Time Passes by James Fraser

MALC TAYLOR

I would love to start this story by saying that it was a dark and stormy night, but I’m sure that we all know that it is ever rarely likely to get two in one. Nor is it very likely that if it were to be both then that would probably be the last night you would choose to go out. No, tonight’s weather was exactly what you would expect; overcast and depressing, not the sort of weather you would give any sort of attention to either. I had in fact been planning this night for a very long time and knew that it would have to be very similar to any other so the dates would be confused and any witnesses would struggle to pin down anything exact. To help with this the weaponry also had to be clean and simple, something that wouldn’t cause a fuss. I had spent the day looking for the right knife, the blade had to be the right length so her neck would seem as if it had just split open and make the murder seem less like an act of hatred and more like the art form I intended it to be.

This had been in the works for roughly thirteen and a half weeks; I had wanted to get it exactly right ever since she had warned me to stay away from her all because I had simply said that I wanted her to spend more time with me and less with her so called friends. This was shocking behaviour for someone so infatuated with her and I tried again and again to get her to spend more time with me and less with the people that constantly berated and insulted me. But before I knew it I was stuck at home with only a certain amount of time before people came to me and wanted money for things I could no longer afford. I had tried one last time to see if she wanted me by buying a new and admittedly cheaper house which was across the street from her and spent every waking moment trying to get her to see differently, but nothing happened. But only in death can people truly be together and so I decided that if she didn’t want to be a part of my life anymore then I wouldn’t let her be a part of her own either.

This is where I get back to that opening; I was sat outside her house and waiting by the wall like an unattractive statue that was too heavy to move but also too ugly to be out in the open. I held my knife close to my chest so as to avoid any car lights reflecting off it and highlighting my position. I was sat replaying how I wanted her death to play out over and over again, making it more and more perfect each time, occasionally changing her facial expressions to make it seem more perfect. This made me feel that cocktail of emotions made up of excitement.

I soon snapped out of my satisfying and self-induced mini coma to further hide myself behind the wall as her car had moved into her drive. I still managed to see her as she emerged from her car and her amazing brown hair moved with the wind making me almost want to hold back from the operation. I didn’t want this to become inevitable but she knew what she did when she said all those things. This was her fault and I refused to take the blame.

After several minutes I decided that it was now or never and that this was my chance. Removing the stop that I had wedged the door open with; I made my way into the house and remained by the side of the stairs with the knife. The footsteps began and I stood up suddenly, I thought to do so without moving my arms much so I would appear more of an impactful force. I wanted her dead in my arms and I was determined to make that happen, but bad luck was staring me in the face again. I instead found myself staring into the eyes of a middle aged man, not much taller than a height considered short for a woman and with the dress sense of a naked man desperate for clothes and looking for some in a fancy dress shop. He stared at me, almost as if he was anticipating my arrival.

‘Is that, Sheffield Steel?’ He spoke with a soft yet mischievous Scottish tone that made his unnerving appearance be at odds with what sounded like a sweet grandfatherly voice.

‘Although I always find that Venusian is a more trustworthy form, shall I demonstrate?’ He brought his hand away from resting on his umbrella and pointed three of his fingers directly at my eyes and pushed them forwards with an inhuman strength making my vision go black and my legs lose all sense of momentum. This forced me to collapse to the ground with my sense of alert going with all of my other functions.

In my final moments I heard him use a witty one liner of all things to do.

‘Because I find it will leave you speechless. Exhibit A.’

I wanted to argue against his easy and cheap one liner but I found my muscles too weak to respond. In the end I found that giving up was the easier option.

LINDA ALDRIDGE

I hadn’t started today by thinking that I would end it conversing with a wanderer of the fourth dimension, nor did I think that he would be discussing with me the terms of my safety from the unhinged stalker from across the street. It wouldn’t have had to be like this if that idiot had just left me alone. He used to work for me at the bank; I had been polite and smiled at him now and then because I didn’t want any of my workers thinking that I was cold or, had favourites. However he mistook this surface level act of kindness as an invitation of love and I found it harder and harder to get him to back away and leave me alone. It was just the straw that broke that camel’s back when he had the cheek to not ask me out on a date like a normal person with a crush but instead to try and control me by telling me to go home and change my clothes because he didn’t like how I looked or to cancel the plans I had with my friends to go out with him instead. He seemed to think that not only was he in a very one sided relationship but also that he had the right to control my every move. So I decided it would be best to sack him. He had to move out of his house because he claimed to be too emotionally damaged to get another job and therefore ran out of money meaning he couldn’t pay the rent. And of course where did he move to? The bungalow across the street where that woman had just died, talk about jumping into someone’s grave as quick.

