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, the rules are simple, (if not difficult for some of us): write a story utilizing the week’s prompt word and, and! be sure the sentence count is exactly six.

Pretty simple, isn’t it?

[Dedicated to our Miz ‘Avry]

Prompt word:

LEAD

“Tell me what I’m seeing here,” the tall, thin man leaned forward, barely overcoming the headwind of excitement ushered through the door of the Manager’s office by the two Proprietors, now crouching to either side of his Eames AG chair.

The Gate-Keeper laughed a grey-white cumulonimbus of cigar smoke, dropping a tube of parchment to bounce like a steampunk munition, the hollow echo signaled it’s intent, if not actual damage to the felt and leather desk blotter. Opposite him, the Bar Tender lay an open tablet on the desk, “Nick may have tangible evidence to tell the story, the record from my very discrete video surveillance system,” the Gate Keeper lost an affectionate chuckle somewhere in his beard, “will show the front entrance of our establishment being accosted by a woman with a suitcase”.

On the screen, like an old wool blanket being aired-out on back-porch, a rectangle of light brown paper flapped, then flattened against the street-side door of the Café, the wide-angle lens convexing both the paper and the motion of a hammer; the latter wielded by a middle-aged woman wearing a surplus army field jacket with ‘Brahmagupta’ embroidered over the breast pocket and a determined look.

A flicker of light and the woman was now standing at the bus kiosk, half-a-block away; the video resolution was sufficient to to make the stickers on the side of the satchel-style suitcase at her left knee, readable, “Nantucket is for Mathematicians” “Six is the Number” “the Elizabeth Islands Arithmetic Society’; almost immediately, a city bus appeared, the digital display above the windshield rolled over to read: ‘The Steamship Authority’ and, moving past the hidden video camera, revealed the fluorescent-lit shelter, now quite empty.

Moving the tablet to the side of the desk, Nick and Denise spread out the rolled parchment, an oversized thimble of cast lead at one corner and a lucite paperweight holding down the other; standing, the tall, thin man read,

“Did you ever stop to think that Seven comes after Six, instead of in front?!”*

*

 

* ed. We borrowed, totally without permission a line from a novella by one of the giants of the Golden Age of Science Fiction, the late Alfred Bester. The story, ‘The Starcomber’ (1954) if you can find it, you will not regret it.

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.

Denise is the host.

Following is the next installment in the (serialized) ‘backstory’ of the newest character from the Six Sentence Café & Bistro oeuvre, Sybil Trainor.

This week’s prompt word is:

VISA

“Hope everything was to your liking,” the waitress raised her eyebrows but stared down at the card reader on the glass counter at the door of ‘Stillwells Eat ‘n Go Luncheonette’; pulling the card from the front-left pocket of her jeans, Sybil hovered the Visa like a latter-day Holy Spirit until it bestowed $9.78 worth of blessings.

Her decision to drive to Radcliffe by way of state and secondary roads only, came to her as the sign ‘Leaving Yates Center (pop. 1372)’ disappeared in the rearview mirror; now, walking along Main Street of Edwardsville IL, the smile that ushered in her decision, chased up behind her like a childhood friend; looking to her left across the Sunday-quiet street at the plate glass shop windows, her smile sharpened into a grin at the white dress and Sunday-to-Church-hat her reflection wore.

Diagonally across from where she had lunch was the Town Square, which for all of no longer being in Kansas, was as familiar as her right forearm; all forty-five degree angles and dry decorative fountains, as if the founders, quite in thrall of the civic DNA from ‘Back East’ were simply too exhausted to do more than pay lip service to a world left behind.

A voice, echoing quietly off the storefronts, drew her attention to a large black man standing at the back of an even larger, but also black, SUV; it’s tailgate open, a small array of loudspeakers aimed at the curious,

“My brethren of the cloth love Revelation 17:1-18:24, more intent, sad to say, on causing fear in those who must bear under the Great Tribulations that approach,” the man stood on a small area rug, held a cordless microphone in his left hand and wore a 21st century version of a Nehru jacket.

“While it is true the Rapture will take up the Saved, our Lord is merciful and those of us remaining will be given a second chance,” like the thin branches of a dowsing rod, the man’s eyes rose above the small crowd and locked on Sybil’s;

“We are invited to stand with Him against the army of the Beast, ’cause God loves you and the things you fear make you unworthy, are the very things that gives it power”.

Sybil stared back at the preacher as he began to sing and wondered, with a smile, that maybe she hadn’t given religion enough credit for bringing something into the world that might help with the endless hunger that grew in a part of herself she allowed no one to see.

 

*

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.

Denise is the host.

You know what one of the things I like about this bloghop? The practice it tricks me into putting into my writing. More than that, the occasional prompting/encouragement of the other participants to trying a little harder. Case-in-point: Miz Av’ry, a week or so ago, when we first introduced the character of Sybil, in a comment wrote:

Why did she so hate the midwest? Why is she so angry? What are her goals and ambitions with all this attitude? Will she be shown as vulnerable, will she learn something from the SSC&B cast of characters, or does she have something to teach them?

