Short thingy. Please review! Emilie :)
Disclaimer: they're not mine.Charlie isn't mine, O'Neill isn't mine, Daniel isn't mine. The purple-and-silver outfit and its unnamed (but we can guess, right?) owner aren't mine. The beige rags aren't mine. ...And anything I accidentally left out that belongs to stargate people aren't mine as well.
Charlie and I were at the carnival.
Usually when you say 'carnival' you mean a nice, happy place. I have memories from when I was a kid of lots of spinning colors, the smell of popcorn, and my sticky hand grasping my father's index finger. I was about four that time, I think.
This carnival wasn't like that. The only colors I could see spinning around me were red and black. There was a faint smell of blood in the air. And instead of grasping my finger, Charlie held a gun. So did I.
Rather than walk down the middle of the dirt-trodden road, Charlie and I had tacitly started creeping ahead on the sides, hiding behind booths and trashcans. I looked up briefly, to find that it was dusk. When I looked back down, I saw that there were two flagrantly-dressed people silhouetted against the red sky. I looked down at Charlie, to see him waiting gravely for my instructions, P-90 gripped tightly in his hands. His knuckles were white.
I signalled: wait here until I tell you to follow. Then I creeped closer.
Although the outfits were silly, the people wearing them were anything but. A man and a woman were standing, looking straight ahead, their eyes dead like in a badly-directed zombie movie. The woman, I saw as I ran silently forward, was wearing purple and silver. The man had what looked like beige rags covering his body. He had, I could see, hair that was pretty long, for a guy. Blue eyes, I knew, way before I was close enough to see.
The woman had a big snake in her hands, maybe a boa constrictor or something. Huge. She held its head up to the man's, who opened his mouth. The snake slithered quickly into it. The man was still for a moment, then started coughing and choking—or trying to. The snake continued to slither into the man's mouth as he was forced to his knees. The man passed out, lying on the ground with his face to me. The tail of the snake disappeared into him, and seconds later he opened his eyes. They glowed.
As the man stood I remembered his name. "Daniel!" I whispered.
Though he couldn't possibly hear me, he turned, smiling ferally. He advanced towards me. When he was six feet from where I was standing in the shadows, I heard Charlie's voice. "Dad!" he called. I turned quickly, yelling, "Run!"
A gunshot. Charlie fell, and though I was thirty feet away, I knew he was dead. I turned back to Daniel, to see him holding a gun, still smiling.
I launched myself at Daniel and found myself sitting up in my sleeping bag, in a tent, in the middle of the woods, on an alien planet. Panting.
"Jack?" Daniel's sleepy voice called from less than a foot away from me. His head turned towards me, and his eyes half-opened. "You okay?"
I looked at him, blinked, looked away. "Yeah, Daniel," I said, "I'm fine." I settled back into my sleeping bag. "Go back to sleep." I was determined not to let this affect me.
It took a long time to fall asleep again.
Thank you! Please review! If you review...I'll read your stories and review them! (hehehe... bribery... works every time...)