I tried my best to ignore him and found some success. I had considered calling the police about maybe filing a restraining order but it seemed to be that there was no need because he never came out of his house, for better or for worse. The worst that happened was the other night in which he had sent a note, or rather a letter based on its length, detailing the terms of a relationship he wanted to be in with me. I was of course disgusted and threw it in the bin almost immediately before going to work. I had a relatively normal day as I was worried that he may have ruined it because of his insulting actions but I swiftly forgot about him and instead spent the day talking with my friends and having a generally nice time. I would have forgotten about it entirely if it hadn’t been for the giant blue box that was sat in my garden by the time I had arrived home. The first thing I had thought of when I got back, after I had annoyingly tripped over a coaster which I had found by the door, was how on Earth someone had managed to park a box of that size and presumed weight in my garden.

A man stepped out, after I assume spending sometime in there, and spoke to me in a soft, ethereal manner.

‘Hello there. Now don’t be alarmed, I’m the Doctor and I have arrived back in time. Now you may find that somewhat hard to believe but let me assure you that I have decided to use my great powers in a way to help you.’

I ashamedly laughed in his face; ‘Get on your bike’

‘Well then, let me prove it to you.’

He took me by the hand and guided me over to the box he had somehow managed to move into my garden. I assumed the worst of course and was ready to either scream or hit him. But I found that I didn’t need to as he had pushed the right hand door while looking right at me, as if he had done this a thousand times before but still got the pleasure of showing off. He pressed the door to its hinges and from a distance I couldn’t see inside, assuming it to be a trick I still entered all the same even though with every step my mind reminded me that I was going to end up regretting this.

As soon as this happened I turned around to realise that he was going back into the house for some strange reason.

‘Excuse me. What are you doing?’

He just responded by saying: ‘What I need to’

I ignored his cryptic statement, thinking; ‘This is definitely a bad idea.’ But still I circled back around to the box where it had turned out that the darkness I had seen from a distance was merely a door to an open space. The entirety of the inside of the police box looked like an actual man sized space, and that was until I opened that back panel and walked in to discover a vast white room of open space with some of the most grand and unbelievably complex design work that I had seen grace the Earth, this was something that looked both alien but also so very human and lived in.

For every high tech button that looked as if it had been taken right out of a movie; there was a dirty tea cup lying on the floor yet to be picked up.

‘Well then, what do you think?’ The Doctor came in from behind me and moved slowly past as I continued to stare in awe. ‘I know the size can be sometimes off putting, but it’s useful. I’m thinking of renting it out to anyone who may need their universe saving.’

He moved his way up to the console and pressed a few buttons but I was too shocked to pay any attention to what he was doing. I found it difficult mere minutes later to believe that I ever doubted, not only him, but time travel being possible. I sat down at the chair beside his console and for hours inside of this massive blue box we spoke about our lives, this universe and pretty much everything else and I never wanted it to end. This was because I felt safer inside of this box than I had anywhere else on Earth and I couldn’t bear the thought of going back to the insecurity of normal life that before now I had never noticed was there.

So I was naturally disappointed when he said that we needed to go back inside as the first stage of his plan had to go underway. We ended up sitting for hours just like we did inside of the box and talking about trivial and frivolous matters, occasionally stopping for breath and tea before I fell over on the sofa of exhaustion.

By the time I had awoken he had barely moved an inch, at first this made me feel uncomfortable and it was a reminder that he really was an alien. But I calmed my nerves and I realized that I had my very own protector sitting right beside me. My father, Malc, my boss, they all felt so far away in this living room so long as the Doctor was sitting right there. But of course reality snapped right back into play as I remembered that it was Saturday morning and that I needed to get the shopping in before the usual morning to afternoon rush. As soon as I stood up though so did the Doctor, almost as if he was anticipating my movements.

‘Where are you going?’ I asked him

‘You need your shopping don’t you. It is Saturday of course and you don’t want to get caught in a rush.’

I at first thought I should be impressed by this but I was a little bewildered. How on Earth does he know that, and in the exact way I was saying it in my head as well. But I brushed it off; knowing what day I go shopping is hardly like knowing my bank details or death date. After thinking all of that I thanked him and turned back over to go back to sleep.

