Name: Sebastian
Story: Sentient Carnival
Colors: Avocado: 12) Seeing her skin feeling silky smooth / Colour of cafe au lait / Made the savage beast inside / Roaring till it cried More, More, More / Now he's at home doing 9 to 5 /Living his brave life of lies -Patti Labelle: Lady Marmalade
Supplies and Styles:
Word Count: ~1600
Warnings: some sexual violence with underage characters
Summary: Quinn goes wandering and finds more than she bargained for.
Notes So, I said a while ago to bookblather that I was working on some Sentient Carnival stuff. This is part of what was in my brain.

Quinn grew up in the carnival scene. She’s heard all the stories, knows the slang and the legends and the ways to get by. She’s been on the road since she was too young to walk and she loves every second of it.

Her body hums along with the music, she dances to the sound of laughter and her eyes glint with the carnival lights. She’s a princess of the midway, her father the king of the ferris wheel and she has no fear walking in her own lands, no matter where they fall.

But there are things she knows she should be scared of. There are ghosts on the road they travel, hungry creatures that want them to stray off course and let their guards down. There are the sirens on the highways, singing sweet songs to truckers and carnies and everyone on the roads, making them lose sight of where they’re going and crash into unsuspecting victims. There are other things too, bigger than anyone or two unsettling stories.

There’s the other carnival.

The carnival that follows you, sets up not too far from where you are. It lures patrons away, but more than that, it lures your workers. It pulls everyone it can in and doesn’t let them go. It sinks it’s teeth into their flesh and renders them into living corpses, zombies who can control the rides just as easily as they can steal your soul.

Quinn has never seen the carnival but her dad has. He’s told her stories about straying too far, about what happens if she sees another carnival near by. She’s never to go inside or to even get close enough to smell the confections being cooked up.

She wouldn’t want to eat any of it anyway.

But Quinn has always been a daring sort of girl, the kind that liked challenges and tricks. She liked seeing what the world had to offer. So, it shouldn’t be a surprise that,when she sees the carnival, she can’t help but get closer.

She spies people just on the inside, girls with hungry eyes and itching fingers. She would read them as junkies if she didn’t know any better, if she couldn’t feel the magic coming off of them.

Then again, there was magic coming off the carnival like a flood. It was almost overwhelming, leaving her intoxicated with promise. She drifted closer still, fingers digging in her pocket to pay her way inside.

In the back of her mind, she knows something is wrong, knows that she would be wary because something is definitely Wrong, but she can’t quite make her feet listen to her. She’s a little bit more curious than she is cautious and that curiosity sees her all the way into the carnival.

The girls from before, she counts three of them at this point, watch her from their spot. They look like they could be related, all with dark hair and light eyes. Their skin is a dusty color, probably from time in the sun, but shes pretty sure there’s something fundamentally wrong with what she’s seeing.

Maybe it’s not that they look related, that’s not quite it. They look like the same person at three different stages in their life. A child, a young teenager and someone who might be about twenty or so.

It set her on edge, made her wonder if there were tricks to be had around this place that she might not be able to handle. Of course, she knew the answer to that, the magic told he well enough that there was definitely something. However, she didn’t know where the three girls fit into it and that was leaving her edgier than anything else.

Quinn walks deeper into the carnival, away from the girls and towards the rides. It wasn’t too crowded, it was a weekday and still around 3 PM, so she wasn’t surprised, but there were more people than she expected too. Some walked past her in excitement but others seemed distant, lost in their own heads.

Quinn felt more and more distressed as she moved deeper into the carnival. Warning bells were going off in her brain, telling her she needed to get the hell out and do it now, but she still remained. Why was she not leaving? Why was she still walking the path towards the fun house even though she knew she should get back to her own show

There’s a noise near by, a soft cry that jerks her out of her own head. She moves towards it, unsure if someone was hurt or needing help. She probably couldn’t help them but she could find someone who might.

She ducks her head into one of the tents, eyes adjusting to the darkness, the only light coming from the candles around the area. Once she could focus properly, she didn’t even know what to do with what she saw.

There they were, the three girls from before, surrounding a boy who was maybe seventeen at most. He was on the ground, his clothes gone, and one of the girls, the little one, sat behind him, his head in her lap. She ran her fingers through his hair while the other two sat on either side, their fingers tracing his skin like they were trying to memorize him or maybe get inside. Quinn coudln’t quite see well enough to tell..

They whispered words to each other, or maybe to him, she couldn’t tell. It didn’t seem like he could hear them though, his face glazed over with something that might have been pain but Quinn couldn’t be sure.

Then one moved, covering his body with hrs and, in a blink, she was naked as well. It was like her clothes had been a glamour and only now can she see them as they truly are. Which felt both true and and like there was more to it. She knew she was missing something, even as the girl, the middle one, kissed the boy on the mouth, grinding her hips against him and coaxing his body to react.

His body arched upward, going stuff and somehow jagged. The girl kissed his neck, down his chest and all the way down until she’d reached the base of his cock. She looked to the others, the little one who still pet his hair, and the oldest who still moved her hands in that strange pattern along his skin

Then sh took him into her mouth, swallowing him as if he were nothing. Her head bobbed up and down, coaxing the reaction as his face shifted between expressions of pain and , if one could even call it that, pleasure.

Quinn was trying to look away. She didn’t want to see this, not any of it.

Quinn knew she shouldn’t see this, that she should run because something was going to happen if she didn’t but she wasn’t sure she could just leave the boy either. She was sure he was there against his will and she couldn’t just cut and run. She also knew there wasn’t anything sh felt she could do.

Quinn knew she couldn’t run, so instead she tried to call out, to interrupt in some way but her voice caught in her throat. All that comes out is an awkward little squeak that doesn’t distract any of them. It felt as if she was compelled to keep quiet, that she was going to watch this whether she wanted to or not and there was no interrupting what was already well on it’s way to being done.

At first, she thought her attempt had gone unnoticed, then she heard it. The little on was giggling softly, her eyes right on Quinn, staring her down as she did so. Her smile was sweet, innocent even, but she saw the teeth, so much more like a predator animal’s than a humans and if she’d had any of doubt before then, it was in that moment that Quinn knew she was in deep.

She stumbled back, tearing her gaze away, not caring what happened to the boy at that point. She knew she had to run, knew she couldn’t stay and watch because hell was going to be chasing after her if she stayed and something worse than what was happening in that tent would befall her if she were to become their prey.

She didn’t look back as she ran, just let her legs carry her through the maze she’d let herself get lost in until she reached the outside gates. Only once she was free did she look back, her head daring to turn and see what might be after her.

At first she saw no one, then, though the bars of the gate, she saw the child, or at least what she had once assumed to be a child, watching her, one of her little hands reaching through the bars to try and lure her back.

Like fuck she was getting any closer.

~

Quinn made it back to her own carnival, safe and familiar and full of tricks she knew well. Her father watched her that night, studying her like he was seeing something in her she hadn’t noticed.

“You look hungry,” he says, his voice careful. “Are you all right?”

She swallowed, her tongue feeling thick in her mouth. “No, I’m good. It’s just kinda been a day, you know?”

He nods, serving her a little more of the potatoes they’d fixed up that night.

As Quinn eats, she tries to ignore the soft grumble of her stomach and the echoes of laughter on the edge of the wind.