the Wakefield Doctrine

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…

Prompt word:

FOLD

“Good, keep your distance, but under no circumstance allow her to be out of your sight until she has engaged the contact.”

The Mother Superior of Eibigen Abbey returned the handset to its cradle with the fragile grace of a glass cutter with a very bad cold. Taking a manila folder from the lower right-hand drawer of her desk, smoothing out the fold in one of two sheets of paper, she read the hand-written entry: ‘Subject has exceptional potential, a dynamic and somewhat unstable balance between a desire to atone for her perception of sins, (a common projection among victims of childhood sexual abuse), and a self-destructive drive, (unfortunately equally common) often observed in this subset of candidates for the Order.’

Thirty-three thousand, seventy-seven miles to the west, Sister Aclima felt the stares of the crowd as she crossed the threshold of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s primary entrance, the scarcity of young women wearing the habit of her Order triggered a flurry of phone videos; her training enabled the former Kayla Sheperd to view the curiosity of strangers as a transient state, thereby insulating her from the worst effects of her extreme fear of scrutiny.

Her phone, its normally innocuous ringtone inexplicably changed to a low, nearly subsonic sound, suddenly began resonating with something buried in her body, an atavistic warning of an approaching threat.

She felt a touch of a hand on her shoulder.

*

*****

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…

Prompt word:

CROSS

The Sophomore, pressed back into the decadently soft leather upholstery as the black Maybach launched itself away from the Café, laughed, “Well at least Newton’s 2nd Law hasn’t been over-ridden by stealth nuns from Bavaria or hot-sounding women in red skyscrapers in Chicago.”

Rosetta Storme, Benson & Hedges 100 bobbing between her lips, every bit the lascivious concert master, frowned with impatience as Rue DeNite tried to light it; Rocco brought the sedan to a sudden stop to avoid hitting a dark-haired woman in a black Malini Handloom suit standing in the cross walk in front of the Six Sentence Café & Bistro; Rocco lowered his window to let out a smile, “If you’re standing in front of it, you know what kinda place this is, not for nothin’ but the entire staff might still be in a meeting, feel free to make yourself at home and if anyone asks, tell them you are a guest of Lou Caesare.”

The car resumed it’s trajectory down the lane, (which merged into an un-named street, followed by a turn onto an avenue and ultimately a crowded boulevard); Rosetta mimed deafness and both Rue and Rocco put on their isolation headphones.

Exhaling a menthol-fresh, laminar flow of tobacco smoke, the niece of Lou Caesare, in a spot-on application of Ernst Haeckel’s observation that ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny, at least the social context of a clueless college student and a fairly pissed-off young woman, her first words ripping through the cloud of nicotine and annoyance,

“First, that’s Newton’s First Law, not the 2nd.”

Pulling the girl to his shoulder, the Sophomore laughed, “Jeez, lighten up, I never said I was a physics major.”

Pulling back from the embrace, Rosetta continued, “And second, and this is the part where your even hinting at this being funny will create a future as devoid of the chance of any form of intercourse, as Neil Armstrong’s first stroll on the Moon, “Your name is Ethan?”

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…

Prompt word:

CROSS

“Please, before you continue your explanation of how Mr. St. Loreto is very busy and not currently available, listen to me carefully. I’ve been behind your desk in reception not so long ago and one of the most valuable lessons I learned was: to get ahead you need to think outside the box, that, and be willing to take chances.”

Turning away from the Lake Michigan side of her office, Anya Claireaux faced the opposite wall and a single 97-inch OLED consisting of a mosaic of tiles that, judging from the natural light through windows showing in the feed, made it obvious that points all over the globe were represented. With the touch of a key and the click of a mouse, one tile grew to claim the middle fifty percent of the display, in it: an office reception area, a desk and a young woman biting her thumbnail; behind her a window looked down on palm trees, sunshine and enough turquoise to bring a summer smile.

“I don’t mean to sound cross, and be sure your recorder is on for this next, it will be useful in your unemployment claim, relay this to your boss: ‘I fuckin’ care if Mr. St Loreto is busy, pull down the shades, turn off the lights, cover him with a goddamn blanket for all I care, just get him on this line.’

And check your email, you’ll find a gift certificate to Neo Nails Brickell, a girl needs to splurge on herself every now and then, and I’ll hold,” Anya smiled as she genuinely enjoyed all aspects of her work.

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.

*