Disclaimer – I have no rights to the characters used in this story.

Beta and at the same time the one who came up with the title: Moviemom44

The idea for this short humorous story dawned on me after reading someone's comment on the Terminator movie section IMDB board. I decided on getting it on. Enjoy.

TERMINAL LAUGHTER

When he landed in the nineties, he was sure – as any machine endowed with strength far surpassing that of humans would be – that his mission would succeed. Because how could it fail? Sarah and her son were just human – a mere human woman and her ten year old son. How could anything about terminating those two go possibly wrong? The Terminator's eyes were showing him the world of the 1990's; so different than the world ruled by Skynet which created him. But the machine didn't ponder the differences between the world from which he just arrived and this one, in which humans weren't slaves and the world still belonged to them. Which was going to change really soon – if he accomplished his mission. Which wasn't going to be difficult. He knew the place Sarah and her son lived. Now he only needed to find some clothes.

Finding a man with a similar build to the killer machine wasn't difficult either. The machine found him going out of the building he worked in – still dressed in his uniform. He seemed relaxed and amused. He didn't even realize it was going to be the last day of his life – actually the last minute of his life, to be more precise. Killing him and taking his clothes and his car wasn't any problem for the machine from the future.

Also finding the Connors, as said, didn't present itself as a difficult task either. Neither did terminating them. If the cyborg was a human being, able to experience emotions in the way humans did, he probably wouldn't even feel satisfaction at the job well done – so trivial and insignificant was wiping their existence off the face of Earth. So easy. He killed them one by one, first Sarah, later her son. Surprised, they didn't even try to defend themselves. All they did before they died was let out a hysterical laugh at the sight of him, as if the prospect of dying in a moment left them devoid of their right senses. It had to be so. The cyborg had detailed knowledge on human anatomy and psychology and knew it sometimes happened to be quite a common reaction in humans. Their weak minds protected themselves in this way from the upcoming horror. He didn't pay attention to the tears of hysterical laughter trickling down their faces from which for this short moment the reflection of fear disappeared. Nor did he dwell on the grimaces of amusement altering their faces. He just raised his gun and killed them.

Before he left, he took once more quick look at the bodies lying in the bloody puddle. They lay peacefully. Peace was reflected on their pale faces which now showed none of the sudden outburst of hysterical laughter the cyborg witnessed barely two minutes ago. They didn't laugh now; cold and stiff. The mission was complete. Saran and John were dead. They could live a normal life, pretending before themselves they were safe but the reality was different than they thought. They could laugh at the moment of having seen their killer like they just saw the funniest thing in the world but it didn't help them in anything. Laugh… what was that funny about all of this?

The cyborg opened the door of the apartment where his victims had hidden and, having checked to see if anyone was passing by, went outside. People on the street were taking weird looks at him. One man was craning his neck so much that he didn't notice a streetlight until he bumped into it. The machine remembered the big, strange building his first victim - the one he took the clothes from- worked in. It had a mysterious inscription on it. "Circus" – it said. And he also recalled what he said to the man before he killed him to take his attire. "I need your clown costume, your nose and your clown car".