Disclaimer: Doctor Who and all its characters aren't mine (sadly)
A tacky melody piped from the garishly coloured tents and roughly strung lights of the fairground. The bitter snarl of the wind battered the canvases, the tents straining against the gyropes. Deep in the distance the lights of a small Scottish town sparkled faintly admit the monstrous elements. Silhouettes of locals trooped amid the ultra-violet coloured carnival, their faces cast into twisted shade.
"Come on, you don't want to miss the show."
A small child and her mother stood quietly under a tent's canopy, faceless people trooping past.
"Where's daddy gone?" the child resolutely said.
"I think he's gone to get tickets, now come one dear."
Grabbing the child's hand, the mother pulled her towards the neon hued big-top at the centre of the fair, headed straight to the winding line of punters.
The child stubbornly dug her heels in, gazing at the harsh night, critically studying the other people the queue. Somewhere in the child's tiny mind there was a niggle, a tiny, minute niggle. There was something wrong, like a twisted shadow on a wall, a broken statue. Something wrong hung over the carnival.
There was something she then spotted, from the very corner of her eye, dancing on the outside of existence. A hefty, pin-wheel marked tent's entrance hung ever so slightly open. A certain, pull, emanated from the tent, drawing the child in, as she slowly stepped towards the tent flap.
She leant into the tent's frigid and bizarre light.
The four-year-old's mind froze as things her still spawning mind couldn't comprehend bent her being with mis-understanding and primal fear.
"Don't you know it's rude to snoop, little girl?"
The petrified girl gazed about to take in the figure right behind her. A ring-master's top hat and cane stood out against the fairground neon.
"Have you lost your mummy, little one," the figure snarled, "but to be honest, perhaps you're one of the 'lucky' ones, because A, you're quite cute, and B, I'm too tired to kill you."
The child could only stand and stare, a black mist descending and the world spinning to never-ending oblivion.
