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.

Previously, in our Six Sentence Serial...

Prompt Word:

ENTRY

“Listen, while I appreciate a tête-à-tête with a fellow pillar of the community, I do have a business to run… illicit substances don’t grow on trees, judges ain’t gonna corrupt themselves and I got too many cops on payroll that need constant supervision,” Lou stood with the silent grace of a shark in an evening-shaded coral reef.

“Anytime, Lou,” the tall, thin man stood with a formality that spoke volumes even as the third person re-established her presence;

“Wait a minute…” Rosetta Storme took out her phone and with a Gen X pirouette tried for a selfie while, in the way of her generation, launching into a complaint about some aspect of her life, most likely her being an employee of the Café.

The owner of the Bottom of the Sea Strip Club and Lounge paused, not yet beyond the circle of light that illuminated the table, “Godamn, that’s right, there isn’t a boarding school in New or Old fricken England that’ll accept you and me, fresh out of severed race horse heads…”

Looking back to the young woman, “of course, you could come to work for me at the Bottom of the Sea; it’d be entry level management position, my hostess and business partner might be open to…” a smile of a problem well-solved began to fissure the club owners face.

“What, are you fuckin’ high, me work for that old…”  a conductor’s baton, raised high on Opening Night before a SRO crowd had nothing on Lou Caesare’s elevated eyebrow, as he continued,

“Diane could teach you more about business management in a single week than two years listening to an Ivory League professor lecturing on the subtle intricacies of monetary policy and maximizing inherent labor resistance.”

“If I may, Lou,” the Proprietor smiled like an experienced lion tamer entering the cage, “You are welcome to continue on here, Rosetta….”

“Oh, great, this is where you go all sitcom on me, how I’ve become a part of the family and everyone likes me.”

“Well, no, ” a cough of laughter stowed aboard a cloud of cigar smoke from the opposite side of the table, “They don’t, but the thing is I promised Lou that as an employee, I’d keep you safe from them; so if you choose to continue on here I should mention we’re having a special celebration event for all employees and their friends and family, April’s Fool on the Third and you will be on duty.

*

*

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.

Previously, in our SSC&B story when last we saw the tall, thin man and Lou Caesare.

Prompt Word:

WOUND

An objective, unseen observer might be forgiven for describing the owner of the Bottom of the Sea Strip Club and Lounge as being in a state of paralysis and the Proprietor of the Six Sentence Café & Bistro as ‘rocking-the-spectrum’ while staring at nothing, were it not for one very simple fact: given who the two men were, ‘unseen’ would not be a possibility.

The tall, thin man watched as his guest’s eyes, dark wounds in a face comprised of as many scars of battle as wrinkles of good-natured camaraderie, focused on the figure moving invisibly from the bar to a point in front of the small stage. Rising with a lethal languor, the Proprietor caused the stiletto knife to drop down inside the right sleeve of his suit jacket, pointed end peeking out of a tastefully-monogrammed cuff.

Lou Caesare rose from his chair, right arm scything into the dark behind his host, who, in turn, felt his nostrils flare at a scent even as he felt manicured fingers caress neck along his carotid artery; a slow waterfall of stress-embedded silence filled the Café.

Lou’s crocodile laugh, after exploding the tension, smoothed itself into words and they, in turn, signaled an all clear, “Luce dei miei occhi, Rosetta?”

Rosetta Storme, her own laughter more of the young leopard returning to the pack after her first hunt, slipped the ice pick back into a pocket and. leaning into Lou’s bear hug, shrugged a smile at the Proprietor who returned it, the click of his knife lost in the soft-scraping of chairs on the floor of the Six Sentence Café & Bistro.

*

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, subject to the Rule of Six.

Previously, in our SSC&B story… where Ian realizes that, dosed with the right drug, Life could be a dream.

Prompt Word:

PERFECT

A vibration overwhelmed my brain, a sheet of static lit up my scalp, all as a soundless roar filled my ears; when it passed, the man across from me was not there.

And, I mean ‘not there’ as in: no evidence of him, (or anyone), sitting opposite me in a booth overlooking the IHOP parking lot; no coffee cup, plate of pancakes, cheap cutlery kimono’d in a paper napkin, not so much as a blue and white printed place mat.

My first thought was, ‘Man, am I high’, but, as everyone knows, if you can say that, you’re not, not really; for reasons that I’d just expressed and immediately forgot, laughter began to blossom somewhere in my chest, fortunately I was able to plea bargain it down to a giggle which, as spontaneous, albeit irrational, gaiety often does, it died of self-consciousness.

I looked out on the parking lot, the blue Chevy Bel Air wagon, my erstwhile time machine, was still where I parked it; confronting it’s reality made my head swell up and my face fall, all while fear kicked my stomach off an invisible cliff.

I struggled to remember something I thought I saw, when it came to me…. a detail about the car… the license plate!

Unlike in old detective movies, license plates are not the critical information in an investigation that they once were, that said, I felt definite relief to be thinking in terms that were part of my pre-time travel/drugged hallucination life, more importantly, I realized that deciding on whether this was perfect or pluperfect tense didn’t matter, what did matter was the single word along the top edge of the license plate and it got me to stand and say, “Check please!”

*

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.

Prompt Word:

WIND

…”I’d be twisting the ends of a comically-long mustache and saying, “Or else.”

Closing my eyes, the other senses claimed dominion over my surroundings: first a zephyr of ‘sweet’ (the-way-candy-should-be-but-invariably-disappoints), scent of maple syrup sublimating against the griddle-hot surface of a stack of pancakes; then, a treble-splash of metal utensils against china plates and cups, the subtle assertion of a symphony orchestra tuning up, kitchen-shouted orders and family conversations, all in the key of Eat; finally, from what is surely the most under-rated sense, taste, in the harmonious cacophony of chemosensory exclamations to the brain, at first oleaginous ambrosia of perfectly cooked bacon.

As I’d hoped, this stepping out of my real-time interaction cued up a memory of a now-deceased zen master who, seeing me wind myself up in noetic bindings, would smile and say, “What it is, is all that it is”.

“Listen up, Mr. Peabody,” resisting the impulse to laugh at my erstwhile captor-slash-time-traveler guy’s confusion, I pointed the outside-arc of my coffee mug, first at his face and then, in an enthusiastic pan around the room; bonus from my Achilles’ waving his shield on the plains of Troy.

“The illusion was well done, so well done that the average person would have bought into the whole, ‘We’ve taken you back in time, how scary are we?”

My time traveling captor actually started to fidget and while I was beginning to enjoy his discomfit, I was also starting to get not just a few nostalgia-flashbacks and, in a very real ‘Speak the Truth and Shame the Devil sense, I was getting uncomfortable with long buried memories;

“So, here’s a tip that your script-writers didn’t read their Heinlein:

“Even if possible and time travel were real, you’d of tried this, heard me tell you to go fuck yourself, knew that I meant it and then would’ve decided not to bother at all.”

*