"Confess."
Clara jumps out of her skin, whipping around to face another one of those creatures. She does not know how she knows what it is, or where she's seen it, but oh, it looks so familiar. It frightens her. Yet one more appears behind that one, and she starts backing away, tripping over her own feet.
"Confess."
How are they doing that without a mouth? How are they speaking?
"What are you?" she shrieks, terror ripping through her chest, tightening her throat. One of the creatures reaches its hand out to her, and she sees that its fingers are at least ten centimeters long, if not more. They're thin, bony, skeletal fingers, and she shudders involuntarily. "Why do I keep forgetting you?" The demand comes much more powerfully than her other statement, and the creature reaching for her stops for a millisecond, taken slightly aback at her boldness.
She tries to step forward, to intimidate it, but two more step out from around a corner. Another from behind the screen. Another from who knows where. She whimpers, and her back slams against the door into the chapel. She scrabbles for the knob but can't seem to find it.
"Confess," they chant in horrifying unison, mouthless creatures shouting a silent order. But she can hear them. Why can she hear them? How can she hear them, if they have nothing to talk with?
"Confess. Confess."
At last her fingertips touch ice-cold metal and she wraps her hand around it, turning it with a force one would only have when terrified. She stumbles backward into the chapel and sees the Doctor and Tasha within seconds of doing something very uncomfortable for Clara. She blushes, and the Doctor notices her presence. Even from this far away she can see there's something odd about the look in his eye. Something off.
When she takes a breath, she inhales the bitter smell of vodka, the tantalizing scent of kiwi, and the thick, headache-inducing aroma of motor oil and rusting metal.
YOU ARE READING
The Time of Change
FanfictionThere are some people who seem destined for greatness. There are others who seem stuck on the path of failure. For most of her life, Annalise Song felt as if she was the unhappy median between the two: bound to be nothing more than mediocre and soli...
