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. Dominated by an endless drive to make all things Six, in this case, the exact required number of sentenceses

Stop the Presses! Unread this Six! Incorrect prompt word, deployed without reason, rationale or explanaiton.

(So, what say y’all just save this bad boy against the day the correct prompt word is written about).

Prompt Word:

LINK

“Has that bio-chrono missing link of a time traveler shown up yet?”

The voice on the intercom was that of the tall, thin man; his tone carried a remarkably-grating edge, one that the average person would have little choice but to interpret as unbridled hostility.

Fortunately for any internet-fiction critics, the setting, (of our tale), is the Six Sentence Cafe & Bistro where the odds of encountering ‘average people’ are laughingly scant; the risk of harm, trauma (rhetorical or emotional) or distress was readily accepted by the three Proprietors gathered around the bar, witnessing the first, (Spoiler Alert!! …and last), use of the aforementioned intercom.

“Nick, cher, tell me you didn’t get the intercom from that awful Sil’s Loans and Pawnshop,” Mimi’s voice had the calm intensity of an airline pilot advising his passengers to prepare for a rough landing; being the man he was, the Gatekeeper bowed his head ever-so-slightly, and said, “Nai agapité Miz M, I thought you would be pleased at how good a deal I got.”

The Bartender’s smile at the exchange evaporated, like suds in a kitchen sink after a Brillo^© pad is rinsed, as the Sophomore walked in from the front entrance; looking a bit worse for wear, he threw a smile at the three and said, “Ssup,” laughed briefly and added, “Too bad our rhetorical greetings back in the ’70s didn’t have such elegant economy, it would have made life much simpler.”

“What?” a treble snap from the square grilled screen signaled the ‘Talk’ button being pushed by the occupant of the Manager’s office, “Send him down… now;” uncharacteristically harsh, the voice convinced the three Proprietors that not every conflict can be ameliorated by good-intentioned mediation.

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 by Denise, you should try it! Six Sentences only.

Prompt word:

DETAIL

He’d reached the end of his rope…

Accustomed to a life intrinsically conducive to absolutes, he waited for the inevitable qualifier to appear in the Limited Seating Theatre that was his conscious mind. Like the tail-end of a movie’s credits, somewhere between ‘Bestboy‘ and ‘This is a work of fiction, any similarities to persons living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental‘, a certain hedging of every emotional bet would always appear; he waited with the patience of a man who believed he knew himself but hoped he might be wrong.

…almost.

Right on schedule, the despair manifested as a feeling, not so much one of ‘being down’ as it was a decrease in buoyancy; the single-word qualifier offered a condition to an otherwise straight-forward, unambiguous assertion; every drunken Romeo who, after splashing his face with water in a nightclub men’s room, convincing himself the girl accidentally threw her drink in his face.

God lives in the details… ok, sure; wait a damn minute, isn’t that ‘the devil’s in the details‘?

The internal dialogue began in earnest as it always did; the company his mind shared, as he continued his search for the True Answer, was a spouse without form or standing, far more formidable than the shiniest of wedding bands.

*

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 every week it’s the same thing: “Use the prompt word and create a story of exactly six sentences, aiight?”

(Hey! Just read what I wrote. Permit me to claim: Shaggy Dog Six.)

This week’s prompt word:

VISION

“You’re all set,” the receptionist smiled towards the all-but-one-empty waiting room and the man walked decisively to the sole corner seat where, at the price of being bathed in the aural pathos of Today’s Top Headlines, he could watch both the entrance to Each Coast Ophthalmology Associates and the door to the right of the sign-in window, where the doctor would appear.

“Mr. Ezikial, please follow me,” without waiting to see if he was being obeyed, the doctor walked down a corridor and, finally, standing in the sole open door he nodded, “Have a seat and we’ll get started.”

“Says here you’ve never had your vision tested,” delegating the interrogative to his eyebrows, the doctor busied himself with the apparatus suspended and gimbaled over and above the examining chair, all of which couldn’t have been more steampunk if the ophthalmologist had worn a leather duster and padded aviator goggles; the brass and dark metal contraption, made reasonable in a down-to-earth sense, had two apertures, but they were almost lost in the concentric rings of gears and levers and flip-wheels of colored glass.

“Are you having any problems with your eyes?” the overhead light winked out and the only illumination was a vertical rectangle of bright white light on the wall across the room, “Blurriness, persistent afterimage, that sort of thing?”

