Isabelle hissed through her teeth, pulling her hand back with a jolt after the needle of the sewing machine lightly caught her finger. She had not been paying attention, not noticing her hand being drawn nearer and nearer to the sharp pin end as she attempted to repair the frays in the soft cream net kitchen curtains. All of this work just so the house would look nice for one silly day. She did not understand it, it was not like the coronation would be taking place in their own front room.

Tutting under her breath, Isabelle lifted her foot from the squeaky pedal and tucked her dark brown hair behind her ear before beginning to rethread the needle and continue her work.

The wireless was playing lightly in the background, out of it spewed some comedy show they followed through the days. Mrs Connolly and Tommy Connolly sat behind her on the settee laughing along lightly with the voices. Gran was trying her best to munch on a toasted crumpet in her armchair while mumbling all sorts of nonsense, like all those of an older generation did. 'Chocolate will make you slow', 'electricity will be the end of us'. You had to laugh at her otherwise you'd go mad.

"He's a caution, that one! He does make me laugh." Rita Connelly laughed freely with a wide smile on her face, knitting along in time with voices. However that carefree grin soon dropped when the living room door opened and the man of the house entered.

Eddie Connelly; a fierce man, with a wild temper and the strict bossiness to go along with it. He was stocky, broad, and could only be found wearing a suit whether he was at work or down the working men's club. He kept up appearances, from his hair to the shine of his shoes. The way the rest of his family presented themselves was a main focus of his as was the upkeep of the house. One loose thread or, god forbid, one ornament be out of place, and it wouldn't be worth trying to make up for it.

Isabelle saw Rita crawl into the shell she hid within when he was around. The woman wore it like a suit of armour, she wouldn't be laughing at anything else this evening; she would barely say another word.

"Oh our lord and master." Gran quipped sarcastically from her place. Isabelle kept facing the window, looking out into the storm, if she didn't move and didn't make a sound then maybe he wouldn't notice her.

"Rita, I'm off out." His heavy southern accent ran through the house, at the volume he spoke she bet even the neighbours could hear.

Tommy, magazine in hand, turned in his seat on the sofa to call his fathers attention to a certain inky page. "Dad."

"Oh, how many times, son? We'll see." Isabelle did not know for sure what Tommy was showing his father behind her back but she could take a good guess as it seemed to be all anyone was talking about these days, especially the children.

"But everyone's getting a telly, dad." Tommy sighed. "Even Mister Gallagher, and the Bell's at number sixty seven."

"Well, perhaps we'll get one for the Coronation. If you're lucky. We'll see." That made the young boy smile and turn back to listen to the radio, the crinkle of the page turning in his lap filling the room.

She thought she'd got through it after that, thought Mr Connelly would turn and head out. But the lack of noise coming from the sewing machine still caught the man's attention as he looked over and glared hard into the back Isabelle's head. It seemed that even when she was silent she was a problem.

"As for you girl." Her body tensed and slowly, Isabelle removed her hand from the machine and turned making sure not to dare meet his eyes. She kept them focused strictly on the ground as Mt Connelly stopped a few few away, grimacing at her.

"Yes sir?" She whispered as the rest of the family tried to ignore what was happening around them.

"I did not let you into this house so you could sit and stare into space day and night!" Eddie shouted, speaking down to her like she was one of his troops. "Sitting in that chair, looking out that window...that's all you have ever seemed to do since you got here!" Like a showman, he marched closer and tore the curtains across the window, hiding the night sky she had, unknowingly, been distracted by. "Nothing's there."

Something sad, almost a hollow pain, boiled in her stomach as the view was snatched away. Pathetic really, she knew that, but it always made her feel like there was more life than chores.

"Sorry sir...it...it won't happen again sir." She turned back to her work, putting her head down and pushed down on the pedal with her foot again, sending the needle into a slow pace.

"Don't wait up." That was the last thing Eddie Connelly said before leaving the house and leaving them all in peace.

"I heard they rot your brains. Rot them into soup, and your brain comes pouring out of your ears. That's what television does." Gran spoke to her grandson but Isabelle wasn't listening, she was too busy thinking. About what? She didn't even know, but what Mr Connelly had said was true, she did always sit by this window staring up at the sky.

Whether she was sewing patches into Tommy's school trousers or shining the silverware heirlooms, Isabelle could be found at that window, her hair tied back with a black ribbon as she stared up at the clouds. Sometimes she liked to think up names for each star or try to guess how far away they were. Sometimes she liked to find shapes and figures in the clouds or try to imagine how it would feel to travel as fast as they did on a stormy day. But more often that not, Isabelle found herself wondering what was there that she couldn't see; were there more moon? More suns? More people, like she and Tommy and Gran, did they exist elsewhere or as animals on a different surface?

Dreams, that's all they were, dreams... Ones which helped her escape the boring day to day life she led. After Lo she barely had a past to look back on so the stars were all she had on those dark lonely evenings.

It could be worse, those shining stars could be so beautiful on a clear night. So pretty they called to her almost, pulling her in until she lost herself, lost hours...it was magical. But reality always came crashing back down around her. She had work to do, she could dream later, perhaps once she was out of Eddie Connelly's bad books.


