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 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.”

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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 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.

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

(We usually write the week’s Six Sentence Story on Wednesday evening or Thursday morning. This Six I wrote Tuesday morning of this week which also was Halloween.)

Prompt word:

TURN

{No, don’t stop reading; these, our efforts to communicate, call them interludes, are being noted by the Sentence Counter and our supply of semicolons has been sharply curtailed; your predisposition to our kind having been established, we trust you will need a minimum of help with the instructions to follow in turn.}

“My last question is, as a writer, which is worse: seeking to manipulate the Readers of your stories into accepting fiction as fact or (that) you wish only to engage them and, with a little luck, move them emotionally,” recognizing the trap buried in her first statement, the speaker, trying to create a safe haven with the second, continued, “I’m serious, despite my physical appearance and confident manner,” with a subtlety of gesture so powerful it could only have been an issue of chromosomal imperative, the young woman pushed rebellious blond locks back from her face, into questionable restraint behind an ear, “It’s possible we might all be characters in a story of unknown origin; you can accept that, can’t you?”

{Ok, they’re on to us; in keeping with the code of the non-unreliable Narrator, I say, ‘It looks like you’re in the crosshairs of this story, the game is afoot and do not, under any circumstance, evince any objective, external reaction to me, or especially, to your being in touch with agencies of a higher plane.“}

I’d fought my parents and my friends and my high school counselors over the matter of curriculum in this, my first year here at Miskatonic University; from the moment I found the school’s site while scrubbing away a day of normal by wandering the Dark Web, a passion grew as the medications waned and memories of my earlier years scrawled subtitles to silent dreams of self-destructive behavior; sure, I’d chased a nightmare but I’m awake now and I can handle this cute little intern’s efforts to trip me up.

{Very good; your reputation as an apt pupil clearly is justified, nothing like the modern-teenage-angst melodrama that some of your generation wear like temporary tattoos, all first-glance-shock/soap-and-water washable; we leave you with words as a shield against the intrusions of the everyday world, this young lady, for example, who is so well-endowed to capture your trust and block your chosen path, heed: Reality exists only in the Mind. }

“You’ve done very well this last year and everyone is so proud of you, its just that the time you spend alone writing your little stories, especially here in this place, might not be the best way to assure a complete recovery.”

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