He held his breath as he opened the door a crack. The glistening, hard skin of the creature heaved in the corner, one of it's many legs oozing a thin, white fluid into a pool on the ground. It's eyes darted around the room, searching for him. Jean closed the door, gently, and heard the creature laboriously try to get up. He shrunk back into the coats, the smell of smoke and cheap beer filling his nostrils from the leather and cotton surrounding him. His heart was pounding in his ears. Just minutes earlier he had been taking coats and handing out tickets at the door when suddenly the lights flickered and cut out. The guests all hurriedly left the room and he was sent back in, by the lovely and not-at-all greasy casino owner, to check on the fuses. That's when he saw it.
Standing 9 feet tall, rounded head scraping the ceiling, and covered in a hard exoskeleton, the creature breathed heavily in the centre of the room, having had appeared from nowhere. It's face, if you could call it that, consisted of countless eyes, each sunken in, each a dark black throughout. It's mouth was on it's torso, where a man's chest would be, half open and drooling over dagger-like teeth. It had four, clawed, arms, tipped with blades where fingers would be, and four similar legs. The creature had turned and spotted Jean immediately, and began scuttling towards him. In a panic he was able to grab a chair and thrash at one of it's legs, sending it into a blood curdling howl as the appendage splintered and cracked in two. The main door was locked from the outside by someone, or something, so he ran towards the coat-closet and locked himself inside as the creature recovered, dragging itself into the corner.
His ears twitched, as though something barely audible was only glistening his ear-canal. It happened again. Faintly, a tapping noise grew from outside. Three, short taps, a raspy breath, the sound of movement, and another three taps. Louder and louder with every repetition. Jean's mind was racing. Why would it do this? Could it not see? He thought back to what he saw through the cracked door, the creature was obviously not blinded. Another round of tapping, this time from the wall the closet was in. How did it find him so fast? The casino entrance was a complicated room, many walls, irregularly shaped. There's no way it'd get that lucky first time, it had to-
Then it hit him.
It knew where he was. It was making a b-line straight towards him. Another round of tapping.
What could the tapping be? Why the hell would it tap? His heartbeat sped up further, outpacing a hummingbird. His mouth was dry, body soaked in sweat, he could taste his mucus running from his nose as his cheeks wetted with tears. Tap, tap, tap.
He couldn't take it anymore, he was going to pass out. It was playing with him. It wanted the fear. It wanted the anguish. It was playing with him. It wanted him scared. It liked him scared.
It was playing with it's food.
"Don't have too much fun without me!" The Doctor called as she shut the door. With a click of the lock, she was alone. She turned and leant on the cool wood, staring out at the warm orange glow of her TARDIS console. Kicking her feet on the ground, she took a few steps towards it, turned, scrunched up her face, turned back, and finally decided on throwing her arms up and letting out a large sigh.
Knock knock.
She almost jumped out of her boots as she ran back to the door, excitedly swung it open, immediately caught herself and feigned a blank look, and greeted Graham with a cool "hey".
"Sorry for this but, well Doc I've changed my mind." Graham was almost sheepish.
"Oh no, don't be! Tesco and dinner can wait, the universe can't!" She was almost bubbling with excitement.
"Yes, well," Graham started, trying to recover from the elated response he just witnessed, "You see I love what we're doing here, all of us, honestly trust me I do. It's just sometimes I worry, you know?"
He looked to the Doctor, them both stepping inside from the raining cold of west London, for support, only to be met by an almost vacant-but-still-listening smile.
"...Oh yes! Definitely! I know a lot of things, yup. People are always like 'Do you know?' and I'm like yeah of course I-" she was cut off as Graham cleared his throat politely, meeting his gaze she scrunched her face up into a smile and resumed listening.
"I just worry about Ryan. Yaz, not so much. She's very capable, and not that Ryan isn't, it's just he's my grandson. If something happened to him I'd never forgive myself." He took a deep breath in and readied himself, "So I want to do something a little bit selfish. I want to travel, just for a few days, nothing fancy, with just us. What do ya say?"
With a bright smile and brighter eyes the Doctor gleefully raised her arms and brought him into a tight hug, "I know JUST where to take us!"
Graham nodded, hands gripping the Doctor tighter as his ears began to ring from her shouting the word "JUST" a bit too loud.
She bounded off of him, threw some switches on the controls up, gave one of the crystals a kick, winced, crumpled slightly holding the foot, apologised to the air, got up, and finally pulled one large lever and they were off.
