(First Published in, the now out-of-print charity anthology, ‘Mythmakers Presents: Golden Years 1963-2013′)
Even a broken time-machine can move through time. Only in one direction. A second at a time. For once I think Reg is right. History is eating us alive.
I hope that my notes, scrawled on these damp pages can soak up the remainder of my leaking memories.
I fear I have little left to retain.
Things I am sure of are few. At this moment I can say in all confidence that I am definitely sat, naked in a bath of lukewarm water. But where is this bath located? It seems like a flat in Camden Town, North London. The date, according to the newspaper I am leaning on, is September 27th, 1969.
But, is it? Everything is wrong. The sky is blood red. Night and day are indistinguishable, as though they have been crushed together.
A dream reality. A waking nightmare. So… fractured. Vague.
Enough of this! I must focus on certainties.
As far as I can tell, there is only one certainty left in my possession; the fact that I am the Doctor.
(Reg has burst in - No lock on the bathroom door. He’s ranting. I must discuss the situation with him immediately)
My flatmate is a tall, lugubrious figure. Well spoken with an acerbic turn of phrase. His clothes are fine, somewhat theatrical and have seen better days. But he, like my surroundings, seems… insubstantial. Unfinished.
There are times when I feel he is my closest, most loyal companion. Sometimes it’s hard to discern where I end and he begins. But other times it’s as though he doesn’t exist at all.
No. Concentrate. What just happened? I am out of the bath now. I’m in a dressing gown, a towel around my shoulders, in my bedroom. Check your notes, Doctor!
Yes! Reg came into the bathroom! He was complaining about the cold. He said we had a visitor. Did he say it was his auntie? His cousin?
He said her name was… What was it?
I’m going to speak to her.
She’s just left. I can still smell her perfume. She was… real.
I walked into the lounge and caught sight of myself in large mirror above the fireplace. I looked pale and gaunt. Reg was there too, a spectral, sketch-of-a- man haunting the far corner of the room.
The visitor was not like us. She stood in sharp focus, while all around her was a dingy, grey blur. Shining with colour. Dressed in silver catsuit with shocking pink belt, boots and gloves, her honey-blonde hair cascaded over her shoulders. Her smile was devastating. Disarming. Was this our jailer? Will never be set free?
Clearly, I was known to her. She took my hands and sat me next to her on the couch. She looked into my eyes, concern was etched across her face. We spoke. About what!? It’s fading. I was brought here for my own safety, she said.
She wants to help. She’s trying to help. But the sadness in her eyes betrays the fact that she doesn’t think she can.
There was more. I am sure there was more! She said I was safe, but I feel in considerable danger here. I can’t remember her leaving. Her name! I forgot to ask her name!
Reg says he feels unusual and wants to go outside.
Reg and I are in agreement. We’re going to escape.
I haven’t seen a soul since we left the flat. The streets are eerily quiet. There’s a background drone, behind the silence. I’m not sure if that is coming from inside my head or the outside world. Come to think of it, perhaps this “outside world” is inside my head!?A disconcerting thought. My head isn’t the most reliable container for anything at the moment. Hence these notes.
I’m lost again. What was I doing? I’m sitting on a park bench with Reg. The sky looks like doomsday. Everything has a crimson tinge. No one else in the park. We need to get away. Rejuvenate.
Escape! Yes, that was the plan. Take the car. Leave the city.
The number plate on the jag is “WHO 0”. Is that significant?
I’m the designated driver, it seems. I have just left Reg’s relative’s house and am waiting for him to join me in the car. We came here because… because, the relative had the means to help us in our escape bid? I think that’s right.
The streets were deserted on the drive over. Despite its dilapidated appearance, the jag handles reasonably well. The relative (Reg’s auntie?) is insane. A little old lady in layers of colourful knitwear, her house smelled of cigarettes and years of accumulated dust. But the most disturbing thing about her was that she had substance. She was like the blonde woman who visited us earlier. Real.
Auntie didn’t seem very happy to see us. She was ranting about some “oaf” who had ruined her day. Reg wanted to speak to her in private and told me to wait in the car. The cigarette smell lingers on my velvet coat. It reminds me of… something. Someone?
I remember complaining about that smell. In the console room. A man, smoking in a leather jacket. A friend? Yes! I had a friend! He smoked! Is this my second certainty?
