My name is Alice, Alice Cradle, and when I was a little girl I met this man called The Doctor. He was dressed all funny with a burgundy bow-tie and a tweed jacket. He told about how he fought monsters in outer space and I remember how amazingly cool I thought he was.
It was almost midnight and I was supposed to be asleep in what was supposed to be my bed but really it was just a tattered mattress with a thin cotton blanket. I had trouble sleeping almost every night because I used to hear things. Granted, I was in an orphanage and the nurses who worked there chatted a lot and gossiped about one another quite loudly but these noises I was hearing, they weren't human. They were something else and they got louder with each night that passed.
The noises were especially loud that particular night, I was astonished that every other child and adult in that building were seemingly oblivious either that or I remember thinking I was probably mentally insane.
I closed my eyes tightly and whispered to the wind, wishing for a hero and just like that he arrived, right on time.
A faint light flashed in the empty room across the hall and slowly I hopped up from my bed, careful not to make a sound as I tiptoed down the corridor past the conversing nurses.
I pushed the door open a tad more, peeping through the small crack. The flashing colours had ceased and it's place sat a dark blue police box. In that moment something came over me, prehaps it was curiosity or prehaps it was desperation, but I rushed into the room and knocked on hard navy door. "Hello?"
"Good Evening, ma'am, sorry i'm la-ah, oh..." a man stepped out from the box, the huge smile disappearing from his face when he realised where he was, "...This isn't Buckingham Palace, is it?"
I shook my head, "Are you the police? Have you come to help me?"
"No, i'm the Doctor. I suppose you could say i'm Time and Space's answer to a policeman but i'd rather be called the Doctor" he let out a short laugh before looking at me with a confused expression, "Now, to more important things. What's a little girl like you doing in such a dismal place, not exactly fun, is it?"
"This is Crowley Orphanage, it's my home" I answered, not liking to admit it. I always got teased at school for it. I was the girl who nobody wanted, my parents didn't want me, the rest of the children didn't want to know me. I was a nobody, "If you're not a policeman then what do you do? I've never met any doctors like you before"
"I do save lives, I just save them by fighting evil space monsters. Not to blow my own trumpet, but if it weren't for me then this Earth would probably be crawling with Daleks, Cybermen and all sorts of weird alieny things" he frowned, "What's your name?"
"Alice, Alice Cradle" I said in the most confident voice I could muster.
"Well, Alice, you're a long way from Wonderland, aren't you?" he grinned before crouching down to my level of height, "So, why were you looking for help?"
I shifted uncomfortably, I had been doing so well ignoring the noises whilst talking to the Doctor but now my ears had focused on them once again. The sound was making stressed and I didn't like it, it put on edge all the time and it was getting worse. "Hmm..that's why. You hear it too?" he questioned, before jumping up to his normal height and pausing, "Strange isn't it?"
"I have trouble sleeping at night, will you be able to make it stop?"
"Certainly! Now, i'll be right back, Alice, you stay put"
Furrowing my eyebrows, I stared at him with confusion, "Where are you going?"
"Just to cancel tea with the Queen. I'll be no more than five minutes" the Doctor grinned before disappearing into his blue wooden box. It's silhouette faded a few times before vanishing, just like the mysterious man that inhabited it and leaving a cool breeze in the air.
Gone. He was gone.