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, constrained by a sentence limit (high and low) of six, there are worse ways to spend the remaining time you have on earth.

Prompt word:

TRICK

“Kayla… Miss Sheperd!”

The class ceased it’s non-verbal Brownian movement: glances and smiles, frowns and stares all shut down at the same moment; not to put too fine a point on this observation, it was more a two-step threshold, starting with ‘Miss’ and ending with ‘!’.

Alien anthropologists, searching for the root cause of Earth’s dominant species’ tendency to isolate in the face of a threat, need look no further than our fictional classroom, as the majority of our Protagonist’s classmates immediately began to stare at their text books, demonstrating the most fundamental of social camouflage strategies, aka:  ‘Sorry, I wasn’t really paying attention’.

“Please share with the class your understanding of the meaning of meta fiction,” even as the nun turned towards the blackboard, demonstrating the first technique of leadership, i.e. after giving a command, assume it will be obeyed; Sister Magellan’s ears barely registered the sound of metal chair legs on a tile flooring as her victim rose, if fingernails scraping down a slate blackboard was the equivalent cries of passion for bats, the metal-on-tile surely was the applause of an appreciative audience.

“If I get this wrong, everyone will stare at me and the dark-girl will be waiting for me tonight, you must not fail,” the girl, our Miss Sheperd, stumbled briefly as she crossed the no-man’s land between the rank-and-file desks and the blackboard where Sister Magellan waited, tapping her retractable chalk-holder, (itself quite the scandal back at the convent among the older teachers objecting to teaching gimmicks and do-dads), against the silver ring on her finger, “Wait a minute, who is the protagonist here…oh.my.fricken.god!”

Reciting with a voice not really that of a child, I began,

“You and these children are the meta in my story and…wait just a damn minute, and the whole purpose of this exercise was to trick me into forgetting to use a certain word,”

with that, the class disappeared, the nun just kinda faded out and the sounds of traffic on 5th Avenue brought me back to the present.

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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, constrained by a sentence limit (high and low) of six, there are worse ways to spend the remaining time you have on earth.

Previously…

Prompt word:

TRICK

Eibingen, Germany:

“Mother Superior, Sister Aclima is in New York City, on her way to the Metropolitan Museum of Art rather than checking in at the Order’s hotel,” the woman behind the desk nodded acknowledgement, her expression a slow-dance between surprise and resignation; a flick of the fingers on her left hand served as dismissal to the young admin who did a poor job of disguising her excitement to be in possession of such scandalous news, the Order of Lilith’s Eibingen Abbey was not exactly the most wired-in convent in Europe.

Manhattan, New York:

Sister Aclima stared out the half-tinted window of the Yellow Cab as the scene changed from the suburban sprawl of Long Island to the concrete ecosystem of the City; the denser the development the more she felt like a 21st Century Gulliver, cast ashore in increasingly strange lands; as the cab approached Central Park, she felt a kinship with Jonathon Swift as out her cab window the sublime danced with the ridiculous; excitement turning a trick with a carefully conceived plan to change the world.

Medium-Sized City in the US Northeast:

Lou Caesare sat at the far end of the row of red leather booths that looked out over Weybossett Street; he scowled through the cloud of cigar smoke that gathered like thunderheads which had the effect of causing the volume of conversation in the Bottom of the Sea Strip Club and Lounge to drop precipitously, a truly impressive manifestation of emotional micro-entrainment in a public setting.

Chicago, Illinois

Anya Clarieaux rose from her desk in an unmarked office on the 42nd floor of the OmniCorp Building and walked towards the wall of glass, drawn to the vast expanse of Lake Michigan which appeared as still and blue as the oceans on an elementary school globe; turning to stare at a group of CCTV displays on an interior wall, each labeled in local time, she smiled.

Miami, Florida:

Cyrus St. Loreto walked the length of the window wall that overlooked Biscayne Bay and the Atlantic Ocean, a miracle of light control technology, besides shading the interior of the Bernbau Company’s boardroom, an impressive synthesis of material science and digital illumination systems cast what might best be called a custom, localized shadow wherever the owner of the Company happened to be; when he moved, the shade followed…perfectly; from overhead a voice, “Mr. St. Loreto, the nun has landed…” Cyrus, bathed in semi-darkness, smiled.

Oxford, England (1875):

“Professor Egmont, the Council has voted, you are relieved of both your duties and responsibilities as Chair of the Department of Physics; the mechanism you created is now the property of the University; for the record I see nothing in these proceedings to  warrant a smile.”

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