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.
Previously in our current tale…
Prompt word:
OPTION
“I have read… perhaps I dreamt it… who’s to say… that this room once served as office/workshop of an inventor who exhausted his funds in order to have it built-out and furnished as an exact replica of the space used by his idol… a misguided and ultimately tragic genius from Victorian London.”
The tall, thin man moved along the perimeter of the room, looking at everything, touching nothing.
“I believe this Room 215,” at this the Proprietor raised the horizon of his inspection to somewhere between chair-rail and crown moulding, “was last occupied in 1911 or so, just before the Bread and Roses Strike at another mill in this region, a most auspicious time for this country’s Worker’s Rights Movement.”
Manicured fingers traced a vertical moulding in a corner of the room, slowed then pressed, causing a section of the dusty casing to retract, taking along with it a rectangular section of the wall.
Holding his left hand up briefly towards where la Raconteuse sat and, without averting his eyes, the Proprietor whispered, “Please, Chris, stay where you are…just for an moment…”
Even as he spoke, from the ebony rectangle of the exposed secret room, a figure stepped out; that of a very short man, four feet tall at best, dressed in an old-fashioned bellhop uniform most often associated with the grand hotels such as the St. Pancras, during the Victorian Era, complete with red jacket, waist pants and an odd little pillbox hat.
The figure, turning his head with an oddly disjointed motion, reached into his jacket and held up an embossed linen card that had printed (in tarnished gold foil):
Option A: Cards Will be Displayed in Response to Commands
Option B There is no Option B.
*
About clarkscottroger
Very nicely told. I wonder what will be on those cards and how he got into that secret room.
Ooh! Chilling mystery mounts, diminutive bell hop barely holds a flood of foreboding!
oooooh — clues: turning his head with an oddly disjointed motion.
we (Olden Ones) have been taught the secret mysteries of the prior Century. These include architectural accommodation to the development of larger homes (for the larger class) We have indulged in a bit of hendiadys in our desire to not diminish the mystery. In this case our use of two nouns: dumb: unable to speak and waiter: one in service (in some cases, domestic)
You are on the right track…shhh
lol
…just as an interesting aside, the house before our current house was built in 1564. It had a priest hole at one end of the Inglenook, and my boys used to love playing in there.
Aye … shhh.
(the inclusion of an already deployed vid clip in no way a diminution of the sincerity of our compliment to Violet’s Comment)
However! Permit our secondary scottian aspect to laugh* at the multi-layered humor**
*un-affected laughter, one of the Predators (scotts) better qualities
**forgive us for indulging in an Olde English/French root word bawd
😊
I knew there was something uncanny about that hallway!
this is very true
hey did you see Reelika’s follow-up Six?!?! damn! some people have a natural affinity for never, neverlands
Oh, loved this! This room – Room 215 – is more than fab…
I am looking to write about this scene next week (Wed) on myside. This is going to be most interesting.
Oo. I need to see this room in person, an inventor you say? Ooo. This is so cool.
turn of the century guy (the last century, as much as it pains me to make that distinction)… the Bread and Roses Strike mentioned in this Six was a real thing, took place in Lawrence, Massachusetts. I used it (both the Strike and Lawrence in a WIP of mine, ‘Almira’ (a prequel to the story that became the movie ‘The Wizard of Oz’)
what a delight… short… tall… i love the mystery of a room standing still till once discovered again… especially so the uniform and pill box hat… and to bring in the this week’s prompt word so seamlessly… heck yeah
thank you, P.
Dr. Egmont is everywhere, ‘course when you’ve invented a time mechanism, lol
Getting a David Lynch vibe towards the end of your Six. Little man wearing “an odd little pillbox hat.”. Not creepy, not creepy at all.
he/it does seem possess of a certain degree of that