"Guess who died!" there was a shrill sort of voice full of excitement that echoed down the hallway. A teenage girl looked up from her book and groaned to see a little midget stand upon the living room's doorway. The girl quickly glanced at her book to pretend that she hadn't heard the ear piercing screech. It didn't fool the midget.
"C'mon then. Guess who died." Usually a subject such as death wouldn't be brought up so casually however this was Lillian, her cousin that the teenager was dealing with so nothing was inappropriate for the girl to announce. "Panny!" the girl whined impatiently.
Before I go on with the story, let me introduce the protagonist. Pandora, a young 16 year old girl. Pandora hated her name. "You can't even make a nice nickname for it" she would often say to anyone who listened. Most people called her "Pan" or "Panny" much to her dismay or to the ones who find themselves quite clever, like the boy who lives across the street she is known as "Pancake Chest" or "Dora the Explorer."
Her physical looks could be summed up to be a single word: shabby. Though arguably pretty, she spends most of her time drowned with self pity and worried thoughts from her self-diagnosed social anxiety and made her even shabbier than she naturally would have.
Now Pan often felt that she was born simply in the wrong place, the wrong time, the wrong dimension. She often daydreams what it would be like if things had been different. She was incredibly jealous of the girls that were always swept by their feet by the Doctor every time Pandora turned on Doctor Who. There was no "madman with a box" in her world. She couldn't ponder for too long though, as she often brought back to reality fairly quickly. Lilian's grandmother often made sure of this and would often bark, "Panny yo' wif that ugly face a' yours again?" Lovely woman.
Pan looked at the midget with arched eyebrows and before she could open her mouth to shoo the girl away, Lilian was on her way to explain that it had been the middle aged man that ran a grocery store few blocks down. In Pandora's mind, he was always known as the "Potato Man" because he had given her a free potato once. Other than that she hardly knew the man.
"I know he left me in his will." Pandora looked at Lillian with annoyance.
"Just because you organized his bookshelf four years ago doesn't mean he'll spare you his life savings," Pandora said sharply. Lilian stuck her tongue out.
"It was actually three years ago," the girl twirled around with a huff. "Also my grandmother called for you." Great.
Pan quickly found the old woman in the kitchen, holding the latest teen magazine and snapping to Lilian's mother, "I look li' tha' whe' I was youn'!"
"I was told that you needed me?" Pan asked as politely as she could. The old woman still gave her a menace glare.
"S'about time ya came! I called ya ages ago!" Oh Lilian. "Ya been lazing at mah house fa too long!" It's been about 10 minutes since you last called me. "Was told tha' some man died so has a lot of work. Wha' was tha' gal's name tha' told us? Paige? Penny? Whatever. Ya gah help." Like a sidekick in a magic show, Lilian's mother brought out a box of cleaning material and a few broken locks. "Was given this by her. Take this and go to tha' man's house." Pandora glanced at the window to see that the sky has became a very dark color. She started to panic. She was suppose to go at home by nine, she was looking so forward to it. Fortunately, Lillian's mother who seemed to be taking a short break from being a sidekick came to the rescue.
"Ah..Mother, Panny needs to go home soon. Anyways it's dark so she's probably wouldn't be there." The grandmother grumbled. Though still ordered to keep the box of stinky cleaning materials, Pandora was excused.
The clock struck 9 when three people sat around the table together for the first time in a long while for their evening meal. To the Smith family, dinner time had always been a tense event. It included a couple and a teenage daughter, Pandora, trying very hard to pretend that they wanted to spend time with each other. The meals were always eaten with awkward silence. The situation was preferably avoidable.
However Pandora had hoped against hope that there had been a tiny chance that after many years of practically avoiding the home and each other they would start to miss the whole family time thing. Apparently they didn't as she heard crashing noises from the floor below as she wrapped herself with a blanket. She wished for the millionth time to be anywhere else but here. It took awhile but Pandora managed to fall asleep.
The next day she heard a very eerie whirring noise. It reminded her of something but she couldn't put her finger around it. What was it?
There was screaming and yelling that Pandora recognized from her parents. Glass shattered.
When Pandora finally managed to convince herself that it wasn't a dream and her bed was painfully hard, she opened her eyes, Pandora quickly realized she wasn't in her room, forget the bed. She also realized what the whirring sound was coming from what seemed like a controller that she wasn't very far from. There was more screaming gibberish that sounded something like, "IT MOVED!"
"Mom?"
When Pandora turned around she found herself staring at a statue, her mom and dad cowering in a corner just inches away from the it. Pandora's jaw dropped as she was able to see the wicked expression of the statue change as she blinked and the arms that had been at its side just moments ago reaching out as if to touch her parents.
Things clicked.
It was a Weeping Angel.
She was inside the TARDIS. With her parents.
Well that's new.
