A short story I wrote for my favourite TARDIS team. It was originally for an audio project but ended up never getting made. One day, I’ll produce this so it can be heard in all its glory but for now, I hope you enjoy!
Bill stares at the page. This is the part where she gets a fantastic new idea about her essay-- some inspiring line of prose for the introduction that the Doctor will be too sentimental to mark down.
It’s due tomorrow.
Oh God, it’s due tomorrow.
She types her name at the top of the word document. Underlines it. Changes the font to a sophisticated Times New Roman. Changes it back again and then shuts the lid of the laptop.
It’s 5.30am when Bill next looks at a clock.
--
The door to the TARDIS is open when she arrives at the Doctor’s office, clumsily jammed open with a polystyrene box. The air smells the same as a dodgy kebab shop; Bill half expects to stumble over a bloke passed out in the gutter as she kicks her way into the ship.
She enters. The Doctor is partway through a mouthful of noodles.
“Bill!” He exclaims, nearly choking in his excitement. “You’re late.”
“Are you eating noodles for breakfast?”
The Doctor ignores her and clicks his fingers at the TARDIS door. It slams shut, tossing the takeaway tub onto the floor in front of Bill. She kicks at it halfheartedly.
“47th century. Big heist. Great gems. Fantastic pancakes.”
“Have you ever met a vegetable or does the accent repel them?”
He raises an eyebrow at her and begins a circuit around the console, flicking levers Bill has never seen before. She follows as the ship begins to wheeze and groan in her ears.
“Have you ever robbed a bank?” asks the Doctor.
She shrugs. “Stole a library book once. Why, are we big criminals now? Are you going Robin Hood on me?” A pause. “Might be enough to fund your takeaway habit, mate.”
“Shush.” The wheezing-groaning stops, the machine suddenly still. He raises her eyebrows at her. “Go on then.”
Bill takes a deep breath and steps through the TARDIS doors.
“Uh, Doctor?”The room in front of her is lined from floor to ceiling with bars of gold. There’s the unmistakable stench of fish in the air accompanied by an instant sense of queasiness— and more concerningly, the floor is moving. “47th century?”
The Doctor’s head pokes out of the TARDIS doors, he frowns. “Subtract thirty. Never rewire a keyboard in binary.” He sniffs. “Pirates. Definitely pirates.”
There’s a creak from behind them. Bill turns and finds herself eye-level with the tip of a very sharp-looking sword.
“Move and I’ll run you through.” a woman’s voice commands. “Names. Now.”
Bill squeaks. Hang on, is that…?
“Popeye. Sailor man.” says the Doctor. “We come in peace.”
The pirate steps forward, the sword’s tip waving dangerously close to Bill’s nose. A pair of piercing blue eyes scowl out from the darkness.
“You take me for a fool, Popeye. What do I look like I suffer from?”
“Diarrhoea,” says the Doctor. Bill cringes. “Fever, nausea, loose teeth. Well-”
The pirate spits, her matted brown hair whips furiously in the darkness. “What are you then? A peddler? Medicine man?” They frown at Bill’s dubious expression. "Quack, then?"
The Doctor makes a sharp croaking noise. The pirate scowls. “Name’s Bonny,” Bill’s jaw drops. “Cure my men and I’ll let you keep your legs.”
“I’m the Doctor. This is my assistant Bill. We can help.”
“Hi.” Bill breathes, and then— “Assistant?”
“Come wi’ me.”
The Doctor and Bill are frogmarched out of the cargo hold and through a series of horrible smelling rooms. Eventually, they reach a gangplank, leading to the top deck of the ship. By the side of the opening, there are scores of pirates bellowing out-of-tune sea shanties.
Bonny jabs her sword into Bill’s neck. Bill gulps. “Cry gyal and I’ll gut ya. Now move.”
Their captor strides up the gangplank, dragging Bill and the Doctor into the open night air. As they emerge from the ship, they’re met with a wall of staggering heat and the smell of unwashed armpits.
The gaggle of men on deck seem completely unaware they’re meant to be standing upright. The most sober pirate jeers as they are hauled past though their accent is so thick, even the translation circuit has difficulty.
The Doctor nods his head towards their tormentor and whispers. “Mary Read. Pirate and swashbuckler extraordinaire.”
“Women on board. Isn’t that like, a super pirate no-no? I mean, apart from y’know” Bill nods her head towards their captor.
