Mortimer Frisk lost his footing and tumbled down the dune towards the beach below, the alcohol in his system robbing him of a controlled descent. He pitched forward face-first, his mouth and nose filling with sand.
Manoeuvring himself into a sitting position he tried to keep the horizon steady while his body swayed from side to side. His face took on its usual well-worn solemn expression.
Doctor Mortimer Frisk had had good friends, a social life, the beginnings of a relationship. Then had come the Recession, job cuts, the Sadness and Fothergill, damn him!
"I hate you Fothergill," he mumbled to nobody in particular, "rot in h...uh...url!" These last words were lost as Frisk keeled over onto his side and vomited.
He raised himself onto one arm and tried again to steady his gaze. Looking out to sea he regained his feet and tumbled towards the tide line, swinging his bottle around in a great arc. "I'll get you," he shouted and shambled on.
Bending down Mortimer began rummaging through the flotsam and jetsam marking the high tide line amongst rotting seaweed and sand flies. He picked each item up, examining it briefly before throwing it down again in disgust.
Lurching his way along, occasionally falling, sitting, then rising again, Frisk stopped. "Hello, what are you then?" he asked the glimmer within the seaweed clump before him, visible through the failing daylight.
His fingers scrabbled over the object as he tried to scrape away its thick crust of sea weed. The thing shifted within his hands as his fingers pushed into it. He realised he was holding a muddy writhing clod of crabs, prawns and other sea life, all tightly bound together and seemingly fighting to reach something at the centre of the mass.
Frantically Mortimer pulled away the creatures in clumps as if he were joining their fight himself.
Triumphant, he held a filthy glowing ball in front of an eye and then blinked as it pulsed and shifted in his grasp. Amazed, he stared at the writhing object as it itself became an eye looking straight back at him. Its bright blue iris flared red and then the eye collapsed with a sigh while Mortimer's own irises themselves flashed red, his eyes widening around them.
"What?" He asked, "what, what, what, what, what, what, what?"
His expression changed, becoming a twisted grin. He turned to face inland again and began to walk.
YOU ARE READING
Genesis Of The Doctor - A Doctor Who Story
Science FictionIn Gallifrey becoming a Time Lord means death! Before the First Doctor there was another incarnation - follow the Girl and the Boy as they work together to escape to a new life of adventure.
