Chapter 1
Imagine waking up and discovering that your whole life was just turned topsy-turvy, from right-side-up to upside down. Imagine all the things that had ever seemed real suddenly becoming fake. Imagine... Imagine... Oh, I dunno, imagine that you've just woken up in a casket, lying on your back, staring up at the dark lid.
That's what happened to me, believe it or not. I opened my eyes and saw nothing but darkness. The smell of roses touched my nose, and when I stretched my limbs somewhat, they made contact with the wooden sides of the box. I noticed tiny cracks of light then, breaching the coffin lid, presumably ventilation cracks of some kind.
So what do you do? You're in a casket with airholes, and you have no earthly idea how you got there.
And something's wrong with your chest. 1 2 3 4. 1 2 3 4. It almost felt like my hdart was concussed, like it had hit its head and was seeing double, or rather, beating double. And then the lid was opening, lifting ever so slowly. It was almost like the world had turned into a horror movie, and the lid of Count Dracula's box was being raised an inch every hour for dramatic effect. Finally though, it was open all the way, and I was staring into the face of an older woman in Victorian garb.
I rolled my head to the side to get a better look at her, and I remember wondering why she was dressed like that. I didn't ask that however. Nope, out of all the cool or snarky questions I could have asked, I inquired of this lady: "Am I dead?"
She seemed amused by the question, or at least, it made her smile. The smile didn't reach her blue eyes though, which took in every detail of my face, seemingly trying to pierce it and stare into my brain. She replied, "I don't think you are. Do you want to be?"
"No, not really." I answered nervously, beginning to sit up.
The blanket that covered me slid off a little, and I caught a glimpse of a bare shoulder. I lifted it a bit more, discretely looking down. And then I was all fire, my eyes blazing with anger.
"What is it?" The Victorian woman asked.
"'Scuse me..." I began, hesitantly and through gritted teeth, "But I don't think I'm wearing any clothes. Care to explain?"
"Oh, don't worry, darling. They must have been burned in the blast of regeneration energy... Here." And she tossed a pile of black velvet my way.
"Yeah, er, thanks?" I asked, as though it were a question. "Right. So am I on drugs or something?" I added after a milisecond.
Madame Victorian lady turned away, and I began putting on the dress and all its accessories. The skirt was too long and the bodice didn't fit right, but the dress, as a whole, was nice. You know, if you were into that aristocratic villainous look. It was black velvet with gold accents at the trim, and streaks of gold on the skirt.
"Come here." Madame Victorian lady commanded, so I went, hesitantly.
She turned me so that my back was to her. I stiffened. Was she going to stab me in the back? I'd heard of psychos doing that... Oh God, I was going to die!
Apparently not, though. She didn't stab me, she just began lacing me into the thing more tightly and correcting the clumsy knots I'd made when trying to do it myself.
"Who are you?" I asked as she sinched me into the apparent death-trap.
"I am Missy. Don't you remember anything?" She asked, half condescending, half bored.
"No. Sorry. Did you just come from a party or something?" I asked, looking down at the bottom half of the dress.
"No. Why? Do you like parties? I never did, too many apes involved, and timelord parties always end in disaster." Missy replied, beginning to give an anecdote about some stupid party to which she went.
I tuned her out. This Missy was like a teacher I once had in seventh grade: she loved the sound of her own voice so much, it didn't matter whether anyone listened or not.
"There." She said, whirling me around again. "Have a look."
She brought out a full-length mirror and I gasped. I looked like... I looked like an evil china doll. But I didn't, or at least, I didn't used to.
I know what I look like. I'd cursed the mirror and my mother for it time and time again. I'd always been tall, rather plain but with an almost-good figure.
This girl, the one looking back at me was short, petite and kind of pretty. Actually, really pretty in a vampire doll way. Her skin was pale, unnaturally so. She looked like she'd just stepped out of a coffin and was about to start sucking people's blood, or maybe out of the Twilight franchise? Her eyes were a dark sapphire-blue, and very large. Her lips were unnaturally red, and they looked full, nothing like the mouth I'd once had. Even the nose was symetrical to everything else and the hair... The hair was a cascade of chestnut brown, longer and thicker than I'd ever seen my hair.