This Six is a continuation of the backstory and history of Sybil Trainor (previously in Sybil Trainor)

[While I don’t disagree with ceayr on everything…lol, he mentioned improving skills. And, surely that is an available, if not utilized, element of this here bloghop here]

This week’s prompt word is:

SURPRISE

“I suppose putting off your schedule by a couple of hours is too much to ask,” Sybil’s father stood at the end of the drive, it’s loose stone and gravel seemed to gather itself into a tighter surface, as if self-conscious at the seemingly endless expanse of KS-47, uniformed with lines of painted color, presenting an almost martial bearing that would brook no casual un-paved driveway.

His words were aimed at the open driver’s side window, delivered from more than a car door’s arc; like a person, pressured into returning to confession, maintaining a buffer between confessor and supplicant, as if physical distance had any effect on a relationship.

“Your friends were planning a surprise going-away-to-school party, you wouldn’t want to disappoint your friends,” a lifetime of stubborn hope to find a girl who wanted to be her daughter, finally ran out, the interrogative lilt unable to transform an accusation into an invitation; Jessica Trainor stood at the end of the driveway, bound by her husband and his ties to the land, as much a permanent feature as the mailbox or the nearest fence post that strove endlessly to impose a sense of human scale to the endless prairie.

Had there been a neutral, but interested, observer, say, the driver of an east-bound FedEx truck, they might, mention how rigidly the man, held onto his wife’s wrist, the difference between date-rape and consensual relations, the distinction sometimes difficult to ascertain, by a moving observer.

Stepping down on the gas, the ‘make-them-non-consequential pedal’, Sybil smiled at the ‘incredibly shrinking family’ in her rearview mirror, and felt as happy as she figured she could be at the moment, the qualification as to time and duration always a variable.

Doing a quick review of the route she’d decided on to get her to Cambridge MA: ‘two-or-three ninety-degree-turns and then upslope to the Northeast’, Sybil Trainor felt as free as she could remember feeling.

 

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.

Denise is the host.

Previously (in our serial story )   to which Nick has added

Betcha you’re right up to speed in our story thus far.

This week’s prompt word is:

SURPRISE

“All done in the kitchen, Tom will be pleasantly surprised when he gets back from his culinary safari.”

The tall, thin man stepped towards the woman at the bar, the double swinging doors whispering shut behind him, like a modern-day CS Lewis wardrobe, restoring the appearance of uninterrupted rows of liquor bottles standing in prismatic defiance of the half-dark Bistro; a sash of white linen aproned his waist, a nod of respect for the vest and trousers of the Dege & Skinner suit; the woman sat on the customer-side of the bar, jotting on a yellow, top-spiral notepad with a chewed-cap Bic.

“Thank you, cher,” Mimi smiled at the cup of tea and, on a china bread-plate precisely at two o’clock from the saucer, two Hostess Cupcakes, “if your work as the pro tem manager of our little Bistro becomes a chore, you could make out like a bandit in the household management business; I have friends in the business.”

From behind her, where the chaotic prism of light from the bar washed against the reefs of lacquer-and-wood tables, came the sound of laughter, in the key of three; one basso and confident, another soprano and affectionately-challenging and the third, seemingly the most minor, a contralto that deferred to the other two in a manner that reminded Mimi of her trip to Botswana and the sight of a pride’s dominant lioness in the branches of an acacia tree looking asleep.

“They like her,” the man frowned;

“And you do not,” not a question, rather an invitation to share, “the Gate Keeper and the Bar Tender, bless their hearts, are not nearly as scarred and jaded as you”.

“Nor as perceptive and wise as you, M”, the tall, thin man shrugged into his suit-coat,

“So, do you really think I could get work as a gentleman’s gentleman?”

 

*

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 each Thursday (link in becomes available Wednesday at 6 pm ET) if you have jones for writing or a hankerin’ for reading short, little stories, this is surely the place to be!

This week’s prompt word:

KNOT

“I don’t fuckin’ care if you’re closed, any more than I give a shit it’s Christmas Eve, I just spent twenty-three minutes in the creepiest empty hallway on the planet,” in a voice both intimate and devoid of emotion, like the rote deceptions an obstinate child might rehearse while sitting alone in a time-out, Sybil Trainor stared at one more man in her way, “So tell me where I can find the Sophomore and I’ll leave you people be”.

The tall, thin man compressed his lips, not so much in sympathy as empathy, much the self-reassessment observed in infants and puppies when first encountering a mirror and being forced to come to grips with the true story of the Garden of Eden: ‘I am’ becoming ‘We might be’. The cold calm in his eyes obscured by the light to his back, in something between a sigh and an assurance, “While I cannot, in all honesty say I know where your friend is at the moment, I assure you that I will know when he returns and, at that point in time I will be in a position to facilitate your reunion.”

In alien benediction, the soft yellow light from the office bathed both the man and the girl, who now wore: bell-bottom jeans that were a patchwork of deliberate, if unnecessary mending; an intricately-knotted macramé belt and an off the shoulder peasant blouse, the perfect framing of the face of a girl fluent in non-verbal intercourse.

The sound of voices to their left drew Sybil’s attention and she turned away from the man without the slightest hesitancy and walked towards the long bar, behind which liquor bottles, neon letters and mirrored reflections created a 2D representation of the nearly empty café; gliding along the reef of barstools, Sybil felt her anger pulse into life at the sound of confident familiarity, but then, her anger was never, ever, too far away.

A voice, at once sure without need to convince, anchored the form of a woman on a stool, and Mimi smiled, “Tonight, strangers are friends-by-default, shair, jess tell that rahdoht voice in your head to leave your heart alone.”

 

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