A Quiet Night In
Inside the swirling eternity of the Time Vortex, a small blue box danced along energetically, constantly moving and flashing its lamp. Its pilot, a relatively young man called the Doctor, sat in the console room, a copy of The Shape of Things to Come in his hands and a cup of Earl Grey on the table to his left. He was relaxed now, a lot more relaxed than before. Earlier that day, he had defended the innocent planet of Yurkaat from an invasion by the Daleks and he had decided that, as he had no friends or companions to talk to, he would try to do what he had been doing on a day that was so long ago for him: read an interesting book with a cup of tea. He had tried this in his previous incarnation, when he was transporting the Master's remains back to Gallifrey, but that had gone wrong. Thankfully he had trapped the Master in the Eye of Harmony and moved on. From then, it had been the usual business. Exploring the universe and saving planets from certain doom, albeit without a friend. He felt lost without a hand to hold. Often, when he was travelling alone, he would think about his old companions. He wondered if Nyssa was out tending to the wounded survivors of a war on a distant planet or if Leela was travelling in a TARDIS with K9, off to investigate a mystery on an alien planet on behalf of the Time Lords.
He really ought to check up on them.
He turned the page. He sipped his tea. He sighed as he laid back in his wingback leather armchair, relaxing into the embrace of the brown material. This was nice, he thought. He really should take time off from saving planets for moments like this. It did seem a lot more calm than defending civilisations from harm.
Annoyingly though, an interruption to his calm arrived soon. The Cloister Bell began to toll ominously, echoing out from the TARDIS console throughout the infinity of the ship. The Doctor put his book down and hurried to the console, not noticing that he had left his sonic screwdriver next to his book.
"No, no. What's going on, old girl?" he wondered frantically, mashing buttons and adjusting controls with no effect. He continued this routine of mashing and adjusting until the Cloister Bell stopped tolling. The lack of dull clanging meant he could get back to his reading, but that was before the lights went out and the knocking began.
The knocking was coming from deep within the TARDIS. The Doctor's advanced Time Lord senses could tell that for sure. He did have some trouble trying to find his way in the dark, especially as he now realised that he no longer had his sonic screwdriver in his jacket pocket. He considered what he could do to make some light. Thinking quickly, he decided to walk towards the tall wooden wardrobe that was in the corner of the room, opening it up and taking out an old lamp. He fumbled through his pockets and found a pack of matches, striking one of them against the sandpaper on the side of the box and lighting the lamp. He could now see the console room more clearly and noticed that his sonic screwdriver was to the side of his copy of The Shape of Things to Come. He hurried over to it, lamp in his right hand, and grabbed his sonic screwdriver.
"Don't want to lose that." he remarked, before setting off to find the source of the knocking.
In the dark corridors of the TARDIS, the Doctor felt more alone than ever. He didn't even have his precious time and space ship for company. It was only him, his lamp and his sonic screwdriver in the middle of a horrifying new world.
And now the creaking began.
The long, slow creaks came between the two rapid knocks and this scared the Doctor even more. Something had infiltrated his precious ship and he wanted to defeat it.
"If you're doing this for fun, then you're sick." he declared, "I am the Doctor and this is my home. If you are some Big Bad Wolf employed to end my life, then come and talk to me. We can negotiate instead of this mystery and horror."
No response came apart from more knocks and creaks.
"Alright then. Here is a promise I will make. I will find you and I will stop you before this gets out of control. I may be alone. I may only have a sonic screwdriver and a lamp but you need to understand one thing. I am a dangerous person when left alone. There's nobody to stop me. Nobody to say no to what I do."
His walk became a run as he hurried towards where the knocking and the creaking came from, propelled by a mixture of fear and anger.
His legs moved him from the corridors of the TARDIS to the TARDIS library. Books were arranged on tall rows of shelves, reaching up to the ceiling. A few desks were scattered about the place so that library users could sit and read books written by famous authors of the past or read classic literature of the future. The Doctor decided to put his lamp down on one of the wooden desks and took out his sonic screwdriver, scanning the library with it. He listened to the device's soft whirr as he moved about the library like a subtle animal, tracking its prey silently.
"Where are you?" he repeated as he scurried along, knowing that the knocking and creaking had come from the library.
He stopped as he realised that he had no form of light lighting his path. The sonic screwdriver provided no form of light and that was one of the device's design flaws, along with the fact that it couldn't unlock deadlock seals or doors made of wood.
He sighed grumpily, turning round and retracing his steps back to the table where he had left his lamp. He almost grabbed it but then, of its own accord, the lamp suddenly fell over and smashed, setting fire to the floor. The Doctor jumped back, trying to avoid the flames.
"Interesting." he said, running away from the flames as they started to move towards the books, rising up the shelves and burning the books on each layer of the tall shelves.
