Another story that was published in the 101 Claras To See anthology. Hope you like it!
Murder, They Wrote
There was a sound that sounded like house keys scraping against piano wire were being magnified and intensified and played backwards in a grating chorus of noise, and then a thump, and then a creak, and then-
"This is most definitely not Peru," said a female voice that tasted like a warm summer's day and cinnamon spice, and sounded like it would probably be best put to use saying happier things. "You promised me Peru. Instead, what we've got here is a dark room."
"Not my fault," returned a male voice from the other side of the room. Its taste was hard to identify- it was sort of all over the place and made you feel confused about just taking a bite out of it. "The old girl is getting temperamental in her old age-"
"Like you, you mean."
"-oh, now that's unfair- I told you, it's not me, it's the eyebrows-"
The woman laughed. "I'm joking, Doctor. Remember joking?"
"Vaguely," the man said darkly. "I have an idea. Let's find the lights."
"Genius. Pure genius."
Two minutes later (with a lot of crashing and banging and bumping around in the dark involved), the woman had succeeded in finding the light switch and flipping it. Bleak white light flickered through the room, bouncing around the walls, and illuminating everything.
The first thing you'd notice about the two people standing in the room was their strange attire.
The man had, altogether, one of the most ridiculous costumes that you'd ever be likely to encounter. He looked like a magician, or maybe some sort of performer- his black jacket was almost long enough to be called a cape, and was lined with a deep red material that looked like you could sink into it forever.
The woman's clothing, in comparison, was bright and cheerful and eye-catching. She belonged, you'd think, at a beach or a park, playing catch and flying kites. Her eyes sparkled with the promise of adventures to be had, and her face was round and beautiful.
"A library," said the man, running his hands over the rows of books, letting the uneven spines bounce his fingers up and down. He tapped at a copy of War and Peace, and hummed speculatively. "Well, it could be Peru."
"Somehow," the woman said dryly. "I really don't think so."
Within minutes, the two of them were out of the door and exploring the house, which seemed to be just one endless hallway. It was a creaky sort of place, filled with crooked floorboards and piles of dust that went everywhere if you accidentally stepped into them. The woman tripped over a loose board, and stumbled into a corner, sending up clouds of grey hazy powder everywhere. She coughed and sneezed, wrinkling her nose up. "Lovely place you've brought us to."
"That would be the TARDIS's fault," said the man mildly, playing with a pair of sunglasses he had pulled out of his pocket. "It's fascinating."
"What, this place?" the woman asked, running her fingers along a bookshelf. "Looks like it's been abandoned."
"Can't be more than a month or two old, according to this," he replied, tapping his sunglasses pointedly in her direction.
"What? You're joking," she scoffed, flicking her brown hair back and ploughing determinedly through a sheet of cobwebs. "Houses don't get this ruined in a month. I mean, this place is creepy, but-"
"You know what it would make it creepier?" the man said with a raised eyebrow.
"I can think of many things," she said dryly, turning to face him. "What are you thinking of?"
"How about a dead body?" He pointed in the general vicinity of behind her.
"A dead-" she began, turning around again, and cut herself off. "Oh, you've got to be joking."
The body was lying on the ground in front of them, skin barely visible underneath the clothes that they were wearing. A slow pool of blood that was creeping out over the floorboards, red and wet. The man moved forwards, kneeling quickly, and carefully flipped over the body, taking off the layers of clothing- of which there were quite a lot. Underneath the covering of black, they were wearing plain white garments- soaked in blood- and underneath that-
It was a young boy, no more than 14 years old, his face contorted in pain and terror. The woman clapped her hand over her mouth, horrified, and the man pressed his lips together, flipping the boy over again to examine his back. It was a clean wound that had gone all the way through the small of his back, but there was no sign of the weapon that had stabbed him and no trail of blood to show where it had gone. It seemed as if the weapon had gone in, and had simply… disappeared.
"Curiouser and curiouser," he muttered underneath his breath.
"Who is he?" the woman asked, still standing a few paces away, and looking a bit pale.
"No idea," said the man, standing up suddenly and offering her a bright and disarming smile and a hand for her to take. "Let's find out, shall we?"
They walked down the corridor together, side by side, and the hallway seemed to go on forever and never end. There were no doors, just dusty old bookcases with dusty old books that carried titles such as 'A Study in Scarlet' and 'Harry Potter and the Cursed Child' and occasionally a mirror or two along the way.
To distract themselves, they talked- about meaningless things, things that probably never happened, idle fantasies- throwing around ideas and thoughts.
After a while, they could see another figure slumped on the ground. Like before, a pool of red was spreading over the ground, creeping into cracks and dents in the wood. The two travellers approached cautiously.
"Are they dead as well?" the woman asked cautiously.
The man ducked down quickly to examine them. "Unfortunately, yes," he said. "She's from Earth, maybe… hm, early twenties?" He swiped a hand along her hair. "Her hair's dyed. Interesting."
"She's dead," she said, folding her arms as the man stood up. "Yes, very interesting indeed."
"But is she really?" he countered. "Listen to me for a moment. More specifically, listen to my voice- ignore the actual words, they won't make much sense- and stop me when you notice something."
"Okay?" she agreed, unsure.
He nodded, cleared his throat, and began to briskly recite a poem. "Zagreus sits inside your head, Zagreus lives among the dead, Zagreus sees you in your bed and eats you when you're-"
"What?" the woman interrupted.
He sighed. "It's a traditional rhyme from my home planet that was sung in order to terrify our small children into sleeping, because we couldn't think of any other logical way to get them to have a nap. Shut up for a moment- just listen. Zagreus at the end of days, Zagreus lies all other ways, Zagreus comes when Time's a maze, and all of history's-"
"Stop!" she exclaimed, eyes wide. "I've got it!"
