Free-writing #4

[landingtree]

File: Meritch Incident.

Quality: Antiquarian-erotic.

Date: 11/03/2015


Detail: Old amulet found in beach drain storm vent, cleared by volunteers after drain blocked by sand. Amulet scratched and dulled by the sand and water. Taken home by volunteer A. Meritch, age 31. Contact with museum, with photo, made and subsequently cancelled. Museum clerk was uninterested, but flagged amulet for checking by senior curator as a standard precaution. Curator was out of office on maternity for the next two weeks. When returned, a further week passed (backlog) before photo was forwarded to our association. Significance of design was quickly realised and museum called amulet in; at that time, Meritch reported amulet “Lost, or given away.”

It was deemed fruitless to approach directly but it was logged as extremely likely that a Secret Life was developing in the vicinity (Raglan township, west coast). Several of our association’s people were placed in the town for the next 3 years, and outlying members were alerted – at that time eight alerts were current with five of those greyed. The Secret Life was encountered in the third year through a local nature book club which held sessions in outlying locations and on hikes and day trips. The encountering member logged a partial report before opting to go native. A commendation for her long tenure was issued.

New members of our association are often under the impression that we suppress, control, or sabotage Secret Lives, and that the balance of power lies with us. This was indeed the association’s founding goal and remains like the impress of a foot in our bureaucratic structure. However as our more senior members learn, it is futile and harmful to dam human nature and we have no inducements suitable for the purpose. Our new credo is to mitigate damage and sample the possibilities of Life and to place interested persons in the vicinity of plausible Secret Lives. Only in this way does any documentation escape.

From the report: “Books read by the club are obscure or lost. Some survive from antiquity while others don’t seem to be recorded at all. There are also sex manuals and star/node diagrams. We are encouraged to fantasize. I am close to the point where I don’t know what happened and what we dreamed together. I don’t think I care. I don’t think the difference matters.”

The Meritch Amulet, still in the possession of A. Meritch and her partner or partners, withdrew from Raglan a year later. The estimated capture was 53 people.

Comments

[sartorias]

Hmmm...REpress or SUPpress? This could go in some interesting directions either way...

[landingtree]

Should be suppress, though I see why I made the slip. Thank you!

[sartorias]

Well, they both have possibilities. The cool thing (at least to me) is that either word leads in very different, and equally intriguing, possibilities.

[leaflemming]

I like this less than the others you've posted lately. It's fun conceptually, but the lapse away from memo-ese to fuller sentences throws me out of it before I've had time to start liking it.

[ambyr]

it is futile and harmful to dam human nature and we have no inducements suitable for the purpose

I like the ordering of this.

[landingtree]

Hmm, on returning to it I can't decide which I prefer. I could change it once a week, I suppose!

(I was going to write 'I don't think I will ever extend this' but then I immediately start thinking of ways to extend it, so we'll see. It is not my plan to be posting these as ways of getting myself to write longer stories, but if I end up doing that it certainly won't hurt!)

[landingtree]

Yes it does rather abandon its own format.

[landingtree]

It does seem to suggest they'd have been perfectly happy to dam human nature if they could only have worked out how.

[maribou]

yes, it was a delightful way of putting a terrible thing <3