Welcome to the Wakefield Doctrine (the theory of clarks, scotts and rogers)
This is the Doctrine’s contribution to the Six Sentence Story bloghop.
Hosted by Denise, constrained by a sentence limit (high and low) of six, there are worse ways to spend the remaining time you have on earth.
Prompt word:
TRICK
“Kayla… Miss Sheperd!”
The class ceased it’s non-verbal Brownian movement: glances and smiles, frowns and stares all shut down at the same moment; not to put too fine a point on this observation, it was more a two-step threshold, starting with ‘Miss’ and ending with ‘!’.
Alien anthropologists, searching for the root cause of Earth’s dominant species’ tendency to isolate in the face of a threat, need look no further than our fictional classroom, as the majority of our Protagonist’s classmates immediately began to stare at their text books, demonstrating the most fundamental of social camouflage strategies, aka: ‘Sorry, I wasn’t really paying attention’.
“Please share with the class your understanding of the meaning of meta fiction,” even as the nun turned towards the blackboard, demonstrating the first technique of leadership, i.e. after giving a command, assume it will be obeyed; Sister Magellan’s ears barely registered the sound of metal chair legs on a tile flooring as her victim rose, if fingernails scraping down a slate blackboard was the equivalent cries of passion for bats, the metal-on-tile surely was the applause of an appreciative audience.
“If I get this wrong, everyone will stare at me and the dark-girl will be waiting for me tonight, you must not fail,” the girl, our Miss Sheperd, stumbled briefly as she crossed the no-man’s land between the rank-and-file desks and the blackboard where Sister Magellan waited, tapping her retractable chalk-holder, (itself quite the scandal back at the convent among the older teachers objecting to teaching gimmicks and do-dads), against the silver ring on her finger, “Wait a minute, who is the protagonist here…oh.my.fricken.god!”
Reciting with a voice not really that of a child, I began,
“You and these children are the meta in my story and…wait just a damn minute, and the whole purpose of this exercise was to trick me into forgetting to use a certain word,”
with that, the class disappeared, the nun just kinda faded out and the sounds of traffic on 5th Avenue brought me back to the present.
*
About clarkscottroger
This piece carries an extraordinary undercurrent of unease, not simply the familiar classroom dread, but something that feels much deeper. The sensory precision: the scrape of chair legs, the command of authority, the quiet disorientation at the end. It captures that psychic echo of fear that outlasts the moment itself. It reads like someone remembering, or perhaps witnessing, a trauma being re-lived through empathy or close observation. There’s an authenticity in that final fade to the present that feels like the mind’s way of returning from a distance. Subtle, layered, and brilliantly crafted.
Good observation: “the first technique of leadership, i.e. after giving a command, assume it will be obeyed”
Although I don’t have a clue what meta fiction is the phrase “the whole purpose of this exercise was to trick me into forgetting to use a certain word” does seem like a good example of whatever it is since “trick” is the prompt word.
I take meta fiction (sometimes just ‘meta’ as in ‘Hey clark you went all meta on that Six)…it’s where a character in a story can make it plain (to the Reader) that they are aware of being in a story and such…similar to ‘breaking the fourth wall’ in movies
Nicely done. I’m going to assume Sister Magellan has been around the world, or at least around the classroom.
(Don’t tell anyone… but the Principle of my parochial elementary school was Sister Mary Magellan)
lol I trust she doesn’t mind the appropriation
I was almost expecting to see someone throw a blackboard duster… and possibly hit someone (ow, that hurt!).
I remember those… hard felt, bricklike erasers that had to be clapped free of chalk dust at the end of the day… something of an honor to be asked to, if I recall
Oooo, shudder, shudder, I wish those fingernails hadn’t scraped down the blackboard!
sorry, man (what the story wants, the story gets?)