Another two knocks. Another creak.
The Doctor had no way out left.
Another two knocks. Another creak.
There was nothing that he could do.
The fire stopped. The Doctor moved to where the fire had lived and noticed that the burnt table, books and shelves were beginning to heal, slowly growing back to their original states. He smiled happily.
Finally things were going his way.
Unfortunately he now had no source of light. It was just him in a dark library with a sonic screwdriver that emitted a soft whirr when activated.
"You think you're winning, don't you?" he asked nobody in particular, snapping a chair leg from a wooden chair and activating his sonic screwdriver at it. The screwdriver set the chair leg alight at the end that pointed away from him and he kept on activating it until the chairleg emitted a short scream, allowing him to know that the flame wouldn't be extinguished.
"You won't win against me, whatever you are. Whoever you are."
He swiftly paced around the library, illuminating the bookshelves with his makeshift torch.
"Come out, come out, wherever you are."
Another two knocks and a creak came as a response to his musings. He swung his torch around him and hurried across the library to where a book lay on the floor. He held the flaming torch above the book and read the title.
It was his copy of The Shape of Things to Come.
The Doctor picked up the book, holding it in his left hand while he held his torch in his right hand. He had put his sonic screwdriver away now as he felt that he might need the small, slim tube of metal later and he didn't want to waste the battery.
"Fear." he uttered, placing the book on a nearby desk and watching it slip off the desk and move to the exact position it had been in a few moments ago, "Humanity thinks that the cutting edge of fear is resurrecting the dead or witnessing see-through humans that have returned from beyond the grave."
He tried again with the book. No success.
"But they're wrong. This is the definition of fear. On the brink of death, hiding in the dark with nobody to call for help. Running from fire and the inexplicable. I am the Doctor and I am scared."
An elongated laugh from somewhere else onboard the TARDIS acted as a response to this by whatever force was haunting the legendary vessel.
"You know, I've had an idea."
His brain had finally come up with a plan that could drive whatever had done all of this away.
He ran out of the library and headed back to the console room.
Inside the console room, he made for the console and remembered that the TARDIS had no power. Deciding that he could always get another sonic screwdriver from the vast reserves of sonic screwdrivers he had buried somewhere, he plugged the sonic screwdriver into the console. The device had less than seventy percent charge left.
"Looks like that will have to do." he said to himself, as he activated the materialisation control and hoped that the TARDIS would land. He didn't care where he landed. He wouldn't mind even if he landed on Skaro or Telos as long as he returned his precious time and space machine to its former state.
A few moments passed before the TARDIS's engines groaned and wheezed into a new place in space and time and the Doctor clapped his hands together, pleased with his genius.
"Just enough to make that small little leap." he exclaimed, turning round to gaze into the entrance to the rest of his ship and yelling, "You're clearly after me, it seems, so I think it's time I went very much against character and endangered some other lives!"
The response came in the form of the TARDIS doors flying open and a large red swirling cloud entered the ship, sounding as if it was screaming for help. The Doctor ignored this and left the ship, looking around the jungle planet he had arrived on for help.
"Come on, you big red whirling cloud!" the Doctor called to the whirling red cloud, "Let's see if you care about other life!"
He ran off, hoping that his insane plan would work.
The Doctor stopped running after a few hundred metres and hid behind a tall, purple tree that seemed to be sprouting unusual green fruits. The fruits looked like apples but were oddly triangular, like little green organic tetrahedrons. He plucked one from the tree and bit into it. It tasted oddly like an orange, but was crunchy and crisp like an apple.
"What a nice snack." he whispered to himself, taking a few more bites from the fruit and then hurling it away to the floor.
He looked round and noticed that the TARDIS's interior had returned to its previous state of Gothic charm. He considered whether or not this was a trap set by the ghost inside but remembered that he always had a tendency of walking into traps set up by enemies.
He re-entered the TARDIS and shut the doors, hoping that he would figure out what had happened soon. He cautiously walked to the console and activated the dematerialisation control, listening to the TARDIS wheeze and howl itself out of the alien forest. Judging by how the TARDIS hadn't returned to its dead state, he deduced that the malevolent force haunting it had vanished.
A few hours later, the TARDIS was pleasantly wheezing and howling its way through the Time Vortex and the Doctor had finally finished his book. He put it down on the table beside him and thought about the force that had taken control of his TARDIS. What had he encountered? He probably would never find out. Why should he find out? Things were a lot more exciting if he didn't know what was going on.
He finished his cup of tea. It had gone cold but still tasted sweet and soft.
He walked over to the console and decided he needed a new book to read.
He set course for London in the 1930s and remembered his library card for Westminster Library.
Smiling with excitement, he activated the materialisation control and listened to the TARDIS land.
THE END