the Wakefield Doctrine

Welcome to the Wakefield Doctrine (the theory of clarks, scotts and rogers)

This is the Doctrine’s weakly contribution to the Six Sentence Story bloghop.

Hosted by Denise, subject to the Rule of Six. hubba hubba

Previously in our Six Sentence Café & Bistro serial story…

Prompt Word:

TIP

Lou Caesare sat opposite the tall, thin man,

“Not planning on staying, loved the act, just wanted to see, first hand, the kind of operation you ran, you know, make sure it wasn’t just book-signings, poetry jams and Sunday Brunch for the Uber-on-the-Mild Side crowd…. that and to say thanks for giving Rosetta a job.”

Like all the tables in the Bistro, theirs was round, lacquered wood, intended to resist stains from all classes of liquid including but not limited to alcohol, drink condensation, tears (both joy and sadness) and, of course the inevitable tubular burn of unattended cigarettes; his face effectively obscured by the stage lights to his back, the Proprietor tipped his glass and lit his cigarette,

“Hey, mi casa…

I hear you, but it’s always about the man… or woman; I didn’t get where I am without developing a nose for character in those I have business with, you know what I’m saying?”

“I do indeed,” on the fringe of audibility came a whooshing sound from the street end of the bar and a brief eclipse of a street light as someone stepped from the vestibule into the Café proper.

“And, not for nothin’ I got a guy, a PI by the name of Ian Devereaux, don’t know if you know him,” Lou’s eyes lost their distant focus and came to rest on the Proprietor opposite him, every jungle predator approaching a watering hole,

“Nope, can’t I say I do, mind my asking why you’re concerned…

Well, he was doing some surveillance work for me and now I can’t seem to get in touch with him…

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?”

“Yeah, somethin’ like that, mainly I wanted you to know I’m in your debt…”

The tall, thin man stood, smiling, “And you can’t remember the last time that I invited you to my home for a cup of coffee?”

Lou’s unrestrained guffaws broke the tension even as the tall, thin man’s careful but equally unrestrained laughter joined in creating a contrapuntal storm of merriment that rolled over the empty tables, breaking against the feet of the shadowed figure moving along the bar.

*

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 and defined by a single number: 6 (the exact number of sentences in qualified stories)

Previously on ‘an Ian Devereaux Six‘

Prompt Word:

RANK

‘Think, Devereaux’, my habitual self-admonition ranked right up there with, “Of course, just being friends would be great” in the category, ‘Change one thing about myself?’

“Alright, one hint and we move on,” the guy who’d started out pretty impressive, not gonna use the ‘intimidating’ word, but given my present circumstance, was looking like someone I’d better pay attention to, leaned over his maple syrup-drenched Cinn-A-Stack, “This is not a poorly-written sci-fi novel info dump where you retell the whole story because the Reader can’t remember that far back in the plot.”

His lip betrayed the friendly tone; the hint of a curl, of the low-life wife beater, proclaiming justification for his growing anger, “But, now that I think of tropes from this era,” he turned enough to linger on our waitress returning to the kitchen, “I could arrange for the wavy-wavy line transition, but given the risk of permanent brain damage, you might want to accept a simple, “Shut the hell up and I’ll tell you, ‘what the fuck is going on’.”

“I am part of an ancient organization charged with keeping mankind from destroying itself and rendering the world uninhabitable. You’ve come into contact with us before, when you helped your friend Dr. Leanne Thunberg search Europe for the cause of her husband’s death; your present client, a Mr. Lou Caesare, has you maintaining surveillance on a young woman by the name of Rosetta Storme, we need to know everything you know.”

Smiling with obvious enjoyment at the pile of pancakes and too-well-done bacon on his plate, he looked me in the eye, “If this was one of your culture’s even older memes, I’d be twisting the ends of a comically-long mustache and saying, “Or else.”

*

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 and defined by a single number: 6 (the exact number of sentences in qualified stories)

Hey, who said, “We love the serial story, but it’s been a while since you’ve gone to the weird side. Hit us up!” Aiight!  Just a hint? cueing up one of those word reverser apps isn’t really cheating.

