Aratica

I'm sure you're wondering about who the second person relevant to the story is. After all, I did say that this story was about, "two former NRPL members." Worry not, for this second part of our story covers exactly that.

It was mentioned in the last chapter of our tale that Joseph had a standard patrol partner named Marianne, who had been out with an illness when we last followed our unsuspecting nymphomaniac. Well, it was three days later, and Marianne was returning to her post for the first time after recovering from the flu. It was not, as Joseph had suspected, her "monthly shame," that had kept her away from her patrols. She had incidentally had her period during those days, but Marianne had never once missed work because of that part of her biology. She was a devout puritan and believed whole-heartedly that her own challenges as a woman were her own to deal with and should never inconvenience anyone else. Truly, her perceptions of what was fair were twisted up in proper knots exactly as NRPL would have it.

But there were rules about coming to work when ill. NRPL made it clear that anyone afflicted with any non-standard state of being were to remain home until the illness had passed. The official explanation was that illnesses were demons seeking to corrupt and would use a corrupt individual as a conduit to also find others and infect them too. Marianne had her doubts about the truthiness of this. She had once accidently found an old, forbidden medical book and read a few pages before realizing what it was. It had said something about germs and how they could infect, and the explanation had made a lot of sense, especially when she considered that she had never felt particularly corrupted when sick, only stuffy and sleepy. But it was never wise to question NRPL decrees, and she had decided that truthful or not, there was probably a good reason that NRPL explained it as they did and that she should simply stay home whenever she was ill. Be it germs or demons, either way it just seemed polite to not risk giving them to others. So, at home alone, her flu had passed and, that morning, she had been cleared by the health screening questionnaire that everyone took each day before going to work.

Within the locker room she had changed into her Purple NRPL uniform (a purple turtleneck and a long purple dress that was as dysfunctional as it was ugly) while embarrassedly hovering in a corner. Though the locker rooms were separated into men's and women's rooms, she still found it incredibly embarrassing to have to strip down do her underwear in front of everyone else. The room was empty while she was there, but there was always the risk that someone would walk in before she was completely covered again.

The dressing ordeal handled, she then exited the changing room and made her way to the staff assignment area where she would meet up with Joseph and receive her assignment for the day. She was a little nervous about seeing Joseph again, knowing that he would likely be very uncomfortable given his usual assumption that she had been out and suffering from her period. She had always thought it was silly that he never caught on to the fact that she was never gone on a regular schedule or for a predictable number of days like would be the case if she was indeed taking time off for her menstrual cycle. But she never said anything, fearing it would be perceived as unbecoming to talk about such things or out of line to correct someone as well respected as Joseph always seemed to be.

But upon entering the staff room, she found Joseph staring blankly off into the distance. Certainly, there were plenty of people who did such things, but Joseph had never been one of them. He was always so alert, as though desperate to be the next one to identify an infraction or to volunteer for whatever additional assignments might be presented to the security group. This time, however, he clearly had something on his mind. Nobody else seemed to notice, but Marianne had always been more observant than most. Likely this had been a big contributor to her success among the Purple NRPLs.

Many who knew Marianne when she was a child would have been nothing short of shocked that such a meek child had found herself among the higher ranks of the Purple NRPLs. She was never authoritative and had a determination to avoid confrontation at all costs. It was true, that many of the classic markers that were looked for among recruits to the security forces were nowhere to be found in Marianne. But what she lacked in classic police officer traits she made up for with her accidental talent for investigating and questioning.

Marianne had always been a very observant person, often allowing her to figure out puzzles before many even knew there was a puzzle to solve. She was particularly proud of the fact that she had identified a teacher who had been secretly stealing communion wafers from the school lunchroom. Nobody had been taking proper inventory, but during a shift as a student assistant to the cooks, Marianne had decided to count the wafers and found that they were consistently a few short compared to the number of students and teachers being served. After a week of careful observation, she had noticed this teacher palming a few extras during each meal.

