“Mime” is a general term referring to silent clowns that evolved under circumstances where stealth was useful for their survival. The common mime (balatro pantomimus) we know today became the predominant clown species in France as a result of this exact type of natural selection during the French Clown Hunting Fever of the early nineteenth century, when more colorful and more aggressive clown species became prime targets for those who hunted clowns for sport.
Clown hunting is now illegal or highly regulated in most places in the interest of protecting species that are at risk for extinction, but there remains a thriving network of poachers who continue to endanger dwindling populations of certain clown subspecies.
impulse, speaking plainly: Mommy.. don’t know daddy’s gettin hot, at the body shop doing something unholy. he sat back while she’s dropping it, she be poppin’ it, yeah, she put it down slowly
We seem to be equally suspicious that the other is the imposter. I keep checking him for roots and he keeps doing the same to me. Is it a double bluff? Is he gaslighting me into thinking I'm the neverwas thing and he's the human being with organs and anxiety? Is he truly unaware he's a mockery given shape? If he can be unaware of it, I can be too.
That's kind of a lonely thought, really.
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It's been several days and the tests are all inconclusive. We both bleed normal blood that doesn't turn into a spider and jump to the ceiling when you touch it with a hot wire. We know the same trivia. We pretended to know the same stuff we forgot that we were embarrassed not to remember. We both got uncomfortable at the exact same time when we walked into the cathedral.
We arm wrestled and didn't tie somehow, but we weren't sure if winning meant he was more likely to be fake or less likely.
I worry that we don't really know anything about accursed other selves from the woods.
Wikipedia has been less than helpful.
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Mom claims she knows which one of us is her 'first boy' but refuses to tell us on the basis that she loves us both and thinks we should get along.
He thinks she can't tell and is too embarrassed to tell us. I think its because she wants to double her chance at grandkids. The difference in opinion is interesting, but is it a sign of an imposter, or the divergence of our experiences?
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We've decided to flip for the job. I won, so I don't have to find new work. I don't know if that's a win.
I think the curse is that neither one of us is an unnatural imposter out to kill the other. Or else whichever one of us is the monster has realized they don't think my life is worth killing to steal.
I know I think about smashing that copy of my own face open with a rusty fire axe, a gush of sea water and blasphemous screams roiling from the empty hole that should contain bone and brains, and it just seems like a lot of trouble and effort.
I think I'm going to start going by my middle name.
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Another me just showed up on our doorstep.
He's caked in mud, sticks and twigs in his hair, babbling about harrowing experiences. I'm fixing him some tea while the other-other me hands him the pamphlet we made just in case.
Now he's telling us about the Night King. Like we don't know.