“Nothing wrong at all, I’m here on the recommendation of my parish priest, to whom I recently mentioned that I realized there is a certain perspective on the world around us and the people who make it up, and that there were, if one wanted to gain useful insight into human behavior, all while having fun, three personality types accounting for everyone; this Idea came to me all as one understanding, it’s constituent elements appearing as necessary with an inevitability of correctness that made me say, ‘My god, this is the Wakefield Doctrine, I must share it with the world.”

With a soft plastic click, the overhead lights came on and the doctor stood abruptly, “This hasn’t happened in quite some time, but,” he smiled to convey good will, “But you want my colleagues in the second building in this office park, Ineffable, Noetic, Transient and Passive, Associates, LLC.; lets see if I can’t get my receptionist to write you a referral, I’m sure they’ll be able to determine the origin of this…. Doctrine of yours.”

*

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 each Thursday, an exercise in creative writing in sextuple-form.

(Hey! I’m counting the first sentence (ending with an ellipsis) as being half of the line of dialogue which ends with ‘chicken’. This may very well not be a controversial strategy, but, you know, full disclosure.)

Prompt Word:

^BALANC_E

“Come on, man, don’t be such a…”

Ever since discovering the true power of metaphor, all autobiographical hell had broken loose, like a… well, it says it best in the Manual issued to all Metaphorians; that, almost said, is always the first challenge: looking around at my surroundings, I recognized the abandoned gravel pit from my childhood neighborhood and sticking out of the far end of my blue jeans… a pair of PF Flyers!

…chicken.”

Based on location, dress and the lack of habitual aches and pains, I figured: sixth grade, which makes me eleven, (still pre-draftee status in the upcoming Gender Wars), playing at life after school; my months of rote memorization paid off as the 3rd Principle of the League of Redacted Metaphorians lit my mind; ‘Sure, the Map may not actually be the Territory, but how bad do you want to explore alternate realities?’

The boy challenging me to jump down the 45° sand escarpment was Allen, my best friend in grade school. Funny how, as I let myself experience this reality, the character and nature of our shared laughter stood out; it was celebration, pure and simple; nothing to do with rating or comparing the day, analyzin’ or dramatizin’ an event, laughter at this stage of life is surely the essence of humanity, a glimpse into the Garden before the decision was made to swap innocence for maturity.

I ran to the edge faster than I could think and jumped out as far as  would take me; as luck would have it, my phone rang, the wind on my face and the dry-tickle of sand and gravel coursing up the back of my shirt ceased to exist and all I felt was the concave teasing of the keys of my computer, like the come-hither of a cybernetic lover; the emotional charge of the memory surged, temporarily shifting a balance I was no longer aware of and the corners of my mouth turned upwards.

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

Prompt word:

TURN

“Hey, where the hell is everyone?”

“I learned a new word…or fact… or whatever the term for the crumbs of insatiable curiosity… gotta be a cool Greco-Romanian fricken word for it,” the tall, thin man paused, very much a person interrupted by the voice of a compelling, if not overly visible, agency; the path he took upon leaving the Manager’s office, while tempting to describe as random and pointless, going from bandstand to bar, back to dance floor, then sitting for a moment at a random table only to rise and move through the mostly dark, entirely empty Six Sentence Café & Bistro, betrayed a certain competence as he ended up at the waitress station at the end of the bar closest to the perpetually dark hallway where his journey this evening began.

“It’s ‘compline’ which is something to do with the Liturgy of the Hours and, while not as cool as some of the others, like Terce,” the man’s tailored shirt sleeves were turned-up un-evenly, his bespoke jacket left hanging on a mic stand on the low stage that ran along the back wall of the Café, a chromium valet reflecting the blood red of the nearest Exit light, “I wanted to tell someone; anyway, compline… those Latins with their declensions and cases, always misleading the average Joe, compline is the last prayer of the day so you’d think it’d have, you know, special powers.”

“It don’t,” the tall, thin man stood still in the empty club, as if waiting on a memory, but then continued with the non-voluntary effort of a drowning man rising out of the water,  “You’d think with that kind of effort, scheduling the whole day, down to every syllable of every word you’d speak out-loud, it would fuckin work.”

“But it don’t…”

The Proprietor stood at the new jukebox and stared at the neon-lit list of songs and felt nothing and, if for no other reason than to drown out the silence, continued,

“You know the worst thing about ghosts? The worst thing about ghosts is that they’re almost real and we’re never, ever, no matter how hard we try, allowed to forget the almost.”

Compline… no, wait, lemme look it up for ya.Here, int Wikipedia , it says,

Compline tends to be a contemplative office that emphasizes spiritual peace. In most monasteries it is the custom to begin the “Great Silence” after compline, during which the whole community, including guests, observes silence throughout the night until after the Terce the next day.^[1] Compline comprises the final office in the Liturgy of the Hours.