That night, Isabelle was sat alone in her room, or in the attic to be more precise. It was late, then again you could say it was just very very early, but she had been awoken by a nightmare.

The worst nightmares are those which develop from a dream.

It had started with her falling through the stars, so close to Suns and Planets she didn't recognise. When she reached out her hand she could almost touch them, her fingertips grazing the sharp edges of the light. She felt the warmth on her skin and the stillness of the air, or the lack of it.

No air to breathe but it didn't matter, she didn't need it. Then came the noise; the one unlike any other she had ever heard but yet it was still familiar. A humming whine, pulsing, vibrating inside of her. There was nothing to see, just that noise, and then a single flash blinding her.

When she opened her eyes she was stood in a long hallway; a long, dark, never ending hallway. Not like a house or even a street, but more like a tunnel with archway doors placed along either side. And she wasn't alone.

There was something in the shadows, lurking, waiting for her. A darkness, a threat, an invisible enemy. Before it had the chance to show itself the walls began to fall around her, crumbling under their own weight and turning to rubble as the flames on the outside rose furiously. They surrounded her and only then did she begin to choke on the thick smoke wrapping around her like a blanket. She was trapped with no way out, struggling to breath with new lungs and lost in a land she called home.

And then screaming. Not from her, it wasn't like those other dreams she had suffered through, gasping for air and trying to scream until she awoke, crying as Mr Connelly banged the kitchen broom against the floor of the attic. They were from others, multiple others; hundreds...thousands. Within the fire and far away beyond where the flames reached, they deafened her until she could take no more and she would wake up; her breathing heavy and a thin layer of sweat on her brow.

More often than not she tried to write it down in a small leather bound book she had been gifted from Tommy a couple of Christmas' ago. Jotting down every details of the stories and scribbling sketches of nonsense before the images disappeared from her mind. The once crisp and new black book was now creased and ink stained and half way filled with drawings of twisted faces and strange life forms.

Tin men, scarecrows...perhaps she shouldn't have been allowed that trip to the picture house all those months ago... But there was also men and women covering the page, so many faces with no names...

A noise from under her made her jump and Isabelle slammed her notebook shut, stuffing it under her pillow before climbing back under the covers and closing her eyes. There was no time for dreaming even at night it seemed, one single noise from her and they would bring it up in the morning, Mr Connelly scolding her for her not being rested for the day's work.

As Isabelle slowly drifted back off to sleep, the images returned in front of her eyes and she found herself wishing in her last moment of consciousness that she was there, amongst the stars, amongst her sweet dreams.


"What is it? What's wrong?"

The commotion from the front room had caused Isabelle to come running in from the yard where she had been scrubbing clothes in the basin. Whilst working the dirt out of a slip with numb hands, she had heard Rita screaming, and then crying. Tommy started calling for his Gran in what could only be described as fear and Eddie began yelling obscenities at the top of his lungs.

By the time Isabelle reached the living room Mr Connelly had turned and was ready to catch her as he blocked her path.

"Never you mind this girl. This is none of your business!" He yeller, panicked, pointing a finger back in the direction from which she had came. The bottom of her dress was damp from the overflow of the tin bath and sudds were still bubbling on her piney. "This is my family and you do not need to be involved, now go! Back to work!"

Isabelle backed away a few steps, keeping her eyes forward, and as Mr Connelly turned his back she tried so desperately to see what was over his shoulder. A scream forced it's way out of Gran before Rita violently pushed her towards the stairs under Eddie's order.

It was just as they were about to stumble past her, that Isabelle's eyes fell on what was causing such distress.

"Mrs..." Isabelle trailed off in a whisper, unable to say the words as a hand came up to cover her mouth. Gran, she wasn't...it wasn't Gran. Her face had gone, for lack of a better description, her face had just gone. There was nothing. Just a smooth plate of skin where everything should have been. Eyes, ears, nose; gone.

"Oi! What did I tell you?" Mr Connelly screamed in her face again, this time pushing her forcefully away. "Get out! GET OUT!" He turned her harshly by the shoulders, pressing his fingers into the soft skin of her arms, and pushed her back into the kitchen. His eyes were angrier than they had ever been. "And not a word of this to anyone! You hear! No one!" Isabelle could only nod before running back out to the yard.

Going back to the washing seemed pointless and impossible. Scraping her fingertips against the wooden boards while trying to erase the image she had just seen.

Nothing had been the same, not in the past two months, not around these parts of London and things were only getting stranger by the day. Worse, not strange...worse.


"We love Muffin, everybody sing. We want Muffin the Mule. Hello." The woman on the TV sang. Isabelle sat by the window watching the goings on outside while the rest of the family sat, watching the television with unreadable faces. It had been a week or so since the incident and still no one had talked about it, at least not to her.

