Doctor Who_ The Taint - Michael Collier [1]
The ring gets a hole in it and everyone gets sucked up inside, except me.
I'm back in my bed, but it's inside the cave. It stinks of hellfire and it's full of bodies like butchers' offcuts, and there are little demons, little devils there, jumping about from body to body, drinking from them. And I scream and scream and I see my great-great-granddad from the scrapbook. He's looking at me... Yes.Yes, I'll be all right again in a minute. Haven't really thought about this in a long time.
You haven't ! Have you really? And a cave just like that one? That is funny, isn't it? You'd think a dream like that...
I suppose so... You're right, it is interesting. I always got sick, though. The longer the dreams went on, the harder it was to wake back up from them.
Used to be scared to go to sleep sometimes, after they let me back out...
Otto had gone by then, poor love, and my Fitz would come home roughed up day after day. They used to call me and him all sorts of names, you know, the kids and the mums. Every name under the sun, and some that weren't. like they were scared.
When I got ill the third time, poor Fitzie was put in care. It was hard for him
- he's a sensitive boy. Oh, yes, he's a tonic, but it's the talking I miss, you know. Still, I can't expect him to sit in every night and talk to an old dear like me, can I? No! No, you're right, it must have its fling.
What? Oh, I couldn't, really... Yes, I suppose it would be company... But I don't know if... Oh, you can't send a driver for me, Dr Roley, goodness, I'll get the bus... No, that's no trouble.
Oh goodness, well... Well, I suppose... Oh, Dr Roley, you are good, indulging an old lady like this.
THE TAINT
2.1
Life was a never-ending series of dramas, some big, some small. The same dramas, experienced again
and again by different people all through history. Only the trappings and circumstances changed. You got a job. You bought a house. You met someone. You got married and moved into their house. You had an affair. You got the wrong person pregnant and they married your best friend. You wished you could marry your best friend.
Whatever, the point of it was that life was essentially a tried and tested series of dramas, with only a finite number of responses. People coped, or they were swamped. They made the wrong moves, took the right choices, made things worse and sank ever deeper or rose above their despair.
Millions of people had proved this to be the measure of life, and proved also that the measure of the man was in how he lived it.
Why, thought Fitz Kreiner, wasn't I born one of them?
If this was a drama, it wasn't a good, solid BBC effort, with all the posh voices and the weighty values. He felt stuck in a commercial break in his life drama. It could well be one of ITV's salacious Armchair Theatre programmes, and that would be wonderful, but he hadn't been paying proper attention and he'd never know until the damned bloody thing started again. In the meantime, Come to Roley's Gardens of Paradise was the only word from his life's sponsor. Roll up, roll up and buy a shrub, or an earthenware pot of the highest quality. A potted plant for your home from our nurseries. Make it a part of your landscape, stage domestics round it.
Live your life and its dramas, and Fitz here will hang around outside, helping to make it prettier for you.
What made it worse was that the opportunities for life's back-from-the-break signature tune to kick in had never seemed greater. Since Dr Roley -
underweight and overprotected son of the late Quentin Roley, millionaire nurseries tycoon and spectral sponsor of Fitz's current existence - had taken in Fitz's old mum for his studies, he'd had his own gaff for the first time in his life. Space. Freedom. Even a bit of cash in his pocket. Looking after number one for a change, instead