The Doctor hums vaguely. As they are dragged to the top deck, Bill looks back at the crowd. There are bodies of every colour swaying, but they share a weariness. There’s pain in the way they limp and heave.
“They look ill, like, really ill.”
“Scurvy.” The Doctor mutters, “If I could just get back to the TARDIS-”
At that moment, Bonny lets go and shoves hard. The two of them hurtle forwards into the ship’s front mast. Before Bill can recover, there is a rope around her wrists being pulled tightly into a complicated knot.
“Stay ‘til I get you.” Bonny snaps. “You’ll cure my crew in the morning.” She tugs the rope tight and examines her handiwork before striding back to the lower deck.
“Wow.” says Bill, flustered. “You knew who that was, right Doctor?”
The Doctor grins. “Anne Bonny. First mate on the William, formidable swordswoman, feared outlaw. Most fearsome female pirate to ever sail the seven seas…” He trails off, seeing Bill’s smug face, “You know her, don’t you?.”
Bill grins. “She’s a pirate. A pirate and a woman, with a sword. You think I didn’t spend all my time looking at pictures of her as a kid?”
The Doctor blinks, an upcoming monologue dying in his eyes.
“She’s kind of a legend.”
“Legends don’t die of scurvy. If the ship doesn’t land soon and I mean soon, she’ll be nothing but an emaciated puddle.” He mutters.
“How far from land are we? I can’t see anything over the sides.”
The Doctor sniffs the air. “South America. Jamaica.” He says quietly “Eighteenth of November.”
“Oh my God,” says Bill. “Nassau Bay, Jamaica, the ambush-”
“On the Eighteenth of November, the crew of the William was captured and executed. Anne Bonny was the only survivor."
“They’re all going to die,” she mouths. There’s a hot lump of dread rising in her throat, “We have to… we need to…”
The Doctor softens his tone. “We can’t stop it, it’s a fixed point in time. The William lands in Jamaica and the crew are too ill to fight off their attackers.”
“But we can’t just stand here and watch.”
“Did you hear that?” the Doctor whispers.
“What, the sixtieth verse of Blow the Man Down?” Bill snaps.
“No, no. Listen.”
Beneath the jeering and the hiss of the ocean, there’s a rattle, like bones hammering against one another. Bill can hear it getting louder and louder until with one final clunk, it stops.
A black and silver blur flies through the air. The Doctor yelps. Suddenly, there’s a creature clinging to his calf, jittering and screeching as it rips through the material of his trousers.
Bill jerks backwards. It’s horrific. There’s nothing but strung out flesh on the bare bones of a skeleton. It’s completely indescribable, and completely alien. Like something you’d see at the bottom of the ocean but worse.
The creature rattles. She can see its whole body, every horrible, convulsing inch as it stares up at her. There’s a sense of dread rising in her gut, the same she gets walking home in the dark or looking at pretty girls—
There’s only one thought left in her head— run!—but there’s nowhere to go.
“Little help would be nice!” the Doctor yells. The creature bears down on his trouser pocket.
Bill seizes on the first idea that comes into her head. She moves the tips of her fingers into her pockets, grabs the first thing she feels and throws. The Doctor kicks. The can of soda skims past the creature’s tail and crashes onto the deck. It lets out an inhuman screech and crashes to the floor. Bill sees the bones of it fold as it lands, its strung out flesh collapsing inwards. There are deep, black hollows where its eyes should be and they’re pointed directly at her.
Bill blinks. The creature skitters frantically out of sight.
“What the hell was that?”
“Something that really shouldn’t be here—” The Doctor pants. “Older than this Universe and far, far away from its home planet.”
“Alien.” Says Bill.
“Very.”
The Doctor nudges the fallen can with his foot. It edges towards them before the sway of the ship rolls it away again. The can speeds towards the edge and falls out of sight. Bill groans.
“Why did it attack us?”
The Doctor frowns. “I don’t know.” He pauses. “Conjecture. There’s a creature from the Dark Times on a pirate ship in 18th century Jamaica. Proposal. It’s here for a reason. Why would it come here? Why a pirate ship? What have the crew of this ship got to offer?”
“Scurvy?” Bill jokes.
The Doctor’s eyebrows shoot up. “Malnutrition. It needs bodies but it doesn’t want to work for them. Victims so weak they can’t defend themselves. It’s going to go after the most malnourished person on this ship and work its way up.”
“You’re pretty hench though and… we’re not ill, right? We haven’t caught some sort of pirate disease?”
He purses his lips together.