I am the Doctor and I have a friend called… I can’t remember. That’s dangerously close to reassuring.
Reg is back. I’m starting the engine.
Coming here was a mistake. The city was vague enough, but the countryside is nebulous to the point of almost total absence. Red light and black shadow. The car brought me to the very edge of this equivocal world. Here, teetering on the brink of existence stands this grim cottage where I now sit.
Alone, I scratch out these notes, a ritual to sustain what remains of my corporeal state. Should I just stop?
Reg! Reg is sitting across the table from me, swigging a bottle of wine! He wasn’t there a second ago. Or did I just forget him? He looks like a bad photocopy of a cartoon vampire. I dread to think how I look to him. I am not the man I was. Reg seems to have abandoned any hope he possessed. He was expecting to find something here. He’s cursing his aunt, his cousins. His fate.
Who am I? I am the Doctor and I have a friend. A friend who smokes and I don’t approve. A friend who cares for my well-being. A friend who has… compassion.
Obviously. (What made me say that?)
If you exist. If you are my friend, I need help. All that’s left of me is here on these tattered sheets of paper. I am almost gone.
Reg says he’s cold. We need to light the fire.
Entry 7 – Dreams within dreams
I have woken up in a big brass bed after a fitful night’s sleep. I am still at the bleak hovel in the country. Unsettling dreams made all the more disturbing by the fact they are so akin to my waking world. Reg’s auntie haunted me, wondering if we could allow ourselves an indiscretion. I strenuously declined the invitation.
At one point, Reg came into the room with a shot gun. Did this actually happen? He stared out of the window and urged me to listen.
“Time,” he said. “Time wants to get in.”
It appears we are under siege. The background drone seems louder. More palpable. I can’t stay here. Too exposed.
I can hear clattering from the kitchen. Hopefully it’s just Reg preparing breakfast.
Send me a sign. Before I fade away.
Clap your hands! “I do believe in Doctors!”
During breakfast, there was a knock at the door. Reg and I exchanged a concerned glance. I tentatively opened the door to find on the doorstep, the Grim Reaper dressed as a postman. Silently, he held out an envelope. I snatched it from his grasp and slammed the door. It was a telegram addressed to me from someone called… Fitz.
Fitz! That’s my friend’s name!
DOCTOR ITS REALLY ME (STOP) I AM SAFE SO DONT WORRY (STOP) TOO MUCH TO EXPLAIN BUT BASICALLY ITS OVER (STOP) YOU STOPPED IT (STOP) I DON’T KNOW WHAT YOU DID BUT IT WORKED (STOP) THE WAR IS OVER (STOP) YOU WERE MESSED UP PRETTY BAD (STOP) THE FACTION TOOK YOU IN (STOP) THE ENEMY OF MY ENEMY IS MY FRIEND I GUESS (STOP) THEY SAID SOMETHING ABOUT YOUR BIODATA BEING HIGHLY TOXIC TO HISTORY (STOP) THEY HAVE BEEN TRYING TO DECONTAMINATE YOU (STOP) THEY MODIFIED A REMEMBRANCE TANK (STOP) THEY HAVE TRIED EVERYTHING (STOP) BUT THEY ARE ABOUT TO GIVE UP ON YOU (STOP) DON’T WORRY I AM NOT GIVING UP (STOP) HELP IS COMING (STOP) THEY MAY HAVE SPOKE YO YOU ALREADY (STOP) I SENT YOU SOMETHING TANGIBLE TO FOCUS ON (STOP) MY LEATHER JACKET IS IN THE HALL OF THE CAMDEN FLAT (STOP) THE TARDIS KEY IS IN THE INSIDE POCKET (STOP) GO TO EARL’S COURT TUBE STATION (STOP) IF ALL GOES WELL THE TARDIS SHOULD BE THERE WAITING FOR YOU (STOP) DONT FORGET TO KEEP TAKING NOTES (STOP) ITS VERY IMPORTANT APPARENTLY (STOP) SEE YOU SOON (STOP) LOVE FITZ (STOP)
I show Reg the telegram. He reads it and congratulates me with a grim smile.
We must leave immediately.
