Chapter Six
The Doctor strides down streets and alleyways whilst rubbing his hands together nervously; not entirely sure as to where exactly he has left his ship. Having already opened two absolutely normal Police boxes, both featuring insides that were in direct proportion to their outsides, he is reluctant to start bothering any more Policemen that might be using the equipment inside the boxes. The scenic route perhaps wasn't the best route back to the TARDIS.
Having passed shops displaying children's dolls, and model airplanes, and shops selling cheap, brightly coloured plastic furniture, brown trench-coats and oddly shaped hats, none of which look particularly cool; and having seen small rusting cars broken down at the side of the road, with large men dressed in dirty overalls hunched over the rattling engines, and record shops with racks of psychedelic album covers, and the monotonous hum of pop-rock emitting from the open window of every passing car, the Doctor decides that the sixties might be fashionable, and sexy, and cool, but it's also extremely boring.
As he rounds the corner, dodging two chatting women, each absent-mindedly pushing a perambulator along the pavement, the Doctor recognises his somewhat familiar surroundings. He glances to his right: further down the street, at an intersection of roads, stand two Police boxes – one a slightly brighter, crisper blue than the other. He crosses over to the pavement on the opposite side of the road and skips eagerly towards the brighter Police box. Reaching into the inside pocket of his jacket, the Doctor retrieves a small silver key, and moves it towards the lock in the door of the TARDIS.
With the key only a few inches away from the silver lock, the Doctor stops and looks over his shoulder. In the street directly behind him, the same one that was swarming with Policemen and on-lookers that same morning, comes a muffled scream. The Doctor turns slowly, places the silver key back into his jacket pocket, and, out of curiosity for the second time, paces quickly towards the sound of the commotion.
The Doctor glances into the window of the terraced house that was the location of the earlier incident, but finds nothing except muddy brown drapes blocking his view. Any evidence of the awful scene that had engulfed the street earlier in the day, the crowds of people, the lines of Policemen, and the ambulance parked on the pavement, have disappeared. The throng of people and officials are replaced with an eerie stillness, a handful of passers-by, and a red double-decker bus which has stopped mysteriously in the middle of the narrow road.
As the Doctor walks further along the street, in search of the source of the cry, he notices that the occupants of the bus are stepping out onto the road and dashing towards the front of the bus. Sensing further trouble, he quickens his pace. Upon pushing his way through a small gathering, and reaching the front of the bus, the Doctor understands the reason for the stifled screams.
On the road, surrounded by horrified on-lookers, sobbing elderly women, and an extremely agitated bus driver dressed in a grey uniform, is a woman. Although her face, pressing against the tarmac, is hardly visible, it is evident that the woman is no longer alive: at least one leg appears to be broken, the body lies deadly still, and blood trickles towards the curb. A brave woman with a long blonde pony-tail steps forwards, places her hand on the woman's coarse, cold cheek, before covering her blooded face with a small white handkerchief. The blonde-haired woman then stands, suddenly begins to weep, pushes her way through the crowd of people, and runs awkwardly from the scene.
Not being able to risk looking the body over with his Screwdriver without attracting unnecessary attention, the Doctor scans the scene in an attempt to work out exactly what happened. He takes a step back from the crowd of people still surrounding the body, and glances up and down the street: straight rows of terraced housing flank the road on either side, a pavement wide enough for three people standing side by side bridge the roadside to the fronts of the houses, and the only corners or connecting streets are at each end of the road. With the woman's body being an almost equal distance from either ends of the street it is impossible that she could not have seen the large, bright red double-decker bus coming towards her. There are no marks on the road to indicate that the bus had swerved towards the pavement, and both the bus and the body are situated in the very middle of the road. The Doctor can come to only one conclusion: the woman stepped out knowingly in front of the moving bus.
One of the people surrounding the body, a young man dressed in a brown shirt and corduroy trousers, removes himself from the crowd and looks down the street. Spotting the two Police boxes at the end of the road, he pushes past the Doctor and runs down the pavement towards them. The man attempts to open the door of the cleaner, brighter Police box but finds that his efforts are futile; instead, he steps to the side, pushes at the door of the other Police box, and disappears inside.
Reluctantly the Doctor turns his back on the scene and proceeds to walk back towards the TARDIS; knowing that however suspicious the situation might be, it is not his place to investigate it. He should figure out what is upsetting the TARDIS, and let nineteen sixty-three continue on its own natural timeline. As he walks past the house with the brown curtains drawn across the windows, however, the Doctor pauses and looks back at the scene behind him.
A small boy died this morning on this street, outside this very house, perhaps even exactly where I'm standing right now; and now a woman, on the very same street, has jumped in front of a moving bus for no apparent reason. Of course, a mother would be upset about losing her child, that's only natural, but children are dying all of the time, every day, and I can't save them; but not every mother, even a grieving mother, has the urge to step out into the road in front of a big red bus...
Despite knowing that he should probably remain uninvolved, The Doctor steps closer to the door of the house in front of him, reaches inside his jacket pocket, retrieves his Screwdriver, and aims it at the metal lock. Before activating it, however, the Doctor notices that the door is unlatched, and simply pushes it open slowly with his foot.
The Doctor glances up and down the street: the only people in sight are the group of shocked on-lookers surrounding the body in the middle of the road. Satisfied that they are all still preoccupied with the horrific scene in front of them, the Doctor slips inside the darkened house, points his Sonic Screwdriver into the gloomy hallway, and closes the door behind him with the heel of his foot: expelling the bustling sound of the city, replacing it with darkness and silence.
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