The Man and the Mime

“How do you plead?”“Not guilty, your honour.”

This was not a conversation I’d envisaged having before I was 30.

Not that I planned to become a criminal when I turned 30, but because I had no idea how that looming birthday might have affected me. I’d hoped I’d take it well and continue to abide by the law. But I might have started mugging kids or stabbing cats. You can never tell, can you? Anyway, I had that conversation, if you could call it a conversation, when I was 29.

Earlier, I’d been sitting with my solicitor. He leaned across and whispered. “Relax. We have the advantage here, remember?” I remembered. “Stick to the facts and you’ll be fine.” I nodded, took a sip of water and glanced over at the prosecution team.

This was a mistake. I caught his eye and had to smile. He responded to my hollow gesture in his typical fashion and I returned my gaze to the judge’s wig. “Fucking show off,” I muttered.

“He’s a judge, he has to wear that,” my solicitor replied.

“Not him,” I said through clenched teeth. “Him.” I didn’t look over, but it was obvious who I meant. The mime. That fucking silent, litigious, bastard mime.

~I met the mime in January. It was cold, obviously, but less obviously I was inside, in my bed, wearing every piece of clothing I owned. The heating had broken and my landlord, who I knew liked to play fast and loose with the concept of professionalism, had seemingly started to dabble with contravening human rights too. I was still tired when I hit snooze for the 45th time (it’s hard to sleep when your body’s shaking involuntarily to keep you alive) but I was finally forced to leave my 13.5 tog womb just before Countdown when the loud knock at the door sounded like it wouldn’t go away.

I must have looked like shit. Real shit. I know I felt like it. I opened the door wrapped in my duvet and there he was. The postman.

“Package for you,” he whispered. He always whispered. He thinks he’s a spy. He’s not. “Actually,” he corrected himself, “It’s a bit of

paper that says you’ve got a package. Here.” He shoved it into my hand, spun around and scuttled away with his back to the wall as if the KGB were closing in. All he left was an elastic band and the smell of fried eggs.

Back in bed, with a disappointing bowl of stale bran flakes, I began to wonder whether my postman really was my postman. I mean, I didn’t get much post anyway, but the post I did get had become increasingly strange since he’d started delivering it. I got a catalogue of animal costumes addressed to Mr Natanga last week, and the week before that I was woken up to sign for a poorly-crafted 12” statuette of Tin Tin. God knows who or what that was for. But now it was mine.

I stubbed out my cigarette on Tin Tin’s face and threw the bad cereal on the floor. Then I realised. Why did he hand me the failed delivery notice if I answered the fucking door? What a mental. At least he was justifying my weekly complaints to the post office.

~Outside. Cold. Arse-breakingly cold. Wind grating my face. I scowled at a dog. I hate collecting packages. I think it’s because the package should already be in my flat, yet due to forces beyond my control I have to trek all the way to the sorting office, wait in a fucking queue with all the other people with normal-sized letterboxes, and then be disappointed when it’s not a present, a cake, or a big case of money and drugs.

The lady at the sorting office scowled at me before I had a chance to scowl at her. Out-scowled. Shit. She had the drop on me. I countered with a disarmingly cheery hello. She reeled, but came back strongly with feigned deafness. Low-blow, I thought, but play continued, and from the brink I pulled out my signature move, slamming the delivery notice to the glass. No words. No emotion. She raised her glasses to her stony face and wheeled backwards on her chair. Victory. She wheeled back with the package and shoved it into my hands. No words. K-fucking-O.

With a smile, I left the sorting office. Unfortunately, the smile was gone by the time both feet were outside. The cold, wet, slap of air felt personal. Shackleton must have hated himself.

Passing the Spar, I realised I didn’t have any bread. Breadful and cold or breadless and warm? I chose breadless and warm (well... warmer) and trekked onwards. But before I could kick into my stride, a woeful shuffle at best, I caught a glimpse of a hand gesticulating in my direction. I glanced over. It was white-gloved.

Following the black-and-white-striped arm to the shoulder I realised it was a street performer. A mime. He smiled through the thick white makeup, baring his slightly yellowed teeth and revealing the dark crevices of his crows’ feet. “What the fuck?” I thought to myself, intelligently. There was no one stupid enough to be outside on a day like today, let alone to pretend to be trapped in a glass box dressed as an anaemic Frenchman.