“All of Bonny’s crew have to be captured, alive. We can’t let that creature get to them.” The Doctor shakes out his leg, wincing as scraps of his trousers blow away in the wind. “We need to get that thing off this ship. If it reaches land, it multiplies. Feeds on stragglers. Who knows how many it’ll slaughter.”
“The ship’s docking today.” Bill adds. “How do we kill it?”
“We don’t.” The Doctor says. “We need to put it off the scent, without curing the crew.”
It’s more than a minute before they meet each other’s eyes.
“Lucozade.” says the Doctor suddenly. “You threw Lucozade at it but it missed. So why did it run? Why do you have three cans of energy drink in your pocket?”
Bill thinks back to chugging one the night before and falling asleep hours later, face down on her laptop. “No reason.”
“No. No, there’s something more. Give one to me.”
Bill tucks a tied-up hand into her jacket pocket and fishes out a palm sized can of Lucozade. With some awkward maneuvering, it slips clumsily into the Doctor’s outstretched hand
He raises an eyebrow. “You realise how many of these ingredients are banned on New Earth for how brain-altering they are?”
Bill resists the urge to roll her eyes.
“Vitamins!” The Doctor exclaims. “They always add vitamins to energy drinks, so they can boast about it on the bottle. The creature didn’t run away because it was scared – it ran because it encountered something strong enough to kill it.”
“It’s scared of Vitamins? It’s basically Scottish.” Bill mutters.
“If we can get what’s inside this onto the crew, the creature won’t attack them.”
“You mean… cover them in Lucozade?”
“Yes. Preferably lots.” The Doctor twists excitedly in his restraints, “At a short-distance.”
“Am I hearing this right? You want me to provoke a crew of drunk, angry pirates, including my childhood crush, and then pour Lucozade on them?”
There’s a pause.
“Yes.” says the Doctor.
---
In 18th century Jamaica, no one can hear you scream, Bill learns. After some creative cursing and screaming, some of which earns her a scolding from the Doctor, she’s left with nothing but a sore throat and wrists rubbed raw. They can’t see onto the lower deck but she notes that the singing has stopped dead. Instead of another verse of ‘drunken sailor’ from the crew there is the sound of heavy snoring.
“The plan,” wheezes Bill, “Is not working.”
The Doctor is trying to cut through the ropes with the string of a yo-yo but the knots Bonny had tied are so firm they’re hardly budging at all. She doesn’t ask if his sonic has a ‘rope-setting’.
Bill glances at the horizon. It’s an early Jamaican morning and the sky is a dangerous red. She’s sure the hiss of the sea is getting louder as they near land; it’s making it harder to listen for the creature’s rattling.
They need to attract the attention of the pirates before the silhouette of Nassau Bay gets any closer.
Bill wracks her brains. There’s something she’s missing, something important. Anne Bonny doesn’t die in 1720.
Oh.
“Bonny!” She shouts, “I know you can hear me. We can help your crew, but you have to let us go.”
The Doctor stifles a laugh. “Convincing argument.”
Bill shoots him an angry glare..
“I know you, Bonny. I know you’re brave and I know how scared you are, but you have to listen to me. You’ve got something you want to protect. Something you haven’t told anyone. And the pain of hiding it is killing you.” She pauses, “Because it’s not just you and the crew anymore, you finally have something to call your own and you’re so scared of losing it. We can help you.”
There’s no sound of footsteps, no singing, just the hushing of the waves below. No one is coming.
Bill droops, the bindings on her hands are rubbing so badly they’re beginning to cut off circulation.
“You said you could help me.”
Bill’s head shoots up. There, towering over her, is Anne Bonny.
“Yes.” says Bill. “We can help you.”
“What do you know?”
“You’re pregnant.”
Bonny nods sharply.
“Symptoms?” asks the Doctor.
“Painful.” says Bonny, pointing at her stomach. “Here too.” She points at her head.
“But you’re happy, yeah?” Bill asks. “You sure you want this?”
The pirate nods.
The Doctor glances at her and turns to Bonny, before lying through his teeth.
“Drink this.” He says. “It’ll help the pain.”
Bonny takes the can from the Doctor’s bound hand and squints at it suspiciously before tipping back the can and swallowing in one go.
Bill can see the moment she tastes it. Bonny’s lips curl in disgust, and she blinks hard. “What did you give me, Popeye? You dare to poison me?” She spits.
“It’s whisky?” The Doctor tries.
Bonny shakes with rage. Bill sees her hand grasp the hilt of her sword, straining to draw it but...