"New Las Vegas, Mars, thirty-nine eighty-two!" She announced, running towards the doors, and flung them open.
Two bright headlights burst through the opening, almost blinding them both. Moments after their eyes adjusted, a bright red corvette was revealed to be metres from colliding, the driver barely registering the TARDIS, the Doctor and Graham screaming, they threw the door shut.
From outside the distant sounds of a car's brakes screeching to a stop, and just about colliding with something metal. Exiting the TARDIS they both watched as the car pulled back from the metal trash can it'd collided with, regained footing on the road, hurled insults at the two of them, and sped off.
"Okay well maybe not fortieth century Mars, more so twentieth century Earth." The Doctor shrugged, "Close enough!" And walked out into the hot evening air.
They were parked dead in the middle of the street in a picturesque 1950s suburb, right down to the fake grass, pastel houses, and front-lawn barbecues.
Just as Graham opened his mouth to speak a blood-curdling scream came from the house two doors to their left. Exchanging a quick glance, the Doctor and Graham began running towards it.
"Oh my god!" It was a woman's voice, screeching through the gap under their front door. The doctor was aggressively sonic-ing it until the latches burst unlocked and she kicked the door open, hurrying towards the voice.
Sat, crumpled, behind her sofa was a woman in her late twenties, brown victory-rolled hair atop a heavily makeuped face, a blue dress adorning her, clutching a beige pillow as she looked onto her television screen in fright. She hadn't even registered the intruders, eyes glued to the screen in fear as she watched a large, obviously felt and cardboard, creature attack some vaguely-human shapes on the small, black and white screen.
The two of them began to tiptoe backwards away from her, eager not to be noticed, until Graham's leg got caught. With one bold pull he sweeped a small table out from under its own legs and sent it crashing. The woman jumped up, turned, and stared at them.
"Who're you?" She demanded through a thick southern accent.
"Oh yes how, um, how silly of us," She smiled, nudging Graham to follow along, "Here." She brandished the psychic paper.
"Oh, goodness!" She straightened her dress and extended a hand to Graham, "I'm so sorry officers, a little on edge is all. Thank god you're finally here." They exchanged handshakes, she overlooked the Doctor entirely, instead making constant eye-contact with Graham.
"Ah yes, I'm Graham and this is the Doc, we're here on call." Graham tried his best to hold the lies, but his eyes began to betray them so the Doctor jumped in with,
"Didn't manage to catch any details about the case, sadly, so could you please go over everything, again, with us?"
The creature's claws dug into his chest, one sharp scythe on either side of his collarbone. His breathing grew shorter, a rasping cough was all he could muster. His vision was blurred, every few seconds a dim, orange, light passed over him. His back was cold, wet, being dragged across rough stone or concrete. He couldn't remember being captured, how he went from the coat closet to here. His ears were ringing, muffled scuttling and water barely making its way through. He could taste the blood running from his nose, it was thick and sticky on his face, wet canals of red flowed over the coagulated dry sheet covering his nose and mouth. He knew he was bleeding out. He tried to lift his arm, his shoulder screaming out in pain as the tendons and musculature was impaled and unwoven by the claw. He went to pinch his nose to stop the bleed, only to hear the creature stop, the creaking exoskeleton bent backwards over him. He was met with tens of black eyes darting over his face, it lunged forward, eyes colliding with his head, everything going black.
"-and he never came home that night," Norma was sat in her kitchen chair, the Doctor and Graham either side of her, consoling the crying woman, "I mean I know people go missing, and the new casinos aren't the safest of places, but please officers, please find my Jean."
Graham looked around for tissues, paper towels, anything to help dry the woman's face. The Doctor looked her dead in the eyes and said,
"Hey, we'll find Jean. I promise."
She smiled at Norma, who managed a weak, hopeful grin, "Thank you."
"Now, where did he work again?" The Doctor pulled out a pen and readied her hand.
"The Cybeck Grand Hotel and Casino," she continued as the doctor scrawled onto the back of her hand, "he's worked there for a few weeks, they set up shop maybe a year or two ago?"
"Alright then," Graham, having abandoned trying to find paper towels, stood with his hands on his hips and said, "Let's give this Mr Cybeck and talking to."
"I don't think that's actually his name", Norma offered up.
"I know, I know," Graham waved, "Just sounded cool didn't it?" and with a chuckle he followed suit as they left the small suburban house and made their ways into the main city.