Welcome to the Wakefield Doctrine (the theory of clarks, scotts and rogers)
This is the Wakefield Doctrine’s contribution to the Unicorn Challenge bloghop.
Once a week, jenne and ceayr offer a photograph and invite one (and all) to write a story of no more than two hundred and fifty words.
Trying, as always, to step up my writing game. …(of late Nancy‘s been getting all kinds of creative, between hyphenating ceayr’s narrative one week to channeling Albee another), this week: a 250 word story with a choice of endings.
This week’s photo:
“Papa?”
“Our first vacation as a family! I promised, did I not? This year your summer would make your classmates green with envy at the beginning of the Fall term.”
“Yes, but…”
The line of cars approaching the private parking lot moved slowly; imperceptibly to a seven-year-old. In the imaginations of the two in the backseat: an adventure on the high seas and, concurrently, (apropos to an impatient child), a shipwreck on a coral reef, tide ebbing and isolating. Rendered on countless scraps of paper, gathered in Winter scrapbooks, images sprang from the imagination into broad frescoes and dioramas shared with a silent friend.
“Every day after school, after I completed my lessons, I would tell her how wonderful it would be at our maison d’été à la mer and we would dream the same dream.”
“I understand, but as you grow older and the world widens, you will come to appreciate the value of social structure. Imagine how chaotic life would become if we did not set limits?”
[Ending A]
“Then I shall stay here, in the car. She is my friend and I will not leave her alone.”
[Ending 2]
As the gardien de parking started the Mercedes, the scowling man leaned through the open window and said, “Stay in the car, don’t talk to strangers, better yet, keep the windows shut. I pay you to take care of my daughter, not fill her head with such foolishness as being a fellow vacationer on summer holiday.”