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.

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.

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.

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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 is one of a series of Six Sentence Stories done in the setting of Parchman Farm, (click here for a Wikipedia briefing). For a sampling of these, here’s one with the prompt word: Quarter and another from later in the series, prompt word: Polish.

Prompt word:

CHALLENGE

“Warden gettin’ soft, tell all the cagebosses to give out these here calendars, for the barracks.”

It was Earl Fenton Callaway’s first day on the job so he threw the sheaf of papers on the trestle table where the inmates of Barracks 8 sat trying to make the December morning meal last.

“Well, don’t thank me all at once,” the starch in his shirt collar gave lie to how casually the man took his promotion; when he and his supervisor stepped into the long, open room, the first thing he did was announce to the men who called it home that, while ‘Mister Callaway…Sir’, was acceptable, he’d look upon it kindly if they’d just call him ‘Boss’.

Cageboss Roscoe, standing in the open doorway, snorted his opinion of his new assistant; the convicts, for their part, made sounds as non-committal and untraceable as the low wind that roamed the cotton fields of Sunflower County during the wet, winter season.

Stepping through the younger man’s words, Roscoe Williams held one of the calendars out to a white-haired man, the hands accepting the gesture looked like two strings of chestnuts folded over on each other; sensing his new-found authority was being challenged, Earl laughed, “Be sure to mark the day, boy, Christmas is still the twenty-fifth, even here at Parchman Farms.”

“Christmas a place,” nodding his thanks to the older guard, the man brushed a silent path from forehead to the middle of his chest, his work-scarred hand a dark star that few of the prisoners could see, fewer still would understand, ‘ain’t just a square on a calendar.”

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.

Previously in our series: the Sophomore sits down with the tall, thin man.

(Warning! This Six is unabashedly a self-imposed writing exercise. Our challenge: to continue the on-going scene of the meeting of the tall, thin man and the Sophomore, with the emphasis on description of both the physical and emotional states of the two characters. Ideally showing and not telling.)

This week’s prompt word:

CHALLENGE

…“Do you know what Hell really is?”

The Sophomore settled back into a chair that was the epitome of minimalist design, in the words of one of his favorite authors, ” …meant to create an alternative to standing and nothing more; moveable and stable which, when you thought about it, are the only really essential qualities a chair required.” The thick folds of his grey-wool overcoat provided support to his lower back, the excessive volume of material in the garment covered up his psycho-congenital slouch and, as a bonus, by leaving it on, he sent a non-verbal message as impossible to ignore as a cat tossed into an occupied shower stall.

“Yeah, of course I know what hell is, kid,” a pink tide rose from the top of the young man’s shirt collar, “If everything they say about how I was somehow transported through time and all, that’d make me your father’s age and, before you even think about trying the ‘you’re young, you don’t know about the painful challenges life can throw at you,’ allow me to retort: Fuck you, I have the scars that prove I’m a survivor and no one, especially an over-dressed, hypo-limbic metro with an exaggerated sense of his own insight into human nature is in any position to challenge my right to do what I want.”

The tall, thin man tilted back in his chair, let his lips turn up at the corners, every bit the scantily clad magician’s assistant and lit a cigarette; the blue-grey smoke formed a skirmish line between his thoughts and the young man’s anger.

“You really gonna try and go meta-a-mano with me?”

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