Screaming Mime

"He's pretty scary for a mime," said Louise.

"Maybe he's not a mime," I said. "I don't think mimes scream."

He's a new mime," she said. "He doesn't know. The city just started having mimes on the subway."

"Maybe he's not screaming. Maybe it's the sound of the tracks or the rush of the wind through the tunnel. He's just moving his mouth so it looks like the sound is coming from him. I think it's creative how he does that, don't you?" I took a few still pictures with my digital camera, then I turned on the video capture so I could get the sound too and the stone wall of the tunnel rushing by.

"No, I don't. I think it's scary, and have you noticed that we're not passing stations anymore. It feels like we're going down into the bowels of the earth."

She always said she wanted to get out of the house, but when I did take her somewhere, she really wasn't open to new experiences.

"I don't mind the idea of going down," I said, "but I wish you hadn't mentioned bowels. I don't like the idea of being in bowels. I think it's a horrible metaphor." I took a few pictures of her being scared. I would use them to illustrate my stories.

"All right then, we're descending into an underground cavern." No sooner did she say that than we were riding a track suspended from the ceiling, rushing along the steaming innards of an underground city where trolls and goblins tended forges and blast furnaces.

"We've entered a parallel universe," I said. "There's a whole city under Urbanopolis. We must have gotten on the wrong train."

The mime was laughing now, a maniacal laugh, like Louise's hysteria on the day the neighbor's pit bull jumped the fence, grabbed her cat in its jaws and shook poor little Muffy until her neck broke.

The mime flapped his arms, emulating a flock of bats that flew by the train.

I looked at Louise. Her eyes were red, not just the rims, like she'd been crying, and not bloodshot through the whites. Her irises were glowing like coals. She grabbed my arm and dug her fingernails into my flesh. "Welcome to my nightmare," she said.

This was a new phase in our relationship. She had nightmares before. I woke her up from them when she started screaming, but this was the first time I was actually in one with her.

One thing was sure. The mime wasn't going to waken us. He flew out the window and joined the bats.

John A. Ward was born on Staten Island, attended Wagner College in the early 60's, sold his first poem to Leatherneck magazine, and became a scientist. He is now in San Antonio running, writing and living with his dance partner. He has published in Doorknobs & Bodypaint, Clockwise Cat, Apollo's Lyre, Toasted Cheese, Green Tricycle, Alighted Ezine, Lit Bits, Cenotaph Pocket Edition, The San Antonio Express-News, Antithesis Common, Wild Child, Ascent Aspirations, Holy Cuspidor, Idlewheel, Cautionary Tale, Sentence, Sun Poetic Times, Byline, Quirk, ken*again, R-KV-R-Y, The Smoking Poet, Long Story Short and Rose & Thorn. Links to his work can be found at Dancing Fool.

Email: John A. Ward

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