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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/Dopabeane on 2024-11-28 23:28:04+00:00.
In October 1978, Philadelphia police responded to a dead body call at abandoned theater.
They arrived on scene to discover most of a corpse of young woman on the stage. Her hands and feet were bound.
At some point post-mortem, the perpetrator had decapitated the victim and stitched the head of a bald man onto her neck. Heavy stage makeup had been applied to the man’s face. His mouth was sewed shut.
When one of the responding officers knelt down to inspect these sutures, the corpse’s eyes opened.
The body shuddered to life, stretching until the bindings broke. The amalgam rose unsteadily to its feet, dipped into a formal bow, and began to move.
The braver of the two officers grabbed the corpse, believing it to be a hoax of some kind. He grabbed it by the throat with such force that he tore the sutures attaching the man’s head to the woman’s neck.
Now only partially attached, the head flopped to the side. The officer recoiled, and the corpse continued to move as though nothing had happened.
At this point, someone yelled, “Stop it! You’re interrupting him!”
The speaker was a young girl of approximately ten years old, sitting at the highest point in the auditorium: A crumbling balcony with no visible point of egress.
The corpse paid her no attention, and began whirling feverishly around the stage. The head was still only partially detached, but the corpse seemed unaware.
Per their later testimony, the police officers slowly realized they were watching a one-man reenactment of a murder. As the gruesome performance carried on, the little girl in the corner began to cry with steadily increasing emotion. Her weeping finally culminated in a wail when the corpse mimed sawing his own head off. He pulled his head off, sutures snapping loudly as they parted through the flesh, then tucked it under his arm and ran backstage and out of sight.
Despite the distance between the theater and AHH-NASCU, the Harlequin — by all accounts secure in his cell inside the facility —expressed knowledge of this incident. He provided staff with the address of the theater and told them, “My son is performing there tonight. Not one of his best, unfortunately, but I’ll tell him you’re coming if you like.”
Personnel were immediately dispatched to the theater.
By the time personnel arrived, two days had passed. They obtained the relevant police reports. Among other things, they learned the officers fled the scene without recovering the young girl since she was unreachable on the crumbling balcony.
Although the officers returned with reinforcements, the dancing corpse was nowhere to be found.
Neither was the child.
But when Agency personnel entered the theater during their investigation, both the girl and the dancing corpse were back inside.
Personnel quickly realized they had arrived toward the end of the performance. The child was sobbing so loudly that she inadvertently masked the sounds of their entry. They concealed themselves accordingly, taking refuge in a small alcove near the back of the auditorium, and watched as the corpse — which, in keeping with the police reports was a woman’s body with a man’s head sewn on — continued to dance.
Shortly after their arrival, the corpse completed its performance and retreated backstage.
Approximately two minutes later, a man with a face identical to that of the head sewn onto the woman’s corpse returned onstage, visibly weeping. In his arms was the woman’s corpse, now headless. Chest heaving silently, he gave a deep bow.
As agents watched, the crying child bolted onstage and hugged the man, at which point the agents made themselves known.
The man vanished backstage. When agents attempted to follow, the child interfered. By the time she was restrained, the man was nowhere to be found.
Resigned, they returned to interrogate the girl, who was still standing onstage.
She refused to provide her name, but was willing to answer other questions. When asked what the corpse had been doing, the girl answered, “He’s showing me what Randall did.” When asked if the entity was Randall, she shook her head. When asked who the man was, she said, “Pantomime. He taught me how to act.” Finally, when asked why Pantomime would show her such a terrible thing, she said, “Because he’s sorry.”
She refused to provide any additional information. When the agents attempted to take her into custody, Pantomime reappeared and attacked them with catastrophic results, allowing her to escape.
Once she was no longer onsite, Pantomime transformed. He became docile and even expressed regret in a nonverbal manner for the injuries he inflicted on the agents. He then waited obediently for additional personnel to arrive, and came into Agency custody without further incident.