I looked bemused as he waved again and motioned me towards him.

“Huh?” I shrugged.

The mime stood bolt upright, his brow furrowing and finger wagging in disapproval.

“What?” I shouted through the wind, shrugging again.

The mime looked furious. He wagged his finger flamboyantly, mimicking my shrug. He thrust a finger to his chest.

“Just talk you mad bastard!” I snapped.

He locked his mouth with an imaginary key and then pushed it into his ear. With hindsight, I now wish that key had been real and had damaged his brain.

“Crack head,” I muttered, shrugging as I went about my way. Five minutes later I noticed something. I was being trailed. The mime was following me.

~My solicitor was tapping his fingers on the desk. It was incredibly annoying. It also made me nervous to think that the man defending me against this clown was more nervous than I was. I nudged him.

“What?” he said.

“Stop tapping.”

“I wasn’t tapping.”

He was definitely nervous. But then, I suppose he should have been. It’s not like there’s ever been a case like this, let alone one to defend. He was on the edge of a new frontier of litigation and I was pushing him into the void. He started tapping again. I had no chance.

It was at that point I looked for the positives. I always wanted to be the first to do something. And now I was. I was the first man to be sued for stealing a shrug.

~I quickened my pace, as much as I could in the icy gale, and didn’t look back. Well, I glanced back a couple of times and there he was each time, striding silently and purposefully after me. If he didn’t look so ridiculous I might have been scared. Ducking into the alley to my block of flats, I thought I might have given him the slip.

I reached the gates to the building and fumbled about for my keys. My numb hands made this simple task look like a man in boxing gloves trying to make an origami swan. As I yanked the keys from their crevice, the mime appeared at the mouth of the alley. My heart shuddered with the first pang of fear he’d induced. I fumbled more quickly at the keys as the mime strode towards me. I dropped them. He came closer. I scooped them up and jammed seemingly all of them into the lock. He was yards away. The lock clunked, the gate swung, and I was inside.

I exhaled with relief. But then proceeded to shit myself as the mime’s albino features slammed into view between the bars of the gate. I froze as he stared me down with cold blue eyes. My skin was probably as pale as his at this point. In my panic I spoke.

“Um... nice day... isn’t it?”

The mime didn’t flinch.

“Well, um, better be off... I’ve got... um... bye”.

I scuttled away pathetically, making more noise than I cared to, as the mime stood there in furious silence, like a snowman being pissed on by a dog. What had I done? Why was I being stalked by a pasty mute? Why didn’t he just talk to me? It’s only a shitty job. He could have just said something. When I got to my door there was a package.

~I’d never been in a courtroom before and it showed. I kept doing things wrong. Standing up when I shouldn’t, answering questions not directed at me, eating a Kit Kat noisily and drawing looks from the jury. I wouldn’t have minded but my solicitor had given me the Kit Kat.

I wondered how I’d even got to this point. Could you even be tried by a man in full make-up? Was that allowed? I suspected my own lack of motivation may have had something to do with it, but it hardly mattered. I was in that situation and I had to deal with it as best I could. My solictor turned to me with intent. “Curly Wurly?”

~Opening the door to the flat was like reaching for a frosty, fridge-cooled beer, but without the beer. I could have sworn it was colder inside than out. I went in anyway, chucked the package on the sofa and slumped into my favourite armchair. My only armchair. Marked with the stains of a wasted life. I turned on the TV from the remote and flicked through the channels, seeing nothing, but providing myself with enough distraction not to move for the next hour or three.

Four hours later I remembered the package. I leant as far as I could without leaving my seat, but I had to get up to retrieve the mystery box. I grabbed it, gave it a shake, and tore into the cardboard. A thing fell out. The thing looked weird, like an odd, dildo-shaped appendage. I picked it up. It was a dildo.

I dropped it in horror, hoping it was brand new. Not that I imagine there’s much of a trade for used sex toys. Or is there? Gingerly, I picked up the ripped box and read the sticker, avoiding eye contact with the offending member. It was addressed to my flat, but the name was wrong. ‘Mrs Hanlon’, it said. It didn’t ring any bells but then it clicked. It was for the flat next door. Fuck.