It was after discovering this that her knack for questioning people really shone in the same incident. In her own head she had simply been wanting to verify that she wasn't making a mistake when she asked the teacher about it. When he gave a dodgy answer, Marianne had simply stood and puzzled it over, trying to decide if she had mistaken who was taking the wafers or if they were even being taken at all. But her silence, when felt by the teacher's guilty conscious, had felt like an interrogation, the pressure to which he quickly broke and admitted to everything.

The teacher had been dismissed for multiple crimes after the incident. In his confession he had admitted to stealing the wafers to give to his dogs, fearing that their souls would not be welcome into heaven and doing anything he could to try and purify them to avoid such a tragedy. Marianne had been commended for her investigative acumen and given a special position as Security Inquisitor; a position created so that she could serve as a spy among students to report to the school security team. Marianne had been quite baffled by it all but was far too shy to question what all was happening.

Similar fortunes had plagued Marianne's career. Accidental successes seemed to constantly find her, elevating her higher and higher among the ranks to her increasing dread. At this point in her career, she was thoroughly convinced that she would eventually be discovered for the in incompetent person she believed herself to be. Unfortunately for Marianne, being a competent person is remarkably rare, making even her accidental success something laudable and worthy of recognition among the sea of mediocrity that was the modern-day workforce.

Unfortunately for Joseph, however, he was paired with the observant Marianne, meaning his days of being distracted without scrutiny were now over. And as she walked over to him, he suddenly snapped out of his reverie and was forced to act as casually as he could.

One might accurately guess that Joseph could not act whatsoever.

"Good morning, Joseph! Is everything alright?" Marianne sat down in the chair next to Joseph, offering him a look of friendly concern.

Joseph was slow to respond, frantically searching his mind for any excuse that would seem plausible. After all, he couldn't outright tell Marianne that he was distracted with the fact that he had found and stolen a pair of panties that he had since masturbated with no fewer than seven times in the past three days.

Settling on a suitable lie, Joseph finally answered. "Yeah! Everything is great! I was just thinking about what I could do over the next few years to put myself first on the promotion list when George finally retires. You heard that he was thinking about retiring in the next five or ten years, right?"

Marianne wasn't convinced that this was what was truly bothering Joseph. Certainly, this is something that would be on his mind, but the cloudy look of discomfort didn't match the exuberance a career-driven person like Joseph would be feeling about the chance to work harder for a promotion. Still, Marianne didn't want to make waves, so she decided to play along. "I had heard that! You would be a great choice to replace whoever else gets promoted to fill his position!"

Joseph smiled, both at the complement and the belief that he had shaken Marianne off the scent of his guilty conscience. "Thanks! I really think I could have a shot at it if I really apply myself for the next few years! Maybe one day when I'm 80 or 90 I'll even be able to earn a position past George's!"

Marianne smiled and nodded. She had always wondered why some people were so happy about how late the retirement had been pushed these days. She wasn't sure what she would even do in retirement herself, but when she thought of working for 100 years of life it just seemed like such a long time. But Joseph seemed happy and that was good enough for now. Perhaps if he stayed happy it would actually be a pleasant morning of patrolling. Joseph was always so good at maintaining the dour attitude most approved by NRPL, but it often brought her own mood down which, though she knew it was the correct way to be, always made the days pass more slowly to Marianne.

After a few more minutes of waiting, the captain of the Purple NRPLs arrived and handed out patrol assignments. Much to Joseph's dismay, he and Marianne were assigned the route that he had been on three days ago when he found the blue panties.

Part of him had wanted to patrol the rout again since finding the risqué contraband. After all, perhaps he would find another pair or maybe find some clue as to who they belonged to. In his own mind he couldn't decide if discovering the former owner would be more exciting to him as a chance to arrest someone or to imagine them wearing the panties.

