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 and defined by a single number: 6 (the exact number of sentences in qualified stories)

Previously on ‘an Ian Devereaux Six‘

Prompt Word:

RANK

‘Think, Devereaux’, my habitual self-admonition ranked right up there with, “Of course, just being friends would be great” in the category, ‘Change one thing about myself?’

“Alright, one hint and we move on,” the guy who’d started out pretty impressive, not gonna use the ‘intimidating’ word, but given my present circumstance, was looking like someone I’d better pay attention to, leaned over his maple syrup-drenched Cinn-A-Stack, “This is not a poorly-written sci-fi novel info dump where you retell the whole story because the Reader can’t remember that far back in the plot.”

His lip betrayed the friendly tone; the hint of a curl, of the low-life wife beater, proclaiming justification for his growing anger, “But, now that I think of tropes from this era,” he turned enough to linger on our waitress returning to the kitchen, “I could arrange for the wavy-wavy line transition, but given the risk of permanent brain damage, you might want to accept a simple, “Shut the hell up and I’ll tell you, ‘what the fuck is going on’.”

“I am part of an ancient organization charged with keeping mankind from destroying itself and rendering the world uninhabitable. You’ve come into contact with us before, when you helped your friend Dr. Leanne Thunberg search Europe for the cause of her husband’s death; your present client, a Mr. Lou Caesare, has you maintaining surveillance on a young woman by the name of Rosetta Storme, we need to know everything you know.”

Smiling with obvious enjoyment at the pile of pancakes and too-well-done bacon on his plate, he looked me in the eye, “If this was one of your culture’s even older memes, I’d be twisting the ends of a comically-long mustache and saying, “Or else.”

*