CHAPTER 2:

Beth, her parents, and her friends stood in her kitchen, all huddled together with their mouths open in shock, watching as the Doctor-who'd put on the pair of navy dress pants Beth had managed to find in the mess on her parents bedroom floor, even though they were much to big at the waist and he had to hold them up with one hand-curiously rummage through the Greene's kitchen cupboards.

He'd also put on the orange t-shirt with the London eye printed on it, which Beth's father had picked up on a family trip into London the year before, which hung very loosely around the Doctor's feeble, yet toned frame.

"Do you have any apricot jam by any chance?..." he said over his shoulder, not even taking notice of the weird looks his hosts were giving him.

"No?..." he said after a moment, even though no one had answered him. "It's alright, I can deal with strawberry..." he took the glass jar from the top shelf, as well as a bag of columbian coffee grounds-which he took the time to smell-then took a celery stalk from the vegetable drawer in the fridge, and the salt and pepper shakers from the counter top.

"Any bowls?.." He looked up and asked. Beth, who was both enamored and shocked by the enigmatic man, pointed to the cupboard beneath the sink. He smiled and nodded, then pulled open the cupboard door and took out a bowl before pouring the coffee grounds into it, followed by the strawberry jam in thick globs.

He then pull open the microwave and put the bowl inside, setting it for a minute. Then-while watching the stunned people with a smile on his face-whistled 'Lady Madonna' while the microwave counted down to zero, then, after the beep, pulled the steaming bowl out of the microwave and put a dash of salt and pepper in it, and started mixing it all together with the celery stalk, scooping a lump of steaming brown and red mess up with the celery and putting it into his mouth.

"Okay..." he said as he'd chewed, his mouth opening wide enough each time for everyone to see the 'food' inside. "Time for questions..."

"Alright..." Mr Greene said. "How the hell did you get into my house...?"

"No...sorry I meant me, my questions...Where are we?"

Mr Greene ground his teeth. "Dover.."

The Doctor scrunched his eyebrows. "You don't sound like your from Dover..."

"We moved from London when Beth was eight...now, how did you get here?.."

The Doctor nodded, swallowing his meal. "Like I said before, I was out around Jupiter..well Io actually, and...I guess it must have been hiding out in one of the ice caves..." He shrugged.

"What do you mean you around Jupiter?..." Lauren asked.

He mixed the goop with his celery a little more. "Ooh, right...see the TARDIS...that's the blue box in your basement...
It's a time machine." he said it as if it was common practice for a man to turn up naked in a time machine shaped like a blue police box while being chased by a giant spider.

"A time-machine?..." Jess said. Her voice went up in pitch while he spoke.

The Doctor simply nodded.

"What about the..uh..Racciss?..." Mrs Greene said. She hadn't left her husbands side since they came down from the bedroom.

"That's Racnoss madame.." The Doctor corrected her as he licked goop from his teeth. "Rac-Noss..but don't worry about it.." he shook his celery hand as he spoke.

"Can the roof hold it in?..." Beth asked. The Doctor replied with a shake of his head.

"Probably not...but we got caught in a solar fla...Ooh, that's what happened..." He said to himself, looking off to side with a grin on his face. "I should have figured that out earlier...must be losing my edge in my old age...Anyway, we were hit by a solar flare, and Racnoss blind remarkably easily...as long as he's in the dark, he won't be able to find his way around."

A series of thumps that startled everyone but the Doctor told Beth otherwise. "Your going to get it out of here though...
right?"

"He bloody better!..." Mr Greene said, waving his golf club at the completely unfased Doctor. "I'm not having some giant bug living my bloody house!..."

"I can get rid of it..." the Doctor replied with another dashing smile. "I'll just have to get my key..."

"Your key?..." Lauren asked, to which the Doctor nodded. "Where is it?..." the Doctor, without looking at the girl, pointed up at the roof.

"It's..with the spider?..." Jess said anxiously.

"Afraid so...I'll have to find some way to distract it..." The Doctor placed his fingers to his temples and closed his eyes.

"How did the spider get into our roof?..." Mr Greene said, obviously still angry.

"Ooh, Genius..see it must have gotten itself caught in the same time stream as I was in..." The Doctor jumped onto the counter and sat cross legged, a wide smile on his face."And when the TARDIS reformed itself in your basement, the Racnoss was in the space inside your attic, so he reformed there." he seemed genuinely excited by what he just said, which to Beth, wasn't interesting at all.

"So why is your key in the attic?..." Beth asked.

"I have no idea"

Beth was confused by the whole concept. "What your saying makes absolutely no sense."

The Doctor didn't even turn to her. "Love, With me...it rarely does." He hopped off the counter and walked out into the hall, but, a second later, shoved his head back into the room.

"You wouldn't happen to have a computer by any chance?.." he asked, his eyebrows raised as he waited for an answer.

Beth stood forward. "I have a laptop in my room?...will that help?." The Doctor grinned his toothy grin.

"Perfect..." Beth walked past the Doctor and up the stairs, closely followed by her friends and family. "Woah I'm sorry..." He said, sticking his hand in Mr Greene's chest, and blocking the entire party apart from Beth.

"I'll need some other things if it's not to much trouble...Ahhh..." he pointed to Mrs Greene. "You...I need some tea...
white, please...six sugars, I like it sweet..." Mrs Greene nodded, then turned back into the kitchen.

"Red?..." he then looked to Cate.