When asked why, he wrote a simple answer:
Because my father can’t get me if I go with you
Investigation post-arrest showed that Pantomime’s stomach contained partially-digested bone matter and meat from a human victim. When Agency personnel removed his mouth sutures, they discovered that his tongue was missing.
Experimentation shows that Pantomime is able to remove and reattach his head and limbs at will. He is able to attach his head and limbs onto dead bodies. Pantomime maintains control over any limb attached to another individual. For example, if his head is attached to someone else, he has complete control over that body until decomposition compromises the structures.
Additionally, Pantomime has the ability to project mental images and fantasies into reality for limited amounts of time. He can only do this after consuming human brain tissue. Pantomime’s most-frequently projected “scenes” consist of himself and a young woman. Nothing of note ever happens in these scenes.
Pantomime’s tongue has been observed to reappear and disappear in apparently random fashion. It should be noted that on 11/26/2024, Pantomime’s tongue reappeared and he asked to speak to Commander R. Wingaryde. Pantomime disclosed largely nonspecific knowledge of a plot between the Harlequin and unknown Agency personnel. This disclosure, combined with the return of Pantomime’s ability to speak, prompted administration to schedule an interview with the Agency’s specialized interviewer with the goal of obtaining additional details about this plot.
It should be noted that Pantomime rarely speaks. Nevertheless, he can write and does so extensively with little prompting. The caveats with Pantomime’s writing are as follows:
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His writings take the form of stage plays, complete with character dialogue and stage directions
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Every one of Pantomime’s works is titled “All the World’s a Stage”
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The Harlequin is a recurring figure in Pantomime’s plays
The relationship between Pantomime and the Harlequin is not understood. Pantomime consistently refuses to elaborate. The Harlequin describes their relationship thus: “My son sang most beautifully in my city bright.”
Pantomime’s many plays are primarily a variation on a theme. They follow the life of Pantomime as he forms a friendship with a young woman named Sarita.
The plays are always told through Sarita’s perspective. Sarita is a poverty-stricken woman who is bullied mercilessly both at home and at work. Sarita’s childhood dream is to be an actress, although she knows it will never happen due to her unattractiveness and her lack of talent. But the dream doesn’t die. As stated in one of the most notable lines of the play, this dream “burns on in defiance of reality.”
One day, Sarita finds an abandoned theater. She begins to spend her free time there, twirling around onstage and acting out scenes in private, far from critical eyes.
But unbeknownst to her, Pantomime lives in the theater and he loves to watch her.
One day, she catches him spying on her. Rather than running away, she chases him through the theater until she corners him backstage.
They form a friendship. Sarita and Pantomime spend their afternoons acting together. Something strange happens when they’re onstage – Sarita changes, becoming more beautiful, and the scenes they act out start to become real. She describes it as an enchantment, a real-life fantasy world that evaporates at the curtain call.
What Sarita doesn’t know is that that Pantomime lives in the theater because it is used as a dumping ground by a killer. The stream of bodies provides Pantomime with a steady supply of human bones and human brains through which he derives the energy required to briefly project his and Sarita’s scenes into reality.
One day, Sarita’s friend Debbie disappears. Sarita goes to Pantomime’s theater, bursting inside just in time to see Pantomime biting into Debbie’s head.
Sarita believes Pantomime is the killer and runs away, never to return.
After her departure, Pantomime cries silently until the Harlequin appears. (Note: Alone of the characters in Pantomime’s plays, the Harlequin speaks in iambic pentameter. In his writings, Pantomime’s iambic pentameter is flawless. The Harlequin also speaks in iambic pentameter in the interview transcribed below. However, the interviewer noted multiple flaws in either meter or stressed syllables in the Harlequin’s iambic pentameter as verbally related by Pantomime. Whether this is relevant is not known.)
The Harlequin asks, “Remember how you sang so beautifully for gods and monsters in my bright city?”
Pantomime only weeps.
The Harlequin tells Pantomime that he’ll take him back to the C…
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