Joe Svetlik: Mime Hunter Part 1

The dark sky poured itself out onto the city. It tried to wash it clean: a rain drop for every sin. Tonight was an especially heavy downpour; sins came easy on a Saturday night.

To the inhabitants, the rain was more scouring then cleansing and they sought shelter wherever they could. Most hid in their warm homes, their bodies warmed by animal-print Snuggies while their flickering televisions calmed them back into docile states.

However, all were not so lucky. Hardy Harrow was so desperate for nourishment that he would brave any celestial scouring to use his meager allotment to purchase a few packs of instant noodles. He wandered the poorly lit aisles at his local Han-Dee Mart, guided by the ancient hunter-gatherer instincts of his ancestors. While the narrow, uneven aisles and flickering, ambered lamps might disorientate an outlander, to Harrow, this was his homeland, his forest and plain. He navigated its alien landscape deftly, using what others would see as warning signs instead as landmarks. A left at the exposed wiring, past the sparking refrigerating unit, and arrive at the treasured Ramen. He had done it a million times, both while under the influence of alcohol and extreme sleep deprivation, and every time he bested his pray and carried it back to his cave for consumption.

Tonight, something shook him out of his familiarity. New instincts, long dormant, came alive again with a jolt. The hairs on the back of his neck and hands stood up, responding to the electromagnetic force of evil and danger. Whatever it was, it was close enough to sense, but not to actually see. Harrow braced himself against his materialism and slowly peered around the endcap. He dared only steal a small glance, but even that chilled him deeply. A man stood in the middle of the noodle isle, staring not at the cheap carbohydrates, but at Harrow.

His pale white face reflected the fluorescent light with a sickening tint. The stripes around his shirt were the color of despair and they looked to be prison bars despite their horizontal orientation. He wore a soulless baret, a lid to keep the evil from flying out of the top of his head. He was motionless, as if trapped in an invisible box, yet this was no consolation. This being was a mime.

Harrows blood froze in his veins. He had done many things in his life that were terrible and he made a point to regret them all whenever convenient. Yet none of them were bad enough to deserve this. A mime, a being of pure evil, stood guard in front of the ramen noodles. His mind raced for substitutes. The frozen burritos were in isle 14, those would satiate his hunger and make his slip into malnutrition that much more confortable. Slowly, he willed his muscles to movement, strand by strand pulling his away. A sudden odor filled his nose and strangled his neck with an invisible noose.  It was a mixture of garlic, unfiltered cigarettes and cheap wine. The mime leered at him from around the corner, filed teeth gleaming.

It’s a rare event in the life of a college student that he utterly forgets about all the heavy responsibilities that loom above his head. In the short term, there were always papers that needed to be cribbed from other sources and reading assignments required a consultation with spark notes. In the long run, the repayment of student loans and the acquisition of a usable degree and socially productive career always remained in the back of all undergraduate minds. They might be coerced to dim this constant buzzing with various indulgences, but they were never completely silenced. Yet, in that moment, these were such minor concerns to Harry Harrow that he could have debated their existence, given the luxury. The breath of the mime, rank with French Mustard Gas, had devoured every other crisis of his life to become the very meaning of Fear. 

Harrow clenched his eyes shut. This Fear was greater to Harrow than any of the existential crises he wallowed in during his college career, and he found it fascinating. He took this, his last moment, to savor the particular melancholy of Ultimate Dred. Harrow wished to have this most elusive flavor still wafting over his emotional tongue as he wondered into lands unknown. He allowed this romantic solipsism to envelope his being.

His ears heard the tinny report of an intercom. “Svetlik, code white in aisle 13. Svetlik, Code white in aisle 13.” They reported this to Harrows mind, but it did not correspond to the delicious abandon of his current despair, so it was dismissed.

When he opened his eyes, Harrow realized that he was no longer alone with Fear. A man stood a dozen paces away clad in a dripping trench coat the color of night.

“Hey, you there,” he announced. If his voice had been any more suave it would have been composed purely of sex and razor blade commercials. The mime wheeled around, upset that his meal had been interrupted. It opened its fowl mouth and gaped a silent roar at the dark stranger. 

“The strong silent type, eh? Two can play at this game.” The man raised his arms to cradle an imagination weapon slung low to his waist. His arms rocked back as the imaginary weapon bucked into him. Moments later, the mime experienced a very real explosion. Harrow ducked for cover as dried noodles and mime bits rained down on his head. The better part of a beret landed smoldering at his feet.

“Tell Satan Svetlik sent ‘ya!” quipped the stranger, swaggering through the debris. He casually rested the imaginary weapon on his shoulder. The aisles had been pushed into new, crooked angles and their contents appeared as if arranged by a K-Mart stocker. The fumes of the high explosive mingled with those of the mime and together they merrily danced through the Hand-Dee Mart.

An aging man in a green grocery apron rushed to the scene. Staying a safe distance back from the impact zone, he shouted, his voice full of gratitude. “Oh, thank you sir! I don’t know what I can do to repay you, but I’ll try, I swear I’ll try!”

Svetlik halted his saunter, his combat boots imposing CLOMP CLOMP ended with an ominous SQUiissshh. Harrow couldn’t tell if he was regarding the clerk or simply staring into space, as his expression was masked by a pair of dark aviators. The moment passed and he moved on, brushing past the clerk.

He reached the front door and gave it a shove, the bell chime intonating cheerfully. “Why do you do this?” begged the clerk. Letting the door close behind him, Svetlik walked out into the downpour and halted. The rain pelted him with a thousand watery bullets, each one a cleansing salve that removed every last mime-bit. He removed his glasses and raised his face to the sky, eyes closed, and submitted to the cleansing.

Harrow watched this while still crouching in dehydrated noodle debris. He saw a heavy, black burden wash off of him in that rain. Harrow knew why the man did not accept payment for his actions. It wasn’t a commission, but a duty that brought him here. This was no exterminator that removed pests, but a hunter that bravely dispatched the beast with its own tricks. Harrows heart leapt for him. For forth, brave hunter! Clad yourself in night and defeat it! A tear came to his eyes, for it seemed that he had found a romance for his heart. What does Fear itself fear? Svetlik: Mime Hunter. But even this joy was quickly dashed by the remembrance of a Calculus quiz Harrow had in seven hours.  C’est la vie…