"Smashing." Mr Connelly shook his head as he stood from the sofa. "Smashing, innit? You'd have thought they was in the room with you, eh?" He spoke mostly to his wife but she didn't look at him. She couldn't stand to, not from what Isabelle could tell. "Fair do's Tommy, you had a point. New television. There, that should cheer you up a bit, Rita. Give us a smile, then, eh?" Finally Mrs Connelly looked up to her husband, but with sadness.

"I can't. Nothing's the same any more, not with her..." She trailed off, her hands beginning to twist around each other.

"Stop going on about it." That was all they ever said about it. All they ever said was to stay quiet.

"But her face, Eddie. What happened to her? That awful face."

Rita could still only see the empty face. Like Isabelle it kept her from sleeping some nights, as well as the banging which would carry on throughout the night underneath her. Gran would become restless at night, hungry they thought at first but with nothing to do and no help to seek, what were they to do?

"I said, stop it!" Mr Connelly warned. Then three solid knocks. They were loud, unable to be ignored. Isabelle closed her eyes, trying to block them out before they become ingrained everlasting into her mind.

"She's awake. I think she's hungry." That was the last to be said on the matter as Mr Connelly sat back down and turned the volume up on the television to 'drown the old woman out'.

But then there was shouting, out in the street. Isabelle opened her eyes to peek outside the window and saw a black car out in the street in front of the Gallagher's house. Her brow creased, it couldn't have been happening again. Before she could even think about what she was doing, she jumped up from her seat and ran out of the front door into the street.

No words in her mind at that moment could explain it, she just needed to see...needed to help. Though how one could help someone else when they didn't even know the problem was infinitely irritating.

"Isabelle!" A voice behind her, deep and rough, called but she didn't stop. It fell on deaf ears as she left the door behind her wide open and stopped only a few feet from the car.

"Someone help me, please! Ted!" It was Mrs Gallagher, screaming as loud as her lungs allowed as two men escorted someone to the car, she had to go from what she was saying to know it was the woman's husband. The lone figure had a blanket thrown over their head, hiding their face, hiding their fate. "Leave him alone! He's my husband! Please."

What could she do? Why did she want to reach out? Of course everyone wanted to stop them, wanted to help... but it wasn't their place and it definitely wasn't hers.

"What's going on?" An unfamiliar voice sounded behind her but as Isabelle turned she ended up doing a double towards a man stood there, next to her now, in a brown pinstripe suit. His hair stood out first, then the odd glasses perched on the bridge of his nose...then the girl. Stood behind him with blonde pinned up hair and wearing a pink puffy skirt was a young girl, even her heels looked like they were from...well Isabelle couldn't liken them to anything she had seen from anywhere before. They're were very high and very pink.

"Oi, what are you doing?" Tommy yelled, having ran out the house behind Isabelle, and he stopped by her side as she withheld her arm to stop him going any closer.

"Who did they take? Do you know him?" The unrecognised girl spoke out, barely glancing away from the scene as it unfolded right in front of them.

"Mister Gallagher." Isabelle spoke, no louder than a whisper. "He Eh...he's a neighbour."

"It's happening all over the place." Tommy followed on, his eyes followed the car which was speeding away. . "They're turning into monsters."

As Mr Gallagher was carried away leaving them behind in the dust, Isabelle swallowed hard and licked her lips, only turning her head once the car was out of sight and a crown of other women from the street had crowded around Mrs Gallagher to comfort her sobs.

She looked at the man stood only a foot away by her side. Her eyes ran up his suit, studying the way he kept his hands buried in his pockets and the unusual sports shoes he matched with such a formal outfit, until he met his eyes. He was already staring back at her, most likely wondering what she was staring at, so she looked away but not because she was embarrassed; it was like she couldn't properly look at him.

A pain which started like a scratch in her mind grew until she had to bite her tongue and dig her nails into the palm of her hand. Black spots started to blur her vision and a long loud whine screamed within her head, deafening her from the inside. Like nails on a chalkboard, she cringed but fought to keep silent, head dropped towards the tarmac, until someone touched her arm.

"Are you alright Miss?" She barely heard the words over the squealing, until a strangers skin made contact with her own. Only then did it all go silent. It was like she was floating, and falling, all at once while the world span around her and she remained completely still.

'Time Lord...DOCTOR...Time Lord. Time War. Time Lord.'

Isabelle took a sharp intake of breath and jumped back, breaking their intact and instantly ending her dream. That's what is was after all. Just a dream, a daydream, a stress induced state.

Looking up, she noticed it was the man who had touched her and his hand remained stretched out towards her, a frown creasing his brow. Those voices, faded away so quickly they could have not been there at all. But she was sure, she...was sure, especially as she locked eye with him again.

"Are you alright?" The man frowned, his eyes bearing down on her in thought as he repeated himself.

"Yes...I'm sorry sir. Just the shock of it all..." She ran her eyes over him again and backed away. "I'm sorry." Before anything else could be said, Mr Connelly yelled out into the street from the doorway to the house.

"You! Girl! Not one word! Get inside now!"

"I'm sorry once again sir." She spoke quietly at the floor, avoiding his eyes. "I'd better do as he says." Without another glance behind her, she ran into the house and up to her room.