"You really are beautiful, aren't you, darling?" Missy cooed proudly, appearing behind me in the mirror.
"That's not me." I stated, whirling around to face her, feeling the anger building inside me, turning my blood to fire and the world inside my head into a chaotic mess.
"Of course it is. You regenerated."
"And you lost your sanity." I spat back. "Regeneration isn't possible, at least not in the real world."
"This is real." She replied, smiling serenely, sketching me a mocking curtsy.
"How?" I asked, whirling back to the mirror and glaring at this other girl, this doll girl.
"I made you. I re-wrote you with a broken chamelion arch and a lot of cleverness if I say so myself." Missy explained.
What the actual frick? Chamelion arch? 'Scuse me, but I'm not taking this. This isn't Doctor Who... It couldn't be. I certainly hoped it wasn't.
I took a look at Missy, actually looked this time, and felt my blood run cold. "Oh my God." I whispered, taking hold of the mirror. "You're the Master..."
"So you DO remember?" She asked, triumphantly.
"No, but wait, you're not... You can't be:.. How the... What? What the hell is happening here? That's a really accurate costume, but I don't really appreciate being kidnapped by a psychotic cosplayer." I realized I was babbling then, not her, and my hold on the looking glass was firmer.
And my heart was still beating double, almost as if there were two of them... 1 2 3 4. 1 2 3 4. Over and over again, as if this were not some weird halucination, as if maybe I wasn't on LSD or something and this was real... This was actual and that wasn't a cosplayer, that was the Master, the fricking Master...
"What the hell did you do to me?" I asked, softly, trying to hold back the river I felt, beginning to collect at the corners of my eyes.
"I made you." She answered simply, and she took my hands, placing them to her heart, or rather, hearts. I felt them both beating there, the same as mine, against my palms.
"How are you doing that?" I asked, pulling away from her sharply.
"This isn't a game." She responded quietly, "I made you with a broken chamelion arch, your broken first body and one of my own regenerations."
And now, something scary was happening: I was starting to believe this crazy woman, to believe Missy as I should learn to think of her.
"Okay." I said, taking a deep breath. "In the event that you're not crazy and telling the truth, how'd you even find me, my first body that is?"
"You were just laying there." She replied, smiling wickedly. "So I thought: finders keepers. And so here you are."
"Okay. Maybe you are crazy. You just found a random girl laying on the ground in a random place and you thought: hmm, I'll take this?"
"Actually, my exact thought was.."
"It doesn't matter. No one gives a damn. Okay, so I'm a timelady. I can live with this because it's all some hallucinogenic drug, that's it. I'm really, really high and I watch waaaay too much TV."
"Don't be cruel. I'm hurt. Come on, we can sit down and talk about it." She said, her face morphing into a mask of mock-hurt.
"I'm not sitting down to a cup o' tea with the Master because this is just a bad trip. A really bad trip and I'm going to come down from this in my perfectly ugly body, out of this doll chick. And you're going to reverse this. If it's somehow not a trip, you're going to reverse it."
"Do you want me to?" She asked, all seriousness now.
"Yes please. I'd like that very much." I replied, calming down some. She wasn't smiling, she wasn't teasing, she wasn't trying to manipulate me. She wasn't calling me 'darling.'
"Well," She said, her face breaking into its manic smile, "I can't. And why would I want to? You are now the member of a superior race."
And this sent me over the edge. I reached up, as she was several inches taller than me and slapped her hard across the face. "You will NOT insult my species but what you are going to do is reverse whatever the hell you did. And I'm not playing."
"And if I can't? Then what?" She asked, challenging now. "Are you going to kill me?"
"Trust me, if you gave me a gun, I would." I admitted, truthfully.
"Well, no one's giving you a gun." She said, matter-of-factly.
"I wouldn't know how to fire one if I had one..." I admitted, the dam breaking now, tears flowing down my face. "I just want to go home. I don't want to be high."
"Suit yourself, then." She said in resignation, placing her hands to my temples. "But sleep now." The command resonated in my head, and though I fought, I knew the battle was lost. I felt my eyes closing the moment she finished her sentence.
"My name's not darling." I murmured as the edges of the world went black. "It's Beth. Beth Heaven."