"Yes?" the man asked with a grin.
"I can taste your voice!" she said excitedly. "It's all strange- like mixed berries and coffee and…" she waved her hands around, struggling for words. "-oh, I don't know!"
"Exactly," he said. "It's a type of synaesthesia. We're experiencing voices as tastes- that's not very normal, as far as synaesthesia goes, but who am I to comment? I usually see Time as colors." He seemed to change moods at the speed of light. "But do you know what this means?"
"Not really," she said.
"It means that all of this," he threw out an arm to sweep across the whole corridor and the body of the woman lying on the floor, "has been constructed by someone else. Somebody's playing with us- and I don't like being played with!" His voice rose to a shout as he directed his next words up to the ceiling. "Isn't that right?"
The lights, quite suddenly, went out.
The corridor was pitch-black.
"Doctor?" called the woman warily.
There was no response.
"Is somebody there?" she asked, moving and bumping into a bookcase. She yelped and muttered something underneath her breath. "Doctor!"
The lights flickered on again.
The body was gone, and so was her friend.
She whirled around, and stared up at the ceiling angrily. "What are you playing at? Bring him back! Right now!"
Or what? the silence seemed to say.
She looked back and forth for a second, and she turned to the corridor, running down it at the fastest speed she could manage. Her heeled boots pounded at the wooden ground; echoing and magnifying, making it seem like there were many more people running down the corridor, too.
"Where are you?" she yelled at the house. "Who are you? What do you want?"
A bend in the corridor seemed to form out of nowhere in front of her, and she banked sharply to avoid slamming into the wall. Around the corner was a dead end, with a mirror hanging on the wall.
"What's that supposed to mean?" she asked loudly, but there was no response. She touched the mirror lightly, tapping her fingernails against it. They made a delicate ringing sound.
She turned again, and the corridor she had entered from was gone like it had never been there.
"Look," she tried, quieter this time. "I can help. We can help. Whatever it is that you want, you don't need to do all this to us- you could have just asked for help. I promise I won't hurt you."
There was a squeaking sort of sound from behind her, and she turned yet again to see that the mirror had misted up, and a single word was tentatively written on it in a child-like scrawl.
Promise?
She looked at it for a moment, and nodded. "Of course."
A creak from behind her. She turned to see a door where the blank wall had been, open just a crack.
She took a deep breath, and pushed it open.
"You have a lovely voice," said the small child sitting at the desk at the far end of the room, looking up at her with large eyes. They had short blonde hair that brushed around their shoulders, and dark brown eyes, like chocolate. One of their hands was resting on the keys of a typewriter.
"Thank you," said the woman, stepping forwards. "My name's Clara. What's yours?"
The child considered, tilting their head to one side. "Cinn. My name's Cinn."
"That's a beautiful name," said Clara softly. "Cinn, what did you do to my friend?"
"Took him away," Cinn muttered. Their fingers shot across the keyboard, and tapped out a few more words. "He was scaring me, and ruining my story."
"You're writing a story?" Clara leaned over to look at the typewriter. "What's it about?"
Cinn jerked it away from her, but Clara pulled it back, and looked at the first few lines.
There was a sound that sounded like house keys scraping against piano wire were being magnified and intensified and played backwards in a grating chorus of noise, and then a thump, and then a creak, and then-
"This is most definitely not Peru," said a female voice-
"-hang on," said Clara. "You were writing about us?"
"Didn't meant to," Cinn muttered. "You just sorta… happened."
Clara kneeled next to them, and looked them directly in the eyes. "Cinn," she said gently. "Can you please bring back my friend? He's very special to me, and I'd miss him a lot if he was gone."
Cinn's fingers clicked busily over the keys. "Why should I?"
"Because if you do, we can tell you some stories of our own." She saw Cinn momentarily hesitate, and hurried along. "We can tell you about the time we fought a mummy on a train in space, and the time we met Robin Hood."
"He's just a story," Cinn said, gaze darting to the shelves of books that lined the room. "They're all just stories."
"Not all of them," Clara assured them. "Please? We can take you on adventures, too. We can go meet people made of smoke… cities made of song…."
Cinn cast another longing look towards the books. "You're not lying to me?"
"Of course not," said Clara quietly. "Just bring my friend back."
Cinn's fingers flew over the typewriter, click click clack, and soon Clara's friend was standing in the room with them, beaming at her like she was the most important person in the universe. He swept her up into a massive hug, and she hugged him back, and they both laughed together, and then they turned to Cinn.
"Do you want to come with us, then?" Clara's friend asked in his voice like berries and coffee and the future all at once. "Come on an adventure?"
Cinn's eyes were very wide as they nodded several times.
"Come on, then," Clara said kindly. "Our ship's just this way."
They made for the door together, and Cinn was about to follow when their eyes caught on their typewriter, still sitting on that old wooden desk with its nearly-finished story still printed on the paper in clean black type.
"Do you want to take it with you?" Clara asked. Cinn considered it for a moment.
"No," they decided, and then wavered. "Can I… can I just finish my story, though?"
"Of course," Clara's friend agreed. "Just don't finish it with the end, though. That's restricting. It makes it seem like there's nothing beyond what you've done- which isn't right. The characters in a story always will have a life off the page or screen or whatever form it's in. The end of the story isn't really the end, is it?"
Cinn nodded. "That makes sense," they said, and with careful strokes on the keys, they finished their story. They bit their lip, thinking for a moment, and added the final two words.
The Beginning