A couple lived there. Well, I thought so. I’d only ever heard them, mainly at night through a series of low guttural moans and sickening gasps. I’d been avoiding meeting them for three months. In theory it could have been a different couple each night, but disturbingly I’d come to recognise each of their distinctive tones through the Rizla-thick walls. I hadn’t been concerned by the noise until this point, but now I had to meet them and hand them a rubber cock.

There was no way I was going to do this so I defaulted to coward mode and put the unwanted item in a Tesco bag and decided to leave it outside their door. Mrs Hanlon would then find it on her way out for more fags and I wouldn’t have to talk to her about her preferences for solitary pleasure. Sorted.

After another half an hour staring at the bag and worrying I decided to have a listen to the wall and see if anyone was in. I couldn’t hear anything, unusually, so I steeled myself to deliver the smutty package. I picked up the bag, opened the door and crept towards

number 18. No sound. I stooped, and gently lay the bag down. But as I did so, the door swung open and a pair of hairy legs stepped into view. I looked up fearfully, and to my horror there stood a beast of a man, smoking, and scratching his balls through his dressing gown. He looked like an out-of-work pimp sailor.

“What’s in the bag?” he coughed at me.

“This bag?” I asked. “Nothing. Just my... lunch.” He wasn’t buying it so I wittered on. “I dropped it as I left my flat and now it’s on the floor, so I bent down to get it and then you, well, um, here we are.” I smiled weakly.

“What you got?” he asked, and then coughed so hard that bits came out.

“Crisps,” I lied, taking my cue from the man’s foul splutterings.

“Looks like a dick end to me.”

Shit. From his angle he could see into the bag. How was I going to explain this one? I ate dildo crisps?

“Oh, this bag!” I said, veering violently into Plan D. “This, um, this is your... girlfriend’s.”

His face screwed up as if his mind was actually steam-powered.

“What in fuck have you got that for?” he grunted.

I could tell, even through his broken grammar, that he was preparing to get fighty so I stood up. I was lost for words. How could I get out of this? I was obviously trying to shove a dick in a bag outside his door. As I mumbled and tried to form a credible sentence I was saved by a vision in pink slippers.

“What in fuck’s name are- oh. Is that mine?”

Mrs Hanlon, you sweaty, unemployed beauty. I could have kissed her hairy, stained face. I said nothing. I was already floundering under very light questioning and the man-beast was now riled.

“Bloke’s got dildo in bag. What yer sayin’ love? I ain’t got enough for ya?”

This was my chance to slip away as civil war unfolded. And I did, just as it went nuclear. It’s not like I’d miss anything, I’d hear it all from my kitchen. And I wouldn’t be beaten to death with a sex toy by a

sentient gorilla.

~The courtroom stank of farce, and it didn’t smell good. The mime was slaying the room. He’d given the testimony of a lifetime without saying a word. The jury were hanging on his every gesture. Even the judge was giggling, fucking giggling in court and making his shitty little wig wobble. I was fucked.

By the time he’d pulled out the dying bird routine to represent his potential loss of earnings as a result of my actions I’d pretty much stopped watching. Just sobbing quietly into the desk.

~I made it to the flat and slammed the door. I could still hear Donkey Kong, but at least he wasn’t grunting sweatily over my face. I looked out of the grimy window to see if the mime was still there. He wasn’t, so I slumped heavily into the armchair, sighing and propelling the smell of age-old Pot Noodle from the cushions into the atmosphere. What had a I done to deserve such epic weirdness from today?

My mind was racing. Who was the mime? Why was he such a twat? Why had he followed me? Why was there a dildo delivered to my flat? There were so many questions that I couldn’t even begin to answer. I looked at Tin Tin. He had no idea either. His charred face gave no clues to my conundrum. It was getting dark, so I lit up a bit of newspaper in the ashtray to provide some light. It burnt out within seconds, and before I could think about turning on the lamp I fell asleep.

When I awoke the next day there was a letter by the door. It had my name on it in scrawled handwriting. I was sure it hadn’t come with the sex toy, I would have noticed, and the postman wouldn’t have been this early.