"My name is Cate...Doctor."

"I prefer red...you and the brownie twins find some torches, and maybe some sparklers or something...whatever makes a bright light." he then went up the stairs with Beth, still holding up his trousers with both his hands.

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"Here it is..."

Beth, who'd crawled under her bed to find the laptop, pulled herself out to find the Doctor loooking through her underwear drawers.

"HEY..."

The Doctor just looked over at Beth, with a face that replicated a deer in headlights. "Yes?..."

Beth hopped to her feet, and closed the drawer, to which the Doctor had to pulled his hands back quickly to avoid them getting caught inside. "You don't ever look through somebody's things!..." The Doctor didn't react much-his eyes just became wider.

"Right.. terribly sorry about that." The Doctor just took the laptop from Beth's hands and...

SMASH!

"WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT!..." Mr Greene's voice echoed from downstairs as the Doctor broke Beth's laptop over the edge of her computer desk.

"Nothing...don't worry about it..." The Doctor leant out of the room and called down the hallway.

Beth, who was visibly shocked by his actions, just looked at him with her mouth open a the Doctor began rummaging through the various wires and chipboards that had been exposed when he broke it. "What are you doing?..." she asked as he closely eaxamined a yellow wire pulled from the laptop's disc drive.

"I'm going to use the soundboards from this to make a sonic ampl...ooh...my screwdriver is in the TARDIS" the Doctor leant back and placed his fingers on his temples.

"I can get you a screwdriver,my dad has three in his..." Beth began, starting to head out of the door, but the Doctor cut her off.

"No...MY screwdriver love...it's a little more advanced than yours..." he said, shaking his head before going back to work. "I'm going to have to get my key before I can activate this..."he said to himself.

"What's so special about your screwdriver?" Beth asked, watching as he carefully twisted the copper in one of the wires around an electrode on a bright green computer chip.

"Let's just say that my screwdriver does a little more than just twist in screws..." the Doctor smiled to her, but didn't seem to want to talk much while he worked, so Beth decided it was best to just leave him to his work.

"I'm going to see what the others are up to,ok?..." she didn't get an answer, but went up the hallway and down the stairs anyway, where she found found her friends playing with a two torches-one heavy duty, the other a normal cylinder shaped one-and an old floodlight from the basement that Beth's dad ad used when he was a road worker years ago.

"Don't waste the batteries!..." Lauren was saying to her two friends as Beth made it to the bottom of the stairs. "Think the Doctor will like these?..." she held up the yellow metal light to show Beth, who nodded.

"What are we going to do with these?..." Jess asked, shining her torch in Beth's face, who had to turn her head away from the light to stop it from stinging her eyes.

"I don't know yet, but if you don't stop shining that in my face I'll..."

RAWWWRSH.

"I'm getting really tired of that..." the Doctor came down the stairs to the group of girls, and didn't seem fased by the light that Jess directed to his face. "Brownie...could you.." Jess did so immediately, even though the Doctor's voice held no anger.

"It's seems to be getting angrier Doctor..." Beth said, looking up the staircase.

"Of course it does...locked up in a dank, dark attic when your the size of small sedan, wouldn't you be annoyed?..." the Doctor smiled as he walked into the kitchen, chuckling by the girls ignorance.

The girls followed the Doctor into the kitchen, where he took a cold cup of tea from the counter top and swallowed it in one go. "Cheers..." he said without looking at Beth's obviously frazzled mother.

He dropped the computer chip-which was now covered in various wires and other junk from Beth's laptop.

"You work fast..." Beth said, taking her cold tea from her father, who was very red for some reason.

The Doctor didn't answer, instead, he motioned for the girls to put their lights on the counter.

"Okay...here's what we're going to do...this here is a sonic amplification unit...I'm going to use it to amplify my screwdriver's pulse setting to stun the Racnoss for transportation...the rest of you are going to be my distraction."

The group looked at the Doctor as if he'd just made a faux pas.

"Hold on a minute..." Mr Greene said, pinching his nose. "You expect us to yell and scream at a giant spider while you try and stun it with a computer chip?..."

The Doctor shook his head and sighed. "You obviously were'nt listening...you humans are a brilliant lot sometimes, but you have your moments..." he picked up the heavy torch and threw it to Beth. "Blondie...you and I are going into the roof..." He picked up his chip, then threw the other lights to Mr Greene.

"The rest of you are going to keep the Racnoss from escaping the roof..." he beckoned for everyone to follow him, which they did, out of the kitchen and up the stairs to the Greene's master bedroom.

"Set up the big one to point at the trapdoor..." Lauren and Cate nodded, then began positioning the rectangle light to point at the roof.

The Doctor pulled himself up to the trapdoor, and tore the planks off with ease, before pushing the door into the roof. "Come on...he pulled himself inside, looking around for a second, and reached down for Beth, who was surprised at how strong the Doctor was for being so thin.

Beth had never been in the attic before. It was dark, and smelled of wet dog, but what surprised her was how expansive it actually was. The floor/roof was covered in cardboard boxes filled with photo albums and old clothes, and a broken dressmakers dummy that Beth had never seen before.

"Where's the Rac..."

"Shhh..." The Doctor cut her off. "Racnoss have astonishingly sensitive hearing...don't make any..."

RAWWWWWWWRSHH!

"Ooh, that's not Good..."

The Doctor and Beth turned, and Beth raised her light to the face of the most horrifying thing she'd ever seen.

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