I am the Matchmaker. Burn this note after reading. Chances
are you will never know who I am. This first note is to tell you about the Love
Club. You are invited to join. This is a privilege for consenting adults that,
should you decide to join the club, you can never speak of it to anyone else.
That is the only important rule of the club. Never speak of it. Not even those
you know are in the club with you. Should you decide to join you simply write
your name on a small scrap of paper. Drop it in the red box at the warden’s
office. Walk away. Don’t look back. Don’t even speak of this note. You will
receive further instruction from there.
Rick
Grimes read the note through twice more, trying to decipher if it was a joke or
not, and deciding he honestly couldn’t tell. The note had been typed so he
couldn’t trace the handwriting. Love Club? What could that be? It was obviously
something secret. He just didn’t know if it was something that was harmful or
not. Per the note’s instructions, he took out a lighter and burned it to ash.
If Rick
wanted to get down to the bottom of the mystery he would have to play along. He
found a scrap of paper in one of the offices, grabbed a pencil, and wrote his
name on it. He then took it to the warden’s office and, sure enough, there was
a metal box painted red fixed to the door. He dropped it inside and looked
around to see if there was anyone else in the vicinity. There wasn’t, that he
could tell.
He tried a
stakeout. He skulked in the corner of the hall and watched for someone to come
to collect the scraps of paper in the box. No one showed. Since it was probably
something harmless anyway, Rick left after a few hours and decided he’d see
what came next.
.
Even
though he doubted he was the only one to receive a note, Rick realized
nobody else was talking about receiving one. The following day he approached
Daryl and started to ask him if he’d received a strange message from the
Matchmaker but decided against it. The rules, after all, were the rules. He’d
put his name in the box, thereby agreeing he wouldn’t speak of it to anyone
else, so he decided he’d play along.
There was
a piece of folded paper, once again typed, on his bed when he returned to his
bunk that night. He eagerly opened it.
This is the Matchmaker. Burn this note after reading. Considering
your history as a law enforcement officer I won’t hold it against you that you
tried to investigate my identity. Further such behavior, however, will result
in you being disqualified from the Love Club. Here is how the club works. Once
a week you will receive a notice with a time and place one day in advance. Be
at that place, at the designated time. Make sure your body is clean, you have
on clean clothing, and that you have brushed your teeth. Proper hygiene is
imperative to the success and enjoyment of everyone’s involvement in the Love
Club. Once you have arrived at the designated location at the designated time
you will find another member of the Love Club. There you will engage in sex. Do
not join the Love Club if you believe you cannot follow through. You cannot
request a different partner, though you may choose to refuse should you find
you are incompatible with your assigned partner. You cannot speak of your
interaction with your partner outside of the meeting. Be clean. Be punctual.
Have fun.
Rick
stared at the note in disbelief. It was a sex
club, right here in the prison they now called their home. He set the note
on fire and tossed it into the small metal wastebasket beside his bed to watch
it burn. He steepled his fingers and considered what was going on.
The Love
Club was for consenting adults. The author of the note had made that clear.
There was no legitimate basis to object. If consenting adults wanted to join a
club where someone made random hookups between people, who was he to stop them?
He didn’t have to join. He didn’t have to take part. Nobody would know he’d
decided to bow out. Nobody but this mysterious Matchmaker, at any rate.
He
considered the idea of hooking up with people from his group. God, what if he
got Beth or Maggie? He respected them. He respected their father. He couldn’t
imagine slipping inside one of the Greene girls.
That
wasn’t completely true. He could see it and it made his dick twitch
traitorously. That was something he reserved for fantasy when he beat off in
the privacy of his bunk some nights, when the loneliness was too much, and he
needed to work off the energy.
He assumed
this Matchmaker was aware of who was related to whom. He doubted Hershel would
ever walk into a room and find one of his daughters waiting. He wondered if
Hershel had received an invitation. He wondered if the religious man had said
yes. He wondered if he’d ever walk into a room and find Hershel waiting for
him. That thought was truly disturbing.
Rick
Grimes kicked his shoes off and leaned back in his bunk to await sleep. He
wondered when he’d get a notification.
.
Two weeks
went by and Rick
started to doubt that the whole Love Club thing was even real. Perhaps his
admittedly fractured mind had simply made it all up. He was just about to
forget the whole thing when he found a tiny scrap of paper on his bed. It was
written in hand, block print that he had absolutely no intentions of trying to
identify, sitting on his bunk.
With his
heart pounding, Rick opened the tiny scrap. Admin Office B. Thurday. Eleven
p.m.
That would
be the following night. He had twenty-four hours to agonize over it and second
guess himself. In the end, however, when eleven o’clock rolled around the next
evening, Rick Grimes was freshly showered, dressed, and on his way to Office B
in the Admin building.
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