But now that Marianne was with him, he wanted nothing more than to avoid the spot. There were so many potential problems with it all. What if there was another pair there? Could he keep his cool enough to act like this hadn't happened before? Would he even be able to function with the added embarrassment of finding something like that in the presence of a woman? What if there was the culprit there? Since he had hidden the panties would he incriminate himself by doing anything? Would he even know it was the culprit? What did a woman look like without underwear on under her clothing? Was there any visible difference? He'd never known for sure, now that he thought about it, whether any woman at any time had panties on or not.

"Joseph? Are you okay? You're sweating." Marianne's voice snapped Joseph out of his near-manic cycle of questions that had no answers.

Blinking rapidly to snap himself out of this trance, he realized that they had made it to the outdoor portion of the patrol route that went through the Chastity Garden. His eyes snapped to where the bush was in the corner where he had found the garments. "Yes! I mean, yeah, I'm fine. I was just... I mean... I thought it was supposed to be colder today, so I wore an extra shirt under my uniform. But now it's too hot."

Marianne eyed Joseph impassively. It was the middle of winter and being too hot with an extra layer was the least of anybody's worries. It was well below freezing temperatures outside so, if anything, Joseph would have begun to sweat inside and felt better going outside.

"Oh, okay. If you need to change you can always stop at the locker room on our next break." Marianne tried to suppress a blush at the fleeting thought of the men's locker room. Certainly, she had wondered what went on in such a place, but her head was no place for such unclean thoughts, or so she believed after a lifetime of living under the guidance of NRPL.

Refocusing her mind, though, Marianne noticed Joseph's eyes flicking back and forth between her and the corner of the gardens. Following his gaze, she saw the bush standing there, unassuming, and wholly innocent in the entire situation. Joseph noticed Marianne noticing his gaze, and quickly tried to look anywhere else. This in turn was noticed by Marianne, who realized that Joseph had noticed her noticing him when she had looked and noticed the bush. At this point, both of them had noticed that things had grown very quiet and very awkward and desperately tried to return their respective gazes forward along their patrol pathway, Marianne hoping that Joseph wasn't mad at her for accidentally observing his discomfort and Joseph hoping that Marianne hadn't somehow guessed what was making him uncomfortable.

Quickly, they resumed their patrol route, silently continuing along their way and desperately trying to ignore the discomfort that had taken hold of them both. The day passed by excruciatingly slowly at that point, neither of them saying much, each wondering how much of their own minds the other had managed to read. By the end of their shift, they were both exhausted and desperate to head home.

But, as they were leaving for the day and saying their goodbyes outside of the NRPL capital grounds, Joseph couldn't help himself. Though he was always so determined to maintain his façade of the perfect NRPL devotee, it was also true that Marianne was the only person he could really consider to be his friend. He had been so committed to the angry attitudes encouraged by NRPL policies that he had successfully isolated himself from every peer he had ever had. Those readers who are particularly astute will recognize that this result is exactly the purpose of fostering hate since isolated individuals are less likely to band together should they ever realize that it is, indeed, their leaders that are instilling such misery into their lives.

Philosophies of dictatorial regimes aside, Joseph found himself blurting out a question that, among many others, had been bothering him since the fateful discovery of the panties. "Hey, Marianne. Have you... have you ever seen what men's underwear looks like?"

Far too conveniently, one of the nearby neighbors that lived a block away from the entrance to the capital grounds, where Joseph and Marianne stood, accidentally bumped the table on which his record player stood, tragically scratching one of his favorite gospel service recordings and perfectly punctuating the halting nature of such an uncouth question. As the record scratch echoed into the evening, Marianne turned a shade of crimson that she hadn't been since the day as a child that she had fallen asleep outside and burned so bad that she was peeling for two weeks.

