Chapter 3

The floor was still angulating as Casey was lifted to her feet, seemingly by her cheeks. As the world centred from diagonal to horizontal, her vision cleared. Her eyes were still centring themselves back into place when a square, pinkish form materialised before her.

It was the face of the woman who had called herself the Doctor before she’d blacked out. She had remembered forces unknown to her pressing reality itself down into the middle of her forehead, massaging themselves across her brow and eventually pushing her back suddenly into a realm of unconsciousness.

“Are you awake?” said the Doctor, still a blur in Casey’s subconsciousness.

She managed a pitiful, “Yes, before two uniform palms clipped her face in a salute of understanding from the Doctor. “Good! You haven’t died in the rematerialisation phase”, she gratifyingly told her.

Casey was almost certainly still drunk, and this would normally be the time that her alarm would shake her from the strangest dream she’d ever imagined. But this was far too real. She’d been in it for far too long to expect the sudden call of her mobile phone, forcing her like a zombie to don the uniform she had surmised for herself and drag “Casey, the one with the nose ring” into lectures.

“We’ve had a rough landing, but everything seems fine”, the Doctor measuredly told her.

Casey fumbled for her glasses, still inexplicably perched on the balcony of her black corduroy dress. They were twiddled into place, but somehow made her surroundings a lot less clear. The room was brighter than when she’d first entered. Archaic furniture littered the outer edges of the brightly lit space. Clouds of acrid smoke twirled around, as if a large extension cable had just gone pop. And over the threshold of the central hexagonal sculpture stood the Doctor.

What kind of a name was that?

It must’ve been a fake one. She was dressed like something between an 80s bank manager and the kind of dealer you might unfortunately run into at a mid-90s acid rave shindig. She was all shoulder pads and eyelashes, standing with an assurance that left Casey in even more discomfort.

“We ought to go outside”, the Doctor offered.

Casey wilfully nodded and for the first time rested her frame against the console. Her ears were still ringing and thin clouds of smoke were drifting in the space between her eyes and the back of her lenses.

The Doctor pushed the red door lever forward and snatched a wide-brimmed hat from a stand that had stubbornly refused to fall over. The Doctor made for the open doors without looking back at Casey.

A small trace of vomit rose in her throat. Quickly shaking the sensation of spewing over the pristine white floor, Casey followed this enigmatic woman out of the strange room.

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A gush of cold wind hit Casey in the midriff.

The crash of waves against distant rocks sealed their surroundings. A blustery coastline, grey and green; the sting of frost wrapping round Casey’s extremities.

This wasn’t Peterborough.

In any case, the nearest coastal region was ages away, near King’s Lynn. And it was daytime!

That familiar sting of acid tickled Casey’s tonsils again. She turned over her right shoulder and threw up.

It wasn’t a hearty chunder. Just the first splosh of ale that had touched her lips earlier in the night. It foamed against a bright blue base. She slowly followed the colour up, passed her head. Whatever she’d thrown up onto was the room she’d stepped out of. But it couldn’t have been...

“Probably the space-time continuum acting on your intestines”, the Doctor said without looking back.

“Probably”, warbled Casey.

This was too weird. The last thing she remembered as ordering a pint of Exhibition, and now she was standing on the top of a cliff, being cut through with biting winds and freezing drizzle.

“Shouldn’t be too long a walk”, the enigmatic figure before her pronounced. The Doctor pointed over yonder, to a tiny, ramshackled wooden house, about a mile from their present location.

“You look like you could do with a walk”, the Doctor said, before clomping forwards through the reeds and tall grass.

Casey stood there for a moment, still trying to catch her thoughts. How had she ended up here? Had she passed out and been driven miles away from her second home in some kind of elaborate stunt? Her housemates weren’t the type to do that – they rarely came out of their rooms.

Still under the blatant delirium of the alcohol, Casey trudged on, trailing the Doctor.

She turned to address the place she’d just been; the box she had just stepped out of.

It was blue, standing against the sky with the grey sun cowering behind it. It was still slightly too bright to fully see what it was. A lantern balanced on top jellied the light that shone from beyond the blue visage. It’s sloped roof cascaded into a rectangular cuboid, with two squat doors pressed into the front. A sign overlined the double doors.

“Police Public Call Box”.

Surely that couldn’t have been where Casey had stepped out of?

“I’ll leave you here if you don’t follow me!”, called the Doctor.

Casey turned round. She wasn’t sure if the Doctor had actually looked her in the eyes since she’d met her. The Doctor was walking fervently towards the wonky home. Casey followed.

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Step gave way to galumph.

This kind of landscape wasn’t suited to Casey, but the Doctor had, apparently, reluctantly waited for her on a rock jutting out of the grass.

“You ought to exercise more”, she surmised.

Casey was caught off guard by her bluntness.

“Excuse me?”, Casey breathlessly retorted.

“You’re unfit for these distances! Look at you! You’re already sweating!”.

Casey was uncomfortable enough with her physical health, but to hear something so cutting from a complete stranger really got to her.

“Don’t talk to me like that!”, Casey’s slight Midland’s lit managed.

Who was this trim, attractive woman to tell her that she ought to exercise? Where the hell was she? What the **** was going on?!

“I’m just being honest, my dear. You’re clear not cut out for these kind of excursions”. The Doctor finally looked over her shoulder at Casey. Her hair was billowing in the wind, but her suit stayed remarkably still, as if it was glued to her figure.

“We can rest in that house over yonder. I trust you’ll want a warm place to rest your feet? Or would you rather freeze to death in this lonesome place amongst some sheep?”, the Doctor callously remarked.

Casey stood her ground, at least for a split second. Still hazy from the booze, she found herself unbelievably under the instructions of this strange, rude and startlingly attractive woman. She was completely frozen to the bone, her hands red from the cold.

In her only way to indicate how unhappy she was with her treatment, Casey decided to step ahead of the Doctor and forge her own path forward. The house bounced ever closer with each step. Whatever lay within couldn’t be colder than the woman she had ended up with.