2nd Doctor Who fanfic, to take a quick break from ATLA.
POV: Random Passerby (American) – NOT ME! :3
Oh, and sorry about the "fish and chips" thing. I'm not trying to be offensive.
Disclaimer: I don't own Doctor Who or anything related to it at all, just using my imagination for stuff.
One Quick Run
by PythianPickles
There weren't any monsters in the warehouse.
There wasn't anything, honestly. Just lots and lots of dust and probably a million poisonous traces of asbestos and all that jazz.
Screw Dan and his stupid dares.
One wall had windows high up, with some very murky views of the stars outside. Another was stacked with huge cardboard boxes. Definitely from Earth. Yet another had an old dilapidated piece of scaffolding with a wooden blue box sitting on top of it.
Hold on—wooden blue box?
Whatever that was. Nice of the owner to label it though. "POLICE PUBLIC CALL BOX" shone brightly in the murky gloom of the warehouse.
Whoever was in there, he was evidently busy, because the windows of the box were lit up. What could he be doing in such a small thing?
Maybe this was a fancy-looking outhouse or something…
With a creak, the box's door began to open, letting out a wave of yellow light, and I instantly forgot all about my attempted judgments.
The box said "police." Maybe police came in boxes now.
As quietly as I could, I ran behind a pile of boxes, wincing at every echoing step.
In the silence, I could clearly hear the creak of the box's door closing. Had the police guy gone back in to eat donuts? Risking a quick peek out, I hesitantly poked my head out…
…and hurriedly pulled it back. I knew the figure of a man when I saw one.
Screw, screw, screw Dan and his stupid dares!
Well, so maybe the guy was just going to take a walk or something. It was probably cramped in that tiny little box. I just had to remain unseen.
Oh shoot.
Footprints.
With this much dust on the floor, I had left a perfect trail of breadcrumbs leading to my hiding spot.
Obviously the guy had come to the same conclusion, because the echoing sound of footsteps began to get louder.
Nonononono…I was not getting arrested because of Dan…
What did he do when he was almost caught? He'd bragged to me many times about how he'd escaped the police.
Oh yeah…that one time…
I took out my cell phone, ready to execute my master plan. Well, not mine, exactly. Dan's.
"No, it's not here," I said to it loudly. Inside, I was half filled with trepidation and half filled with a strange kind of glee. This was the first time I'd ever done anything this high-stakes. "I told you, Bob, it's not here!" Seconds after saying that, I realized how idiotic I'd been. Bob? Really? I berated myself mentally.
Rising up from behind the pile and trying my best to put an irritated, yet nonchalant expression on my face, I walked out as calmly as I could. "Sorry Bob, but your doll isn't here…got it?" Doll? Ugh…
I really needed to get better at thinking under pressure. Oh well, I just had to continue my "conversation." "So let me te—"
Then everything stopped, and I couldn't help but stare and stop talking.
If this was a policeman, he was the weirdest one I'd ever seen.
Nothing about this guy remotely said police.
Policemen didn't usually wear tweed jackets. And they definitely didn't wear suspenders and a bow tie…
Most of all, police definitely didn't have this type of expression. I was pretty sure policemen didn't have friendly expressions on their faces after finding trespassers. And there was something about his expression…
…oh.
When I was a kid, I visited my grandpa a lot. I still remember his expression.
This guy's expression was remarkably similar to my grandpa's.
"Well, hello there," he said to me, as if I was just another customer at McDonald's. His British accent contested sharply with this, wiping that image from my mind. All right. Maybe a waiter asking me if I wanted fish and chips, then.
"Hello, sir," I greeted, in my most official tone. Just because this guy was acting friendly didn't mean he wasn't a policeman. Maybe he was a plainclothes policeman with a really twisted fashion sense.
"I'm the Doctor, not sir. I hate 'sir', so boring…oh, go on," the man said, gesturing casually. "Wouldn't want to interrupt your talk with, uh, Bob—was it?"
"Uh…Doctor? Doctor who?" I glanced at my phone, realizing too late that it was visibly off.
"Funny though," the man continued, as though he hadn't heard me, "haven't seen someone name their phone Bob and talk to it. Is it alive?"
My calm expression had vanished completely, to be replaced with a nonplussed one. "Wha—"
Before I could even blink, the man had snatched the phone from my hand. Holding it up, he inspected the bottom critically. "No breathing holes…"
Maybe this guy wasn't a policeman. Just my luck, getting caught alone in a warehouse with a lunatic.
"Hold on though," the man cautioned, holding up a finger absentmindedly. With his free hand, he reached into his jacket and pulled out what looked like a slender metal stick with a light at the end. "Let me just…"
Three bright flashes of green light and an odd warbling noise followed before I snapped out of my shocked daze. "Hey!" I yelled, forgetting all about the possibility that I was dealing with a lunatic. "Give that back!"