In fact, she hadn't ever thought of such a horrible thing and was now, at this very moment, desperately running through her multiplication tables to ensure that her mind would not wander to exactly that thought. "Joseph! I... No! Of course I've never thought of that! That would be extremely inappropriate!" Marianne wasn't a fan of making others uncomfortable, but in this instance, she found she rather hoped that Joseph was ashamed of asking such an absurd question of a lady.

To his credit, the horror of what he had just asked dawned on Joseph as soon as he had spoken the words. Appropriately, that very horror was now plastered upon his face. "I'm sorry! Of course you haven't! That would be very wrong, and you've always been a model Purple NRPL! I'm sorry, I don't know what came over me to ask that. Please forgive me and forget I ever asked!"

But Marianne's mind was racing now. "You aren't accusing me of having impure thoughts or intentions, are you, Joseph? I mean, why would you ask if you aren't suspicious of me? What have I done that would make you suspicious?"

"Nothing, Marianne! You haven't done anything wrong and I'm not trying to accuse you of anything!" It was strange, historically Joseph would have had no issue with having accused someone of anything and would even have been quite proud at invoking such discomfort. But Marianne was different. Though he had always found her meek demeanor to be a little tiring, he had grown to see her as his friend and now, in the face of having hurt a friend, he was surprised to find that he was desperate to make things right and not damage this one relationship that he had.

Marianne looked back at Joseph doubtfully and asked, "you're honestly not accusing me of anything?"

"No! Definitely not!" Joseph tried to sound as earnest as he felt but found himself feeling anxious and uncertain as she looked back at him, her impassive eyes staring into his. For the first time, Joseph felt himself truly understanding the investigative powers that Marianne had. For her part, Marianne was doing absolutely nothing to glean any information from Joseph by then but was instead simply trying to decide how she would apologize for accusing Joseph of accusing her of anything.

But the silence tore at Joseph, forcing him to reply like an interviewee incriminating himself in the face of a very patient journalist. "Look, I just, well, I had the thought the other night that men and women have different... anatomies... that might have different needs under our clothes. Just like how we have different jackets and pants or dresses for our uniforms for those... anatomical... reasons. It was only academic, my curiosity, I swear!"

Marianne was once again shocked by the brashness of Joseph's talk. So shocked that even her astute observational skills didn't notice the obvious lie in the words, considering that Joseph knew full well that both men and women had been given basic education on one another's garments, so as to avoid accidentally purchasing the wrong type and mistakenly committing the major NRPL crime of being a crossdresser. After all, she had never heard him speak like this. She had never heard anyone at all speak like this, for that matter.

The silence hung, growing longer and more uncomfortable by the second. In the end, Marianne decided to fall back upon what had always been instilled in her as a young girl growing up in a puritan society. "It's natural to sometimes have questions, Joseph. But it's important to remember that there are things that are inappropriate and should be shoved deep down inside so that they don't make ourselves or others uncomfortable. And, if the thoughts keep coming back, there's always confession to absolve yourself of the impure thoughts or rehabilitation to fix your brain if the thoughts keep coming back."

A new silence hung between them now. A silence that can truly only exist in a society that prohibits communication and openness. A silence that recognizes that a simple, open conversation would be therapeutic, informative, freeing, and healthy all at once, but is denied based on the misguided belief that simply ignoring the difficult things will make them go away. A silence that breeds mental health disorders instead of solutions. It was a silence that those living with NRPL in their lives were all too accustomed to.

With curt nods and brisk steps, Marianne and Joseph parted ways, each heading home to deal with their own repressed minds that were now full of questions that they had only ever forbidden themselves from asking.

When joseph got home, he quickly fled to his bedroom, desperate to satisfy the strange new urge bouncing around in his mind. The discussion with Marianne had made him realize something; Marianne was a woman who, though he had just openly confessed to having impure thoughts, something that could get people imprisoned, had simply told him to keep it to himself and move on. For a member of NRPL society, that was as meaningful as taking a bullet for someone and a sign of a friendship far deeper than was likely permitted deep within the web-like laws of NRPL rule.