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 it is governed by a single rule: all stories must be exactly six sentence in length.
Prompt word:
MACHINE
“You know what this joint needs?”
It was late morning on the first Tuesday of the New Year and the Six Sentence Cafe & Bistro was as empty as an upside-down pail.
Seeing the woman sitting at the end of the long bar, the tall, thin man shielded his eyes from an imaginary light-source and called-out in an exaggerated aside, hand in front of his mouth, palm outwards, “Mimi, you’re not gonna leave a brother hangin’ metaphorically-….”
“Cher, surely you don’t mean, ‘dialogue-istically speaking’, were you to, you’d end up as tangled in the alliterative underbrush as an ole gator what chased un cocodrie in his leaky pirogue,” the diminutive woman laughed with a natural kindness that defied mockery.
“Sorry, I thought the Café fiction machine was on the fritz again, please do not let me disturb your reflection, I just…” the well-dressed Proprietor had a look of chagrin even as he lit another of his favorite brands of cigarette, Player’s Navy Cut; seeing the look in the woman’s eyes, he hastily added, “No, I gave up years ago, but I have a Reader who, though no longer a smoker herself, enjoys their fictional representation,” his smile served as convivial punctuation.
The laughter from the bar reminded the tall, thin man of how, in a fictional reality, things really do work out for the best, even as the peaceful impromptu moment was interrupted by the Bartender bursting through the kitchen’s double swinging door.
*
About clarkscottroger
Woody-esque.
(matches… lighters are for windy sets… besides, you can’t write or have written a phone number on a lighter.
I know…that reeks of being old school but hey… tell me something I don’t know!)
Thanks I could only hope, (i.e. this blog kills fascists) lol (how much different is the world between then and now… no! not the political/cultural, rather the positive aspect of technology… i.e. the virtual world.) though I confess to preferring RATM as manifesting the potential of the instrument
know you’re a cigar guy, but Players (besides providing the cover art on a most excellent of albums*) was my first brand of cigarette
*and the poor, poor Sophomore… being dragged out of his time (late ’60s early ’70s) which I willing characterize as one of the top three periods of time in which to be a music fan**) and ending up here in this part of the 21st C (Rick Beato did a vid recently about the disappearance of bands as creators of music that makes it to the top of the charts that is chilling, if not scary)
Rick Beato’s videos are the representation of ” Don’t look at me – I told ya so!”. And he did. Will that make any difference?
Will we avoid the homogenized soup in music ( the rest…fall in a single column line)? We’ll see.
yeah… but those years.. full fricken albums from bands like nearly every year for a while there (one of the points in the video I’m referencing (the one where a count of the top 100 or 10 or whatever on Spotify positions held by a band was 3. 3 bands. can I get a ‘damn!’)
but I don’t want to sound like I’m complaining. I don’t listen to streaming music. I go foraging through youtube not only for rock and stroll records and consider myself fortune when I ‘discover*’ people like Jacques Loussier (like dis shit)
* for me… usually they’ve been around decades
Ten years quit, and I still miss a good cigarette! There’s just something ethereal about looking out over life through a dancing coil of smoke…
Wonderful write!
I get that! I’d cross the street for an opportunity to walk through a crowd of outdoor smokers just for a whiff of second-hand smoke lol (‘ceptin now seems everbody is all vaping and calling it smoking (talk about your ‘…taking a shower with a raincoat on’ lol
Cher, is the fiction machine ever really on the fritz? There’s always a new story to spin.
yes I enjoyed the fictional thick smoke.
I remember when anonymity was guaranteed by thick smoke.
Thank you.