THE DOCTOR

You know, for a time traveller so frequent in his rather fixated obsession with travelling and saving civilisations the idea of saving one life on its own merits had never occurred to me before. Obviously I would do what I could and where I could but I had never thought to actively seek out any untold stories and use my mastery of time to help them. So on the morning where I had visited the twenty third century I glanced at the ashes of a house that had been fossilised after being eradicated in a fire years ago and wondered what its story was. Now, I’ve been to countless planets, galaxies and remnants of old universes so I could tell you the story of a thousand different stars and still have enough left to fill an entire series of encyclopaedias.

But I ever rarely stopped to think about some of the little regarded stories, everyone knows the story of Goldilocks but does anyone ever ask about what the three bears were up to. What were they doing that day? It must have been something very sudden and worrying for them to leave three bowls of food lying on the table like they did. So looking at this house I began to wonder what its story was, so many get untold that I decided it was time to change my ways and trace the history of this particular house hold. Well this was after I had sorted out the invasion of the killer insectoid octopi by banishing their murderous cereal to the furthest reaches of Andromia’s open rift.

But afterward during the time in which I would normally go to celebrate my recent victory with tea and jelly babies I instead ate and drank them in front of the TARDIS monitor and looked up all of its occupants to find out about their stories. There were a few strange entries such as a man who fought in the second world war but didn’t use his original name as well as the strangest name I had ever seen: Barack Stremis, all of these people moved on after living in the house though and it was the life of a young woman called; Linda Aldridge that specifically drew my attention.

She was found in her house having been killed with a knife. A tragic tale of a young woman who had all of the world to give but in the end had it tragically taken from her. I discovered that the culprit was never found and I was angered by this deciding that the life of this woman was my main focus in delivering justice to some of the smaller stories on the Earth that go unnoticed.

I parked the TARDIS in the garden of this young woman’s house, but I struggled to think of some of the ways in which I could convince her to stay under my protection. The moment she came out into the garden I told her what I was doing here and did what I knew how to do best; blow her mind. I treated her as if she was any kind of companion, and she was in a way. But I knew things were going wrong as soon as I saved her from what was meant to be her death, the TARDIS simply couldn’t cope with the paradox. This meant that I had to take her back into the house and ensure that nothing was going to come for her.

However time always finds a way and while Linda was sleeping I heard the sound of stones being thrown against her bedroom window. But when I went to see what it was I saw him again; the killer, and he was trying to draw her to the window so he could launch a rock at her head and kill her that way. I found some sort of pleasure in knowing that I was ahead of him and poked my head out of the window and did my best impression of annoyed cockney that I could to make him think that he had got the wrong house;

‘If you don’t stop throwing stones at my window I’m going tocome down there and rip your bloody head off.’

It’s safe to say he believed me and while I was watching him go I told him in my normal voice;

‘This is all futile. She’s under my protection now.’ He turned back to see if I was there but by that moment I had long since gone back downstairs to.

‘Bye then.’ Linda shouted to me the next morning as I was heading to the door in order to get her ‘shopping’.

But the truth is that I wasn’t going to get her shopping, well I was but that wasn’t the main reason I was heading out. During the night while Linda was sleeping I had gone back to the TARDIS in order to check out the next way in which her death was recorded. It was no longer under death by knife, but was now a longer story in which she had been killed inside of her car. The only way in which this could have happened is if Malc had found a different way to surprise her by waiting and jumping out. I assumed this meant that the fire; which destroyed the house that I saw in the future, happened through some other form, such as leaving the iron on or plugging in too many appliances. But because I wanted more than anything to prove to not only me but to time itself that it is not in charge; I agreed to do the shopping for her. So when I saw him; pathetically hiding in the back seat almost as if he knew what he was doing, I knocked him out once again and drove him to the coast abandoning him on a bench countless miles away from where he lived or where he could find a way to get transport back; an entertaining hybrid of justice, revenge and a practical joke.

By the time I had arrived home I felt different to how I did when I arrived. I felt like I had finally managed to beat time itself and sat down with Linda to enjoy her company for the first time without any ulterior motives. I was tempted to check the TARDIS records again but I instead thought it would be better to talk to her again after I had such an enjoyable time last night. Being a Time Lord with such responsibilities as myself; it is such a rare event that I get to sit back and relax with someone else.

And to me that conversation lasted a long time, forever even, and I cannot stress enough how disappointed and depressed I was when I saw the flames of an oil fire licking through the floor. It wasn’t my fault, but I really felt that it was. And now that guilt is going to stay on my shoulders for the rest of my life alongside all of the other lives I failed to save. Except what makes it worse is that it is just a number, another example of a life I failed to save. The story that was never told that I was desperate to tell will remain as exactly as I found it as.