Tentatively, I opened it. It was a summons. I was being taken to court.

~I hadn’t listened to the proceedings for the last half hour. I didn’t care by now. I was going down for stealing a mime’s trademark simply by shrugging. Undone by apathy. Sent down by a street

performer. It was ludicrous, but it was really happening, in real life. My life. God knows how many people would laugh at the newspaper articles or over conversations at dinner. I was a laughing stock, win or lose.

~I’d been clutching the letter for so long it may as well have been part of my hand. I hadn’t said a word out loud for several hours as my brain gears slowly clicked through each word on the summons like a rusty enigma machine. Court? You? Summons? Dear? None of the words made sense to me.

This phase was followed by other words, but ‘why’ was most prominent amongst them. I’d been pacing my flat trying to remember all the bad things I had done. I stole a pint of milk from by the gates to the flats once. Had the dairy police finally found me? I hadn’t paid off much of my student loan. Could be them? Maybe I was being set up. What if i was taking the fall for a mob boss? Or perhaps it was all just a misunderstanding like the mixed up delivery or that time I offered my seat to the pregnant woman, only to find she was just fat and was in fact a man. Maybe it was that! No. It couldn’t be. It was something else.

I spent the next few weeks eating cheese on toast and wracking my brain for the source of the summons.

~Opening one eye I could see that my solicitor was floundering, as he had been all day. I could also see the mime, looking as smug as a man in face paint could look. I stared at him for the first time that day. The black triangles on his cheeks pointing down to his striped torso, his cold blue eyes darting around the room like laser beams.

As I watched, the prosecution collected their papers and prepared to leave the room. The mime gave one last pirouette to the jury and flounced off with the suits. As he passed us, he winked at me. The cheeky fucker, smiling with yellowed teeth. He knew I was finished. All that was left was an empty desk... and the smell of fried eggs.

My brain did a somersault, synapses firing fireworks into my consciousness and a thousand mental puppies running in giddy circles to alert me to this new and exciting development.

“Fried eggs!” I screamed, leaping from my seat and causing several gasps in the courtroom. The mime and the suits had stopped in their

tracks.

“Fried eggs! Fried eggs! Fried eggs!”

I was jumping around like a mad man by this point. The judge was shouting at me but I didn’t hear a word. All I could hear were those beautiful words. My solicitor looked concerned.

“Fried eggs!” I said, grabbing him by the lapels and grinning like a lunatic. “Can’t you see?”

He couldn’t.

I explained my theory in frantic detail. The smell of fried eggs, the yellowed teeth, the mysterious packages, my constant complaints to the post office, the mime waiting for me to collect the package, the attempt to get me beaten to a pulp by my neighbour. It all made so much sense. The mime was the postman! The postman was the mime!

“How can you know?” my solicitor asked.

I slammed my head on the desk. “I don’t know! Wash his face! Tell wiggy over there! You’re the fucking solicitor!”

“Order!” the judge cried, hoarse from effort.

I turned around, panting heavily in my excitement. The judge was red-faced and scowling, the mime was standing in, well, silence.

“This man is not a mime!” I screamed.

The crowd gasped.

“This man, your honour, is a postman!”

~Slumping into the old armchair, I sighed. It had been several days since the court case and I couldn’t remember a thing I’d done in that time. I took a long draw on my fag and pushed the newly fired ash into Tin Tin’s face, clicking on the telly with my right foot and flicking through the channels with the other.

The memory of the mime was still vivid. I don’t think I’d ever forget it or the accompanying news stories. “Mime goes postal” was a particular favourite, although inevitably inaccurate given the paper that produced it. Personally, I would have done something along the

‘silent witness’ lines or being trapped in a box or something, but I don’t write the headlines. Either way, it was a story to tell, no matter how close I had been to going mildly insane. All I cared about now was that the mime business was done and dusted and life was back on it’s natural course.

And with that, I exhaled a glorious grey plume of smoke into the frozen air, pulled the three nearest duvets over my legs, and ramped up the television volume to drown out the obscene shrieks from next door. Total. Fucking. Bliss.

© 2011 by Ian Ravenscroft