Joe Svetlik: Mime Hunter: Part 2

Svetlik drove though the night in his usual silent manner. He didn’t need any radio to occupy him for the trip: just the purr of the engine and the buzzing of his thoughts. He left the scene of a job quickly; law enforcement usually didn’t appreciate his services as much as his customers.  

Entering his spartan apartment, joe peeled of his wet clothes and draped them over the nearest piece of furniture. Tonight, this happened to be a battered wooden chair that had once been part of a dining room set owned by giddy newlyweds. It enjoyed being part of a happy new household. So much mirth and joy seeped into its well-polished wood grains then. The chair would often look back and ponder with pensive regret the events that led it down this road in life. It didn’t notice the wet clothes.

Svetlik walked across the room and fell into bed. Like the rest of the room, the bed matched a sparce ascetic inspired by Batman, more Nicolson then Clooney. With just a simple mattress with a heap of blankets on top, it got the job done every night without complaint.

His head smacked into the soft feather pillow with such force that it knocked the dust of the day out of his mind. It puffed out of the cracks and wrinkles in his brain and gathered into a cloud that floated before his dreaming eyes. The stoppage,  having been removed, allowed the fatigue to seep out of his head, drip out of his ears, and pool into his pillow.

Though asleep, Svetlik was by no means at rest. Something about his encounter with the feral mime earlier that day struck him, and it dislodged something long tucked away, as if the librarian in his mind had wanted to hide it from the more conscious parts of his being.

Svetlik’s mind lay like a sleeping city, which is to say that the most important, productive aspects lay completely unaware while the parts with nothing better to do generally had their way. The memory had fallen down from its hiding place and now lay as a smoldering hunk of obsidian in the road. Most parts of his mind had simply walked around it as they hurried on with their urgent duties. Yet, now that the city was empty, the more subtle, subconscious parts came upon it with the full inquisitive intensity of a child that knows he’s trespassing.

They swarmed around it, feeling it out in the darkness of the night. It felt like someone standing behind you in a dark alley. It felt like the unease that seeps into your skin. It felt like frozen panic. They all scattered back into the comfort of the fetid sewers.

It was about this time that the sleeping parts of his mind rose out of their beds, muttered curses and loudly demanded to know just what was going on. Enough stayed behind for Svetlik to continue sleeping while the rest journeyed out with lights to investigate.

Memories are timeless things. This isn’t to say that they don’t have length or cannot be tied to a particular time of happening, for they usually have all these things. It means that they are experienced all at once, as if the observer existed outside of the stream of time.

So when Svetlik’s mind found the dislodged memory, he experienced it all at once. To describe it as he now felt it would be to destroy all the nuance that made it so worthy of description, much like dumping too much sugar and cream into a well-brewed cup of coffee. Instead, I’ll lay the bits and pieces out in a vague chronological order.

First, a birthday. It was his, and he was turning 10. In his mother’s eyes, the extra digit called for extra celebration. It should be noted that, despite all comments to the contrary, Mrs. Svetlik viewed the occasion as her time, not her son’s. Thus, Joe was never asked what he wished for a birthday party, or even if he wished for a party at all. Having experienced this nine previous times, Joe wasn’t surprised. 

And so, when Joe later found himself sitting in the backyard, surrounded by kids he didn’t particularly like, waiting for a hired clown to arrive, he wasn’t disappointed. Due to a mix up, a mime arrived instead. Yet, even this tragedy upon tragedy did not break little Joey’s stoicism.

The performance was mundane, and only Mrs. Svetlik derived any entertainment from the event. He couldn’t make balloon animals, so instead he stood in front of them, going though his various acts: being trapped in a pretend box, pulling a pretend rope, and so on. He had a sway and stood at odd angles, like Uncle James  when he arrived late to family reunions. A brief wave of panic swept across the mime’s face, as if he became decidedly claustrophobic about his pretend box. Franticly he pounded the air until it silently shattered. Stepping out, he stood, limbs bent at decidedly un-mime angles, and roared as ferociously as a lion, yet as quiet as a room after a racial slur. Spittle spattered across the horrified faces of the children.

The children, long conditioned by their schooling to accept scary authority figures with ridged stoicism, remained in their seats, gripping the bottoms of their lawn chairs. The mime closed in, yellowed fingernails clicking and clacking. Joe, however, leapt to action, his pocketknife gleaming in the summer light.

Joe placed himself between the monster and the children, his small-bladed pocketknife held at the ready. This mime looked down at him, eyes already tinting red. It batted a gnarled paw at Joe, ripping a gash up his arm. While his blood leaked, his adrenaline-fueled courage did not. Svetlik lunged.

The knife’s baptism was brief but full. Up until this point, the only blood his pocketknife had tasted came from failed attempts to whittle. Now it tasted mime-flesh, and it hungered for more.

After that, the moments became like torn scraps of a newspaper, words without much context. Screaming and sirens rang out. The police came, then left. Adults talked back and forth with the same scared tone of voice they use when discussing money. News anchors were forced to switch from their usual panic to an unnatural calm just to provide emphasis.

Nobody knew quite why it happened. Perhaps it was something in the makeup, or in the baguettes. Some even suggested that the cause lay in a communal disease that spread in mime-circles. Whatever the reason, it wasn’t an isolated incident. Now, they roamed the streets, feral. Some started to travel in gangs, filing their teeth and ambushing passersby in alleyways, trapping them in very real invisible boxes.

Meanwhile, all this hummed on in adult circles far above Joe’s head.

While his wound had closed, it had never completely healed. The flesh that grew over it was different. Pale, yet dark at the same time. The first few days his parents had feared infection. Restless nights and fevers tormented him. Then it vanished as quickly as it came. All the adult attention around him found other things to attend to, and Joe was left alone. The fever may have lifted, but the infection remained.

It stained his dreams. Every night, he became a mute, trying to scream out but failing to find words. Along with the words, objects would vanish as well, loosing their image but not their corporality. It started with small objects like cups and pencils and moved up to larger objects like walls and cars. Soon, Joe became accustomed to living in a full mime paradise every night.

Svetlik awoke violently, untwisting himself from his tangle of blankets and sitting up. The dreaming of dreams had been too much strain on his restless mind. He held his sweat-sheaved forehead in his hands and felt the throb of a headache inside. Stumbling out of bed, he fumbled for some painkillers, swallowing them dry in a swift motion.

Outside the unadorned window, the light of a full moon poured into Svetlik’s room. A shiver of fear racked his body. Not tonight, he thought. Any night but tonight.