The Mysterious Man From The Blue Box (A Doctor Who Fanfiction)

Chapter 4: The Screwdriver On Steroids

**The last up-to-date picture of what I think Echo would look like is on the sidebar**

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Chapter 4:
The Screwdriver On Steroids

    December had lost its importance. For seven years, the Doctor was a no-show. I mean, I shouldn't have expected him to reappear. I'd sold my aunt's house in Hartford, Connecticut and moved to Shrewsbury, Massachusetts, and apparently that energy field that the Doctor was looking for didn't move with me. Not that it mattered. I figured that the time I first formally met him would be my last time seeing him. But something told me that we'd meet again. 

   I'd hoped and prayed that he would come visit me again. Truthfully, I missed him. I missed the way he talked too fast and how his eyes shone with youth but also a hint of age and knowledge. Even though his features were vivid in my mind, my paintings couldn't convey those details like they had before. I'd almost lost the will to paint altogether.  

   I sat on my lawn one summer afternoon after convincing myself to paint the Doctor again. But then a sick feeling came over me. What color were his eyes? They were hazel, weren't they? No, brown. Or were they green? I felt terrible. I couldn't remember the eye color of the person I admired most! Even worse, I couldn't remember what was written on the TARDIS. Was it Public Police Box? Or Police Call Box?      

   I began to tear up. If I couldn't remember the little things now, what would my memory of him be a few years from now? Would I completely forget about him? 

   "No," I said sternly to myself. "You will never forget the Doctor. You can't forget the Doctor." So there I sat, alone in my yard, trying to piece together my scattered recollection of the Doctor. I focused on the little things, like the way he smiled and how he only seemed to wear Converse sneakers with his suits. I thought about his little screwdriver thing with the glowing blue light and the wheezing metallic sound that the TARDIS made. In fact, I almost could hear it now...

   I shook my head. I was going insane. How could I hear the TARDIS now if I hadn't heard it in seven years? My heart began to beat faster. No. It couldn't be real. It was my imagination. But the noise became louder and louder. It rang in my ears as if it was right behind me.

    I spun around. There was nothing but my picture-perfect house behind me. The noise ceased. A creepy silence fell upon the yard. I sighed, half disappointed and half relieved. If the Doctor came back, I wouldn