Halfway Out Of The Dark || The Doctor

Rose

An alarm clock beeped in the bedroom of a London flat, waking 19-year old Rose Tyler from her slumber. The young blonde smacked the clock to stop the noise and dragged herself out of bed to begin her day. She was soon dressed and bidding goodbye to her mother Jackie, before leaving for work.

Rose worked as a customer assistant in the ladies section at Henriks department store on Oxford Street. Her morning passed without incident. She performed her usual daily tasks of putting clothes out on the shop floor, helping customers in the changing rooms and serving customers on the checkouts. At lunch time, she met up with her boyfriend Mickey Smith in Trafalgar Square, where they had lunch, a laugh, teasing each other and kissing each other.

After lunch, Rose returned to work for several more hours of shop work until at last 6PM came and the store closed. Rose was just reaching the door ready to go home when a security guard waved a bag of money in her face. Today was Friday, which meant it was the day the money was handed in for Henriks' lottery syndicate. Rose begrudgingly took the money and rode in the staff lift to the store's basement.

When she stepped out of the lift, she found the basement deserted, which was unusual as there was usually technicians and cleaners working down there. "Wilson?" Rose called out, going down the corridor to the door that led to chief electrician H.P Wilson's office. "Wilson, I've got the lottery money." Rose said, knocking on the door, but received no answer. "Wilson, you there? Look, I can't hang around cos' they're closing the shop. Wilson!" Still no answer. "Uh, come on!" Rose grumbled to herself. She just wanted to go home, have chips for dinner and go down the pub with Mickey for the evening.

A sudden sound came from further down the corridor and Rose snapped her head in that direction. "Hello?" she called as she went to investigate, "Hello, Wilson, It's Rose. Hello?" She stopped outside a door and pushed it open to find herself in a storeroom full of shop floor dummies. She turned the light on and went further in the room. "Wilson?" she called out, "Wilson?" She tried a door on the other side of the room when the doors she'd entered through shut abruptly. Rose ran back and tried to open them, but they wouldn't open.

She heard a creaking sound from somewhere behind her. "Is that someone mucking about?" she called out, going back further into the room, "Who is it?" Suddenly, a dummy's head turned on it's own accord. Rose turned around just in time to see it step out of it's alcove and move towards her. "Heh... ya got me, very funny." she said as she backed away.

The dummy said nothing and continued to advance on her, two more joining it. "Right, I've got the joke." Rose said, getting unnerved now, "Who's idea was this? Was it Derek's?" The dummies continued to advance, more and more coming to life. "Derek, is this you?" Rose called, continuing to back away. She tripped on a box, quickly backed herself up against a wall and braced herself as one of the dummies raised it's arm, ready to deliver a blow.

Suddenly, she felt a hand take hers and she opened her eyes to look at the owner of the hand; a tall man in his early forties with a brown crew-cut, piercing blue eyes, rather prominent ears and dressed in a battered black leather jacket, a burgundy V-neck jumper, black trousers and black doc martins. "Run!" he urged in a thick Lancashire accent, and so they ran!

The man pulled Rose out of the way as the dummy's arm came down and sliced through a pipe like a knife through butter. Rose and the man burst through the doors and raced down the corridor towards the lift, the army of dummies in close pursuit. When they reached the lift, Rose could see that it was being held open by an attractive young brunette woman who looked in her late twenties with long wavy hair, dark brown eyes and dressed in a black leather jacket, a black tank top, black skinny jeans and black biker boots.

Once Rose and the man were inside the lift, the brunette woman hit the button for the ground floor and the doors began to close. But before they could close fully, the dummies caught up and one stuck its arm through the doors, preventing them from closing properly. Both the man and the woman tugged on the arm until it came off with a pop and the doors closed.