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

[ceayr Advisory: Sure, the character, ‘the Sophomore’ is familiar by now, the setting is consistent with the storyline thus far, even the music is enjoyable to a certain variety of post³-graduate from most institutions of higher education. But…but the musings, in the form of a message from one of the Proprietors? Might get grabbing Doug and Brad and running (metaphorically) down to Keith’s Stage Door Bistro for a shot (or three) of something that makes sense seem like a good idea.]

This week’s prompt word:

LABYRINTH

The Sophomore, ceasing his hurried descent, leaned against the glass-block wall that bound the mid-floor landings of the mill builind together like rough jewelry on a metal-casting tree; from the exterior alleyway it gave the appearance of uncut blood diamonds stacked improbably, awaiting the polishing wheel to remove the patina of time and use.

His shoes, sandals, actually, were responsible for the peculiar sound accompanying his hurried descent from the roof, a double-slap separated by a whisk; the double slap, familiar to anyone attempting to make haste while wearing footwear intended for anything but making haste, and whisking sound, the result of maintaining direction on a surface covered with a fine aggregate of flaking paint, deteriorating cement and the leather soles of a hundred years of exhausted laborers.

His breath reclaimed the rhythm that his lung’s design specs stated were advisable for a maximum usable life, the young man took from the left front pocket of his grey Dockers a twice-folded square of paper the tall, thin man had pressed into his hand as the medevac chopper shouldered it’s way up and off the rooftop.

‘Everything you want, and all that you fear, is inherent in the day today, your inability to grasp that which you desire is not due to their distance in space, because everything is a matter of probability in the context of your reality; life is but a labyrinth, so remember that the paths you do not chose are what makes it seem difficult to find the exit you seek and half your battle is won.’

The Sophomore turned and walked down the alley in the direction opposite the loading dock at the back of the Six Sentence Café & Bistro. The city air held the scent of bus diesel and the promise of afternoon temperatures in the high nineties; his stride, the careful one-foot-in-front-of-the-other manner of a person so tangled up in their mind as to not take a chance on non-moveable objects like telephone poles, bus kiosks and anyone who refused to leave him alone.

*

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

This week’s prompt word:

LABYRINTH

Approaching the open double-doors of the gymnasium, the young man allowed a part of himself that rarely participated in the never-ending arguments in his mind, to fight the fear to a stalemate and stepped over the threshold.

The gym, or, for that matter, any part of a high school at night, becomes, very much a movie set, accurate to the last detail but something didn’t ring true. Scanning the vast space, halogen lights transforming the glass walls leading to the athletic field into shiny black paint, he immediately spotted the difference: the teachers, required adult chaperones at the first of the year’s sock-hops, were not wearing shoes.

A wave from the bleachers on the girl’s side of the gym was accompanied by a shout that lost all linguistic value due to the force needed to overcome the wall of music infecting the more socially-mature adolescents with whatever strain of Saint Vitus was currently rampant.

His self-consciousness made a last-ditch attempt to paralyze his legs as he watched his friend elbow those around him into standing and cheering his approach. A song that was old when the teachers were young, made the sophomore laugh at the part of his mind that never tired of focusing on facts and information; despite this, he moved into the mass of dancing couples and entered the labyrinth that stood between him and the future.

*

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

Last time at the Café

This week’s prompt word:

STRIKE

The helicopter rose from the rooftop, it’s circular down-draft buffeting the shoulders of the three men standing together in a pattern that implied bonds both recent and timeless. The machine paused, as if to strike a pose, the better to remind the humanity below of its progress beyond the days of fixed wings and desperate prayers.

One of the three, the Sophomore, ran towards the dark rectangle hollowed-out of the brick stairwell; the downward angle of his torso as he moved shouted defiant submission at the blades rending the air above the building.

One of the two, Tom, walked with measured strides to the edge of the rooftop, his left arm crooked to his head in the most 21st Century of poses, cell phone against his ear, both talisman and charm as he spoke; the sound of his words offered up after the Proprietor, already little but a swatch of red hair on a white blanket showing through the plexiglass door of the craft.

The last of the three, even before the bright yellow star on the tail section disappeared among the urban canyons and buttes, climbed the wrought-iron staircase up to what Chris took joy in calling, ‘the Penthouse’ and stepped into the room.

The tall, thin man, stared at the slate blackboard, the tray along it’s bottom edge with colored chalk in varied sizes giving it the appearance of broken abacus, written in across the center, in a hand both controlled and hasty, the words: ‘Saul of Tarsus’, ‘the Order of Lilith’ and a series of numbers, at once mnemonic, while random, somehow disturbing.

 

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

(New Readers: this Six is a …segment(?) … installment(kinda)… chapter(nah) a part of what certain Sixarians in this weekly gathering are beginning to refer to as ‘Tales from the Six Sentence Café & Bistro‘ You may begin to see (other) Six Sentence Stories that seem to be taking place in the same setting, describe characters who are familiar. If there is a map, a Legend, if you will, to this evolving world, the Comments would be where I’d start. Just sayin’)

This being a continuation of last week’s Six, here’s a handy link, in case you didn’t read it.

This week’s prompt word:

ERUPTION

The tall, thin man looked over at the Sophomore, his index finger to his lips, eyebrows cursoring the young man’s attention towards the far side of the rooftop where the stairwell door was sighing closed behind the dark silhouette of the Proprietor known as the Raconteuse. Hair, like angry coals in a forge, rode her shoulders as she passed among the skylights, under stilted wooden water towers, her black robes dusting the inverted ‘J’ of beaten-metal air vents, to the base of an open staircase, the granulated crunch of her Eloise Bottas’ modulated into flattened, nearly-musical, bell tones as she ascended to the structure referred to as ‘the penthouse’.

“Ain’t no shame in letting the little subconscious alarm-bells get to you, kid,” the older man was now, somehow, at the edge of the roof as far from and in the opposite direction from where the Proprietor Chris disappeared.

The college student looked out and down at the enclosed bridge structure connecting the building housing the Six Sentence Café & Bistro to the adjacent mill, beneath which at least four horizontal rows of soot-glazed windows continued down to the alley, loading docks and alcoves.

Hoping to laugh off his mood, the Sophomore turned away from the post-industrial abyss only to come face-to-face with a sign, riveted to the brick wall of an additional stairwell; across the top: ‘Warning! Permitted Individuals Only!’ beneath that: ‘Rules Governing the Workpeople’ the list, long since obscured by the passing of seasons and time, except for the odd words: ‘the Overlookers’ (and) ‘The Masters’; what made him fear a four-alarm eruption of his battered subconscious was the slogan across the bottom of the Notice: ‘The Engine That Changed The World’.

The tall, thin man, sounding too far out over the alleyway to make any sense, laughed with restrained joviality, “I know, right?”

*