lilith painting I always use)… let us know we’ll be happy to introduce ya
hey! speaking of avatars (lol), I’m about due to write me a ‘the Stone and the Crone’ story… maybe an origin story for a ‘Corn
Remember too many words can lead to foot in mouth disease.