Entry 9 – M1, heading south
To make time, Reg is driving while I write. The M1 is an endless, stripe of shadow stretching ahead of us. Behind, the motorway dissolves into nothing. A swirling black and red vortex surrounds us. Things are falling apart.
I have reread Fitz’s telegram over and over. It’s definitely him. I can’t quite picture his face, but his voice is clear and distinct. The accent, the intonation; It’s Fitz Kriener alright! The rest of the message rings true, even if I still can’t remember the specifics.
The TARDIS! That really does ring a cloister bell! Just seeing those six capital letters on the page make me feel safer somehow. What is it?
I have been evacuated from time, but evacuated to where? How can anything outside of time be counted as a ‘place’ at all? I am outside reality. What does that make me? A fiction?
He said that help was coming, that I may have spoken to them already. Could he mean the woman in the silver catsuit?
No matter. I have a course of action and all my questions will be answered later. Reg points out of the window and Watford Gap services rears up from the maelstrom.
Reading back over my notes, the woman in the silver catsuit and Reg’s auntie both seem likely candidates for this ‘help’ that Fitz mentioned. I wish I could remember more of my conversation with the blonde woman. Why was Reg so eager to speak to his auntie alone? What could have prevented them from freeing us?
I have been edited from the story of time, made unreal and woven into a different tale. Maybe too much of me was lost in the transition? I have become too engrained in the story. It must be played out to the end.
No other cars on the motorway or as we join the north circular into London. The city is a mausoleum.
Reg is reticent and almost transparent. The jag is running on fumes.
I’ll have to catch a train back to reality.
Something strange has happened. We’re back at the flat in Camden. I walked into the bathroom and found a stranger taking a bath. A man I have never seen before with a crew-cut and a cheery smile. He greeted me with an affable “Hello” which, for some reason, terrified me. I ran to my bedroom, only to find the woman in the silver catsuit already there, although her catsuit was on the floor and she was in my bed, half asleep. She apologised, saying hadn’t expected to find me here.
Who was the enormous Northerner in the bath? What was she doing here? I demanded to know!
She said it didn’t matter, that she would leave and then started to search around for her clothes.
(They both sound like they are from the North. Is that significant? North of where?)
I went through to the lounge and found Reg opening a bottle of wine and reading the post. An overwhelming sense of dread enveloped me. I quickly took notes.
She’s leaving. She is standing in the doorway now, offering a sad smile. She blows me a kiss and then hurries out of the flat.
Reg gives a derisive snort.
I can hear singing from the bathroom. He’s still here!? Why didn’t he leave with her!?
It’s all slipping away. I need to study my notes
The Faction have been and gone. They want us to leave. That’s alright with me. I just need… something. What was it again?
The man in the bath has gone. I can’t find Fitz’s jacket in the hall. Reg swears he saw the jacket when we he answered the door to the Faction. Reg is now steaming drunk. It’s all going wrong!
“He took it!” Reg shouted, over and over. “He took Fitz’s jacket!” I asked him if he meant the man in the bath.
Reg gave me the strangest look and muttered; “It’s not a bath, you idiot.”
He said he’ll walk me to the station.
And there he goes, swigging his bottle of Mersault ’96, sauntering off across the park. With every step, Reg is fading before my eyes. He’s a ghost, then an outline, then nothing at all. I shall miss you, Reg, even though I was never sure if you really existed at all. I had tried to persuade him to come with me. He said it was impossible. I didn’t ask why, I just knew he was right.
The city itself is fading now, evaporating all around me. All that’s remains is the park bench I am sitting on and the path I must take, towards the tube. I can see the light from the station’s sign beckoning me.
The platform is dimly lit and deathly silent. When did the background hum stop? I’ve gone over all my notes and reread Fitz’s telegram. These pages are the sum total of my knowledge. There’s so little of me, just a list of confusing events and my will to continue.
No, I was forgetting the most important part. I am the Doctor and I have a friend called Fitz Kriener. Through the doubt and confusion, with all awry, he reached out for me. He told me I had succeeded. I stopped a war. If it were all to end here, it would all still be worth it. I would count for something.
The tracks are rattling. A tube train slowly emerges from the tunnel.
Last Entry - Earl’s Court
I reached street level and I saw the TARDIS. She dissolved before my eyes. The roar of her engines filled me with an indescribable joy. As the sound slowly faded, the sense of loss that followed was absolute.
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