Prompt Word:

RANK

“Are you sure?”

seY, 001% niatrec!

“Man, this is messed-up,” Trying not to look at the mirror, the previous night played back until right after the fortune-teller booth; the other guys were ranking on how hokey it all was, but my date, Amber, didn’t think it was so funny, but the last thing I remembered was saying to her, ‘Hey, it’s a guy thing, just some good-natured fun,” but, of course, not only didn’t understand, she started crying.

lleT em gnihtemos I nod’t wonk!

“Try to stay calm, that ole sorcière, I gave her fifty dollars and she said, if we… I whatever, just  hold the amulet against a mirror and touch our foreheads, the spell will be reversed and we go back to the way we should be, but better, can’t say I liked the way she was smiling,” feeling my way closer to the mirror, the brush of hair against my hand made me want to throw-up, and for some reason, my eyes began to sting, I held the fifty-cent charm on the glass and, still refusing to look, leaned into my reflection.

noD’t yrc, tiaw, on, og daeha uoy’er doog, I’ll ekat erac fo uoy, ebab.

*

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 and defined by a single number: 6 (the exact number of sentences in qualified stories)

Previously on ‘a Café Six‘

Prompt Word:

RANK

“Lou?”

“Tall.”

The two men stood on equal, opposite sides of the round, lacquered-wood table; claiming a hemisphere being the most equitable of ranking, social or otherwise.

One, dressed in an exquisitely-tailored bespoke suit, raised an eyebrow, an ambassador of a smile that stood in the wings, the better to be fashionably late; the other, whose fashion choice was emblematic of a life in which lethality and personal comfort were of equal status, blew a grey-blue cloud of cigar smoke only to disrupt it’s fractal symmetry as he leaned out over the table’s equator.

A fraction of a second before the growing tension would have compelled an ordering of rank, the ice-maker, alone behind the bar reflecting neon votive candles of rows of liquor bottles, released it’s freshest, coldest cubes; it was a sound not unlike that of an antique steam locomotive’s first piston thrust tearing the machine from Newton’s grasp.

Both men acknowledged their amusement and sat down at the table.

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, governed by a single rule (that stories be of six sentences in length, no more and no less)

Prompt Word:

CLOSE

“No Fricken Way”

The smell of coffee and the skittering of metal on china was my welcome to my new ‘here and now’; I took a moment, closing my eyes against the reality I found myself in and recalled a line from one of Carlos Castaneda’s books in which don Juan Mateus confides in his half-comic-relief foil, Carlos, that, ‘the world is a feeling’. I treated myself to a smile of pride at not going into catatonic regression in light of  the events of the previous ten minutes (or days), as I honestly had no idea how long ago my encounter in the tunnel under College Hill had been.

“Tell me, how expensive is this little operation, the drugs alone must be a huge part of your budget, Mr….” having resigned myself to being a captive audience to the man sitting opposite me, I opened my eyes, looked around and started to laugh.

In the booth behind us, a young family, the boy couldn’t have been more than six, his eyes like saucers at the prospect of breakfast in the middle of the day and, pancakes at that; over the shoulder of the man without a name a young college-age couple: his hair was a blond waterfall breaking on the shoulders of a Salvation Army trench coat and he talked in a mumble that relied on the gesticulation of his hands to clarify his torrent of words, the girl’s hair was long, freshly ironed and behind gold wire-rimmed glasses, her eyes were calculating as the equation of happiness was arranging itself on an invisible blackboard; had he not been as young as he acted, he might have heard the chalk scrape of the positive and negative integers of reproduction.

“Let’s set aside the mechanics of your little show, I’m willing to stipulate your production values are quite impressive,” looking out the window to the parking lot I could see the car I woke up in seemingly a minute ago, the street sign clearly readable as Thayer Street; looking down at our table, the sight of a chrome-wire rack of six different flavors of maple syrup triggered a chill up my spine, “In fact, let’s not argue minor points, the East Side International House of Pancakes was demolished in the mid-seventies, so fine, you’ve managed to transport me back in time fifty-plus years,” the man nodded silently;

“So what the fuck do you want?”

*