The Winter's Tale

Greetings travellers. I have engaged the use of this blog feature to warn you all of an insidious threat that lurks unchecked in our public squares and quirky side-streets.
You may know this white faced menace by the name "mime", but the truth behind these seemingly innocuous street performers is far more disturbing than their silent charades would lead you to believe

Fig.1: The Devil wears whiteface

In this exposé we'll look at the real identity and origin of mimes, and the very real threat they pose to society. MY SOURCES ARE INFALLIBLE, AND ALL ARE TRUE.

1. Mimes are intergalactic spies that have supplanted a burgeoning human artform in its infancy.
Extra terrestrials walk among us, and only the most naive would believe otherwise. While they cannot speak our languages, they have chosen a guise that allows them to easily cover this - the mime. Throughout history, human attempts to create silent pantomime acts as entertainment have been hijacked by these visitors, who jumped at the chance to gain a foothold in our societies and avoid questioning by impersonating silent performers. Via telepathic communication, they are able to consolidate each others positions and convey information on the weaknesses of human society to their superiors, in order to plan surgical strikes by exploiting our vulnerabilities. So unfortunate is it that most people see pantomime acts as lighthearted entertainment rather than a dance of death that heralds our impending doom

2. Mimes are forcibly re-socialised criminals that have been drugged to remove connections with reality, to ease re-integration into society.
A novel and disturbing solution to prison overcrowding is the forced re-socialisation of inmates through drug treatments that removes any threat the person might pose to the outside world. The failure of attempts to replicate model citizen behaviour in inmates lead to more drastic re-socialisation procedures where the inmate's connections with reality were broken. As a precaution they also underwent surgeries to remove their capacity for speech to prevent them from blurting out secrets about the procedure unknowingly. Now living in a dreamlike, psychotic daze the inmates posed little or no threat the public and could be re-introduced into society with a little supervision. Of course beneath the veneer of derangement beats the heart of a rapist or murderer. The white makeup and charades are merely the façade of tortured monsters incapable of realising their situation, and couldn't scream about it even if they did. Naturally, every so often the outer shell cracks to release the terror within...

3. Normal human mimes exist. But they're still freaks.
They all have something to hide. All of them.

I hope you are now all aware of the danger these individuals pose to society. Stay safe my friends, and Lord Vetinari once wisely said: Learn the words.

EDIT: Pantomime=/=mime. "Silent charades" is redundant. derp