"Sorry," the man murmured, already turning his attention to another part of the warehouse. He distractedly pocketed the phone. "Now I think you should run, because there's a…" he advised, trailing off.
"What?" I demanded. Maybe the guy was hallucinating, but if he knew something I didn't, I wasn't about to die in here.
"That," he finished, pointing.
Squinting through the gloom, I tried my hardest to see what the guy was pointing at. "What?" I asked again. "There's nothing there!"
Then the figure stepped forward.
"What the hell is that?" I exclaimed, accidentally cursing. Had the man somehow sucked me into his hallucination?
"Oh, Silence," the man said cheerfully, already walking towards the thing. "Run," he directed again, gesturing vaguely in the direction of the warehouse door.
"Wait a minute—" I started, running after him, "you've got my phone!"
The Silence, or whatever the Doctor had called it, lifted one tuxedo-clad arm and pointed a finger at the Doctor.
And me.
Seeing him drop to the ground, I did the same. Anyone who could stay calm and cheerful in the presence of what looked like a skeleton in a suit probably knew what he was doing.
Except I made a mistake.
Out of instinct, probably out of watching too many action movies, I rolled.
The instant the monster exited my line of sight, I forgot.
Pausing in mid-roll, my entire mind just…switched. Apparently I had just teleported into the middle of a handstand on the floor. "Wha…"
I stood up in record time, eager not to embarrass myself.
Which was, of course, why an extremely embarrassing cry of pain escaped from me as a bolt of lightning slammed right into me.
"DAAAAAAAGH!"
Every single muscle in my body locked, and intense pain ran through my entire body. In my few coherent thoughts, I was pretty sure I was going to die.
Against my will, everything started getting faint and vague.
"No!" an elusively familiar voice rang out. Something pulled me out of the lightning.
I smiled sleepily at the sudden comfort, and then promptly lost consciousness.
"Where do you live?" something, or someone, asked.
Since I was too frazzled to refuse what normally would've made me reach for some pepper spray, I mumbled my address and lost consciousness again.
Before I did, though, an odd wheezing and groaning sound reached my ears as the ground beneath me shook. Maybe there's an earthquake…but I really don't care… I thought, as I drifted off again.
Click.
Normally that sound wouldn't have been enough to wake me up, but for some reason, it was.
Coughing to clear the dust in my throat, I started awake, brushing the blankets from my body.
Blankets?
With a jolt, I looked down and realized that I was in my bed. In my house. No lightning-shooting skeleton suit thingies anywhere.
"Hey, wait, hold on!" I yelled, leaping out and rushing downstairs. Looking about frantically, I noticed a light shining in through the window from my back yard.
"Doctor! Whoever you are! Just a second!" I yelled. Speeding through my back door, I got out just in time to see that same old blue box.
I started hesitantly towards it. How did that guy even get the box here?
"Doctor?" I said quietly.
Too quietly, as it turned out.
A deep resonant thump reverberated through the air, like someone somewhere had just had an accident with a massive bass drum.
And then came that mournful wheezing, groaning sound again. Suddenly…
The box began to fade out of existence.
Staggering backwards, in the part of my mind that wasn't frozen with amazement, I was surprised that the bottom of my jaw wasn't scraping along the ground.
As the sound progressed, the box slowly faded completely out of sight, the glare from its lamp slowly dissipating. With a last doleful wail, the sound faded out along with the light.
A full minute of silence and my occasional astonished grunts passed before I finally snapped out of it.
"Dah…what…Doctor—" I stammered, stumbling like a five-year old towards the place that box had been.
It was gone.
I never quite forgot about that. When Dan called me later on my cell phone (the Doctor had been kind enough to stick it in my pocket before he did his magic disappearing thing) and asked me where I'd been, I casually told him, "Oh, just sort of disappeared there and reappeared here," leaving him to figure that one out.
Apparently that warehouse had exploded for no reason. I was pretty sure I knew the reason.
And I can't forget about that picture. It happened one day during school, while I decided to go through my phone's pictures for fun while my history teacher droned on about World War II. Dan in a headlock, my mom's cake, Dan kissing some girl, skeleton in a suit, today's homewo—
WHAT?
All of my memories came flooding back: the lightning, the man, the sound…
I wrote it all down before I forgot it again.
Of course, that's why you're reading this.
All in all, I'm pretty happy I wasn't killed by Dan's stupid dare and whatever that thing was. Although...
I just wish I could've seen inside that box before he left…
So, the end! What did you think? If you liked it, review, since that really motivates me to write more fanfictions! Remember that "do police come in boxes?" dialog from the show?
PythianPickles out! :D
Other DW Fanfictions I've Written (check out my profile for the link):
- Why a Police Box?