Six Sentence Story | the Wakefield Doctrine - Part 21 Six Sentence Story | the Wakefield Doctrine - Part 21

Six Sentence Story -the Wakefield Doctrine-

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 each week by Denise, all we’re asked to do is write a story of six (and only six) sentences.

Prompt word:

KICK

It’s the smell that gets the newcomer, really; you’d think, in this modern day of solid-state appetites and digital passion it wouldn’t, but the closest encounter most people have with the spiritual is at the nexus of scent and memory. However, here, at the opening of our story, it’s the smell of the air, at once machine oil and grease mixed with carboxylic acids, the original eau de Cologne of human suffering. This particular detail will be all the more a kick in the Reader’s head as they finish and realize this Six is just a one-off parable, (or maybe a fable), about the inner world of creating fiction.

Yeah, that section of cubicles forming a hexagonal exercise yard is the GenPop module; nope, no fences or barricades, don’t need ’em, that bunch has an irresistible drive to form ghettoes, each different genre anchored by slavish obeisance as they pray to their god with a thousand faces, the Almighty Campbell for inspiration, if not intercession, in their effort to write.

That building, off by itself, is our Maximum security, it’s where we house the metaphor-addicts; no, don’t even bother asking, trying to talk to those poor bastards is like… well, you know.

Sure, some are rehabilitated and allowed to return to society; the lucky ones find a quiet, minuscule-PageRank blog and live out their lives shamelessly churning out negative-meta tales for word-prompt bloghops.

 

*

Share

Six Sentence Story -the Wakefield Doctrine-

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 each week by Denise, all we’re asked to do is write a story of six (and only six) sentences.

Prompt word:

STOCK

‘From stock room to boardroom,’ the man stood at the window-wall that framed the expanse of blue that was Lake Michigan on an early January morning. The expression on his face was a battlefield of pride and shame, as the phrase, ‘lock, stock and barrel’ pushed all other thought to the side as nurture triumphed over nature.

Having completed his daily invocation, the president of the Omni Corp rested his forehead against the glass in profane genuflection to Mammon and Friedman, his prophet.

Without changing his posture, one in which balance was as much an illusion as the belief in the value of his own will, the man looked down; the city streets, already alive with people and vehicles pulsing and flowing like corpuscles giving life and clearing waste from a living, growing body.

“Mr. Avaritia, the men from the SEC are here,” Anya Clarieaux stood in the doorway, her title was Executive Administrative Assistant but any stock analyst, from the NYSE to the Nikkei and all points in-between would, after a long enough day on the financial ramparts, whisper, like young boys sharing old, dirty jokes, ‘Wither goest Anya’.

“Tell them to wait, I have one last file to secure,” the windows along the northern side of the penthouse offices were not designed to open, save one; ‘If you apply yourself and never admit defeat, you can be so much more than everyone else’ the words of his father as softly corrosive as rust on the undercarriage of an old car.

 

 

 

Share

Six Sentence Story -the Wakefield Doctrine- [a Café Six]

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 each week by Denise, all we’re asked to do is write a story of six (and only six) sentences.

The last time we saw the tall, thin man and the Sophomore… (click here)

(Hey, shoutout to  Rockstar Girl. Her Six this week was a masterful display of the use of anaphora. Far be it from us to resist the temptation, lol. ‘a course, we don’t quite employ this excellent rhetorical device with the simple grace as did she.)

Prompt word:

TASK

For the first time since entering the Manager’s office, the Sophomore’s confidence began to fray, shuddery as the moment after a near-miss between an inattentive driver and a freight train at a crossing so familiar it neglected to blow it’s cursory warning.

For the first time since a searing night with a woman whose name he’d scratched from his conscious memory like the prisoner in solitary confinement marking time with bloody finger nails, the tall, thin man felt vulnerable.

One of the two thought, ‘Maybe I need to give up this time-traveler thing, the security that nothing imagined can cause harm to others, might not be so ironclad’.

One of the two fought to repress the thought, ‘This is bullshit, why get caught up in this; emotion and reason are like… oil and sugar, or some-fricken-thing.”

The task before the two individuals differed only in terms of their respective resolve to draw aside the veil and pay a price that can only be self-inflicted.

“You know what I think…” the Sophomore leaned into his words, the better to surmount the wall he believed was there;

“I think you know better…”, the tall, thin man let his words settle on the surface of the desk that separated the two men.

 

 

Share

Six Sentence Story -the Wakefield Doctrine- Sister Catherine

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 there but two requirements for inclusion: involve the current prompt word in your story and have no more/no less than six sentences.

Prompt word:

TASK

I am the master of my fate,
        I am the captain of my soul.

Sister Catherine turned to face the classroom even as she wrote the final line of Henley’s poem ‘Invictus’; the majority of the eighth graders were busy scribbling notes, a third, mostly the boys in the back row, looked impressed by her chalkboard skills and one student frowned as if trying to solve an attractive riddle.

“That sounds like he’s saying we can rely only on ourselves in life, we don’t need others, not even God,” the boy spoke half to himself but looked up to see the nun staring at him; smiling, she extended her hand, “Come up and lets see if that’s as valid an ideal as Mr. Henley wants us to believe, shall we?”

“Don’t worry, Seth, your task is simply to walk slowly to the door, turn and come back,” her arms now at her sides allowed the traditional habit of her Order to cover all but a window formed by the starched-white wimple framing her face, her eyes, with a thinly-veiled passion, commanded the attention of twenty-five young people; “Now, repeat your walk but when I say stop, freeze.”

Three steps away from her, she said “Stop” and the boy, his right leg halfway into the next step, froze and stumbled forward; the class laughed, the boy joined them with a protestation of, “No fair, I was in-between steps.”

The woman in the ancient clothing of her Order nodded, “Exactly, walking is nothing more than falling forward, counting on your other foot to be there when needed; and that is surely the most mundane example of Faith; being willing to fall because you know that God will be there to keep you going.”

 

*

 

Share

Six Sentence Story -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. This ‘hop has but one rule, that I’ll share with thee, Six and only six sentences your stories must be.

This week’s prompt word:

JINGLE

“No, I don’t mind holding,” I lied.

Sitting at my desk, on a late-December afternoon, the offices of Desiderata Investigations and Conflict Resolutions LLC was enshrouded with the kind of gloom possible only in the northern latitudes; during Winter; on a cloudy day.

“Yes, still here… I already told the young woman who answered the phone what this is about, but, sure, if you need me to repeat my request,” I tried to force my eyeballs to expand and throw off the stingers that encircled them like meth-addled spermatozoa refusing to accept their creator believed that quantity offset competency and more is more.

“Yes, I realize the Human Genome Project is a multinational effort and this number is for the most general of enquires,” I swiveled away from the empty office now possessed of that special kind of dark that can be witnessed only by one who has let the natural light extinguish before being compensating with interior illumination; a room full of newly-hatched shadows is nothing if not a nightmare’s finger paints.

“This is Dr. Joseph Aāmīn, how may I help you, Mr. Devereaux?”

“So my question is this, what part of our DNA accounts for the feeling we experience when our loved ones die; no, I don’t mind holding,” The pre-recorded music was their corporate jingle and was making the second go-around when, after throwing it as hard as I could, the far wall of my office got all Newton’s First Law on my cell phone, putting it out of its misery; one-out-of-two ain’t bad.

*

Share