The man walks toward the rusted gate, his bag dragging at his shoulder like a sack full of regret. The path before him is choked with weeds and whispers, the kind of place that makes animals turn back without explanation. He pulls at his collar, though the air is neither warm nor cold; it simply exists, heavy and waiting.
The gate creaks as he opens it, a sound like a long sigh from something too tired to warn him properly. He begins his journey up the unlighted path, where the darkness is so thick it feels less like an absence of light and more like something actively present, watching.
By the time he reaches the foot of the stairs, his heartbeat has developed a personality of its own. It pounds insistently, like a drummer who wasn’t invited to the gig but showed up anyway. He hesitates before ascending. The stairs creak in a way that suggests they might be whispering to each other, perhaps placing bets on whether or not he makes it back down.
He wipes his sweating palms on his coat.
At the top of the stairs, the lion-headed door knocker stares at him. Not in the way a decorative object should, but in the way something might if it was very aware of him and extremely disappointed. The lion’s eyes glint in the dim light, and for a moment, the man swears it raises an eyebrow.
He knocks three times.
The door groans open, as though this is the last thing it wants to do today. A tall, dark figure lingers just beyond the threshold, unmoving, a statue waiting to be declared something worse.
The nervous man squints into the shadows.
The stranger’s complexion is unnatural. Not pale, not dark, not even a color that fits into any comfortable category. His skin is the shade of something forgotten, something ignored for too long until it warped into a color the human brain refuses to register correctly.
Then, the stranger steps into the light.
The man’s breath catches. His pulse is now a drum solo performed by someone on a caffeine overdose. His brain attempts to deny what his eyes see, but the truth is unavoidable.
He is…
HE IS…
THE KILLER MIME.
The man does what anyone in his position would do: he screams, hurls his bag at The Killer Mime, and turns to flee.
But it is too late.
The Killer Mime reaches into nothingness and withdraws an imaginary gun.
A silent shot rings out.
The man feels an impact on his leg and stumbles. Another shot, his shoulder jerks back as if struck. A third, final shot, right in the back. He collapses onto the stairs, gasping, his hands grasping at wounds that do not exist but hurt anyway.
The pain is real. The bullets are not. And somehow, that makes it worse.
He rolls onto his back, looking up at the sky as if some greater force might intervene. The stars do not care. The Killer Mime looms over him, expression unreadable, a quiet god of suffering bound by invisible walls.
The man whimpers. “Please…”
The mime responds with a slow, deliberate movement: a hand raised, fingers squeezing an invisible trigger. One last imaginary shot.
And then, nothing.
The man does not move again.
The mime turns back to the doorway, where the abandoned bag waits patiently. He lifts it with delicate care. His white-gloved fingers brush over a patch sewn onto the fabric, the lettering stark and official.
“United States Postal Service.”
The Killer Mime exhales through his nose. A slow, silent sigh.
Neither snow, nor rain, nor heat, nor gloom of night will stay these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.
But mimes?
Mimes are a different story.