the Wakefield Doctrine

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, there is a single rule: the story is to have six sentences; no more and no less.

(Not for nothin’ but I’m hoping there is a Reader with as great a tenure as we have that can name the TV show in the above photo.)

Prompt word:

PANEL

“We just got your CBC panel back from the lab.”

The man in the examining room not wearing a white lab coat, with or without blue-stitched lettered name: Dr. G Moore  ‘Internal Medicine’, felt the room’s ambient temperature drop.

A third person, though not wearing a coat, did display a name tag; Jayne; an odd spelling, but consistent with the aggressively phonetic convention embraced by the current generation of parents; it echoed a forgotten memory.

“Everything looks fine, I’m quite pleased.”

Remembering his manners, the older man stood and extended his hand, a gesture seemingly as archaic as his respectfully-silent attention; the physician nodded and Jayne, for her part, smiled an impossible combination of polite interest and generic affection favored by her generation.

The patient, the one lacking an embroidered lab coat or the natural ease available on short-term loan to the young, began to speak, but the door was already open and the doctor was following his clipboard to another room and another patient sitting alone, balancing on the edge of 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 defined by it’s numerical eponymous title.

Prompt word:

CLAW

The sign, in flaking gold-leaf letters against a time-sooted field of white read: East of Éclair and immediately below: Pâtissiers

…the tall, thin man turned to the Bartender, an impatient October wind pushing the brown cashmere scarf, his one concession to end of Summer, perpendicular to the storefront. “You know what we really need to offer our clientele at the Café?”

“Strippers?”

If an acquaintance, familiar with both, were asked what the signal characteristic of the man and woman currently forming a dyad on the seaside village’s brick-paved sidewalk, a shrug would be encyclopedic if not slightly inscrutable; as if to escape further scrutiny, the man in the Harris tweed jacket held the door for the multi-couture’d young woman.

The proprietor was of average height, her figure buxom in a cyclothymic-cheerleader sense and, though dressed in a fashion not atypical of the seaside village in the south of the coastal state, wore jewelry worth more than the shop, real estate included; display cases were set in the middle of the shoppe, glass-encased islands of flaky dough, confectioner’s sugar and a peripheral zephyr of cinnamon.

The tall, thin man smiled at the incidental benediction of a brass bell shouldered aside by the oak-and-glass entrance door; the Bartender, already looking for something to brush the powdered sugar from her lips was muttering, “Lions and tigers and bear claws, oh my!”

Offering his hand to the woman, the Six Sentence Café & Bistro manager smiled, “My associate and I would like to discuss establishing a business arrangement, one we trust our fellow Proprietors, Mimi and Chris and the Gatekeeper and, of course, Tom will surely applaud,” the more subversive of his eyebrows broke loose in the direction of the Bartender, “With or without exotic dancers, of course.”

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 defined by it’s numerically eponymous title.

Prompt word:

FOIL

What? Sorry, misheard what you said, this is the rare manuscript department, maybe over in the self-help section?

Yeah, lots of those in our self-published and flash-fiction shelves, one might say that…eccentricities among indie authors… damn, sorry, my age is showing and the hearing is the first to go, especially with the bilabials; have you tried looking next door in the supermarket?

Sorry, as a delicacy, that stuff was outlawed because of the cruelty to the geese; sorry, damn…my French is minimal, maybe you should check in housewares.

Welcome to the Grocery department, yes, yes we do, we even have a choice: Reynolds and Store brand. How many rolls would you like?

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, ruled by a sole numeristic imperative. Six

Prompt word:

PUNCH

“…get the hell back here, I got a job for you.”

Lou’s voice rolled up the Lounge side of the Bottom of the Sea, and, like the true destructive power of a tsunami, did not manifest as anything as theatrical as a towering, white crested wave, destruction and death incarnate, instead it was as fundamental as a in change sea level; a reorientation to the norm, as he intended. Best way to describe the effect, it was like the adolescent-boy dominance game, (as if everything, at least until the arrival of girls wasn’t), of ‘Who can hit the lightest’, but in a metaphysical sense, of course.

Diane Tierney’s hand on my forearm was the reason the subjective and metaphysic view was not the sole guide for the Path of Man; at least not after the grandest of boyishly-mean pranks, the ‘You can have anything in the world except for this one thing;” I wrote a paper in sixth grade titled ‘Why I’d Rather God Punch Me Now and Get it Over With’; Sister Mary Imela was not amused.

Although some of us would like to think the world should be amusing with intervals of fascinating followed by happiness and contentment, I had pretty much given up on that view of Life; the touch of a hand reminded me why that was still, ‘pretty much’.

“A word to the wise, Ian…”

the overtone of caring to the lightly saracastic interrogative brought me back to earth, one that held the promise of life with things worth being serious about.