As We Keep Running

The smell of bacon filled my nose as I climbed out of bed. The sun was shining, I felt rested, and it was a Saturday- my weekly Doctor Who marathon day. Things couldn't have been better.

My cat, Winston, was still curled up in bed, snoring lightly. I giggled and stroked him. "Buddy, it's morning. Don't you want breakfast?" I had been living alone with the grey-furred, blue-eyed cat for almost six months, and it was wonderful. Being fresh out of high school meant no more drama or rough schoolwork- just life. I was still job hunting, but, if I'm honest, I wasn't searching very hard at all. Work was the least of my concerns. For the time being, I had my own lovely place, and that was enough.

And suddenly it hit me- if I lived alone, who was cooking downstairs?

Impossible scenarios began racing to my head, and I forced them out of my mind. "No, Savannah," I told myself, "David Tennant is not in the kitchen. It's probably a break-in or murderer." Of course, this didn't make me feel better at all. Paranoia was hitting me like a truck going 80-MPH on the highway.

After five or ten minutes spent worrying, biting my nails, and hiding in my closet, I finally gathered the courage to go downstairs. Why would a burgalar or murderer cook bacon, anyways? I pulled on a tee shirt and jeans and ran a brush through my hair (if it really was David Tennant, I wanted to look presentable) and opened my bedroom door.

I think that was the slowest I've ever walked down that hallway. Even though I was in plain sight wherever I stood, I walked on tiptoes and stayed flat against the wall, hardly daring to breathe. The kitchen seemed to get too close, too fast.

And then I was there. Standing in the kitchen with a stranger. His back was to me, as he was leaning over the stove. He was wearing a tweed jacket, and his hair was a little long, but very neat.

"Good morning!" He didn't bother to turn around, instead deciding to call out these words as he cracked an egg into a pan over the stove.

"Who... Why are you... Are you a murderer?"

He laughed before cracking another egg and stirring things about with a wooden spoon. "No, I'm not here to hurt you. Don't have enough time to hurt you." He looked back at me. "Even if I had the time, I wouldn't want to." He quickly turned again to face the stove.

The face I had seen must have been my imagination. Fiction heroes don't suddenly just pop up in your kitchen and make you breakfast. "I- Do you- Who are you?"

He turned around once more, this time so that his whole body faced me. "I'm the Doctor."