THE CULPRIT

I was shocked and appalled when I woke up the next morning, having being knocked out for the second time in as many days and abandoned on a bench in the middle of nowhere. The strange Scottish man had anticipated my every move and killing Linda was beginning to feel like a chore. This was not how I intended it to be and I wasn’t going to let a short, stump of a man with a Napoleon complex ruin this for me. So after managing to mug and steal my way into getting a bus fare, that I swear is only that long so people will have to pay more, I decided it was time to go as far as I never intended to; I was going to set her alight. Believe it or not I actually wanted to make her death as humane as possible so I made burning to death the last resort because to me burning to death is possibly the longest and most painful way to die. But unfortunately in order to kill her like this, that dire and dislikeable dwarf she spends her time with will have to become a part of our story as he will also almost definitely die in the fire. I knew I would eventually find a way to get over this and in a way I was killing two birds with one stone by getting revenge on him for ruining my plans at the same time.

Before I set the materials needed to make the fire possible I was forced to climb up to the top of the pylon at the end of the street and sever the wires so no one could call the fire brigade before she had burned to death. Lighting the fire was a lot easier than I expected it to be. That man didn’t show up and Linda had no way of knowing what I was doing and therefore couldn’t stop me. In the end it just happened.

I did hear screaming and fire engines but that was no more than I was expecting and it was if anything less than everything I wanted it to be. I didn’t feel anything except the lack of frustration and the lack of need to complete something, now that I had truly completed my schedule I realised that I was a man on his own with no job and barely a house to live in. So it was especially surprising when I arrived back home and found the Doctor sitting in my living room.

I stood there for a moment and thought about what to say. I was actually expecting him to say something first and was preparing for another monologue or quote which is nothing more attractive to listen to than a finger nail on a chalkboard. In the end I thought he might have been brain dead and thought best to say something just to make sure that his brain wasn’t falling to pieces like bits of wet cake.

‘It’s too late, she’s dead. And there’s nothing that you can do.’

‘Oh I’m very aware’ it appears that his limp mind was still intact but it appears only for the worse.

He spoke with a sense of uncomfortable certainty, almost as if he had been planning the entire thing ‘You see I knew from the very beginning that Linda was destined to die, I thought I’d help where I could and see if there was any way that I could save her. But as I learned the hard way tonight, time always finds a way.’

‘It doesn’t matter what you did, she’s still dead. I’ve beaten you.’

‘I’m afraid she is rather, but that isn’t the reason I came back in time. Well I suppose it is somewhat but I knew the risks from the beginning. One doesn’t have time machine without knowing the fate of everyone they meet.’

‘You’re just ad-libbing all of this aren’t you?’ I attempted to speak with the same kind of certainty that he did so he was aware that he was in the midst of an equal. ‘You’re just trying to twist it into some sort of a win.’

‘Unfortunately for you I’m not.’ He stood up and we faced eye to eye, well as well as he could at his height ‘Because I’m a time traveller you see, I’ve set a trap for you.’

‘Where?’ I responded, just in case that he was telling the truth

‘Somewhere in your future my dear fellow, but here’s the thing. You’re never going to know where. I can jump backwards and forwards as far as I like so in order to witness this justice you may have to wait a day… a week… a month… a year, ten years! Or alternatively you could go to the kitchen to make yourself a cup of tea and find that you are not going to make it to the end of that drink alive. Maybe you’ll even get to a point where you cannot bear to live anymore and take your own life, but you’re never to know if it was something that I did to lead you there. Who knows?’

‘That’s rubbish’ I shouted in his face.

‘Oh, really am I missing something?’

‘What you just described is exactly how life works; everyone lives every day with the thought that they could be killed today or tomorrow. That was just an empty threat.’

‘We’ll see then shall we. If you look at your wrist you’ll notice a scar from falling over the other day on your knife. That scar will stay with you every day for the remainder of your pathetic, sordid little life and will tick away in your mind as a reminder that at any moment you may fall victim to something I have set.’

‘Foolish, nonsense’ I declared in his face.

He bowed his head as if having just lost a fencing duel and showed himself to the door, leaving me alone in my living room. This all happened just last night and takes me to today where I have barely moved from the same spot on my sofa.

For the past hour I have been wrestling with the idea to leave my house or not in order to get some shopping. Whenever I stand to move my scar begins to tingle before moving into itching pain and I feel too afraid and sore to move any further. I’ll probably remain here for the rest of my days and waste away into a pile of rotting flesh that the Doctor believes I am.

And the worst part is that I don’t know if all of this was his plan all along.