“You aren’t worthy of my mercy,” the pirate says. There’s something so worn in her eyes as she turns to go. Bill doesn’t say another word, though she can feel a lump rising in her throat.
“She spared us,” says the Doctor.
“Does it even matter?"
Bill’s head fills with static. She doesn’t hear the shouts of alarm from the crew as they catch sight of the bay, nor the first shots fired across the water. It’s the morning of the Eighteenth and the sky is pink and cloudless, today is the day the crew of the William are going to die and she can’t do anything to stop it.
The Doctor nudges his foot into hers but she kicks it away. “You said if we let that creature go, it’d kill millions!”
“Bill. We have to go. If we stay, we’ll be causing an even worse paradox.”
The harbour is so close now, pirates are shouting and scuffling for their weapons. She can hear bullets firing into the water from the other side but the sound is muffled.
Bill’s fingers tremble over the ends of the knot. There’s still too much rope, too much fray for her to grip on to.
He nudges her again. “Bill.”
She turns to look. The Doctor wiggles his hands. “How did you...?” she trails off.
He pulls out the buckle from Bonny’s belt and uses it to yank the ropes from Bill’s arms.
“Nicked it. Come on!”
There’s a gang of soldiers boarding the ship, weapons raised for battle. The crew are firing flintlocks but their aim is drunken and the shots don’t hit. The Doctor leads the way, dodging and weaving around distracted, staggering pirates.
Bill spots the pirate she had seen earlier, Mary Read, fighting side by side with Bonny, their swords slashing ferociously at their attackers. They’re so caught up that they don’t notice the Doctor and Bill sneaking through the cargo hold door and stumbling down the gangplank.
“This way!” the Doctor shouts.
They retrace their steps, knocking over barrels of silver and gold in their haste. This time when Bill bursts through the cargo hold, the stench of fish has been replaced with smoke and the tang of blood in the air. She watches the Doctor scramble for the key but the noise is so unbearably loud, she can hardly hear the engines of the TARDIS.
The TARDIS doors slam shut. Within seconds, the groaning, wheezing of the ship dematerialising fills Bill’s ears. It’s not quite enough to block out the sound of bodies being dragged across wooden planks, nor the hot pressure churning in her gut.
She looks at the Doctor. “Tell me we couldn’t have done something.”
The Doctor doesn’t look back.
“We saved some people, yeah?”
“Yeah.” he says.
Bill doesn’t reply. She looks down, her shoes have holes in them. Escaping the ship must have torn the soles, let the seawater in to drench her feet. It’s cold inside.
“She lived in the end,” Bill says to the floor. “Married. Kids.”
“She was happy.”
“Was she?”
The Doctor’s stare breaks from the console. He claps. “Back to Bristol then. Students to ignore, tests to mark, ponies to buy. Don’t think I’ve forgotten about that paper.”
Bill’s anger spikes . “We just let millions of people die, Doctor. Don’t talk to me about papers!”
“Ouch.” He grimaces.
“I’m not laughing, Doctor.”
“No, seriously—” the Doctor cuts himself off with a yell and scrambles for a hold on the console. Underneath his left trouser leg a shape thrashes, shredding fabric around it as it tears towards his ankle. Bill stares, amazed, as the hem of the Doctor’s trousers falls away to reveal a long writhing skeleton. The creature screeches.
Bill looks frantically around the console room. The polystyrene box from earlier lies discarded, just within reach. She grabs it, kicks hard at the creature’s head and slams the box on top. It screeches louder, stabbing it’s tail through the foam.
“Pocket!”
The Doctor grabs the last can of energy drink from Bill’s pocket and upends it. A stream of Lucozade spills out, soaking through the box and onto the creature’s back. Its stops mid-shriek, its movements slowing gradually to a complete stop.
“Activate Containment Protocol!” The Doctor commands.
A small metal cage materialises around the remains of the box. The creature rams against the bars and bears its fangs at Bill.
“Hush now,” says the Doctor soothingly, stroking gently along the sides of the cage.
“Noodles for breakfast.” Bill beams.
“Shut up.”
She tries on a Glaswegian accent. “The most malnourished person on the ship?”
“Shut up.”
---
It’s 5AM when Bill presses send. Her eyes feel dry and dead under the light of the laptop screen. Across the table is a can of unopened energy drink.
She hadn’t planned to spend her word count convincing the Doctor to eat a vegetable, but she’ll be damned if it isn’t the most important essay she’s ever written.
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