Reyna's Hobby

Reyna’s Hobby
(words:298)

Struggling into woolen gloves, Reyna whooshed through the lobby door into early winter sunshine, glanced up, and spied a mime across the busy thoroughfare.

The doorman said, “Miss Laraby?”  When she paused, he continued. “I can call a cab.  You don’t want to walk through the park, nowadays, with all the murders.”

Petite and willowy, her smile seemed bigger than her face.  She shifted the heavy backpack. “I’ll be fine – it’s the street-people who have to worry.”

She jogged through barely budging traffic and strode up to the crowd gathering around the mime.  Dressed in black, the mime was slimmer than she, which was rare, since she was a ballerina.  Slipping among the gawking crowd, she stopped before him and studied his painted face.

Focused on his act, he took no notice when she dug through her backpack and then dropped her special offering into his collection hat.  A five-dollar-bill wrapped around a chocolate cherry-syrup-filled candy. 

She glided away, fighting the surge of passers-by like a salmon swimming upstream.  Entering the park, she sat on the first bench and waited. 

She didn’t actually like mimes or the unkempt homeless people who frequented her block.  They were depressing and disrupted the neighborhood.  She wished they would go to shelters, but she gave hand-outs to those who didn’t.  Sometimes sandwiches, sometimes cake, sometimes little chocolates filled with cherry syrup, all with a little something extra – her secret ingredient.

After half an hour, just as she became impatient, screams erupted from the street.  The crowd around the mime’s prone form broke apart in alarm.  With a small smile, Reyna continued across the park, listening to the sirens.

Ballet was beautiful and perfectly controlled – as things should be.  Reyna and her special recipe made the world a little more perfect every day.


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Written for the Daily Flash Fiction contest 11/24/2009, for the prompt: write a story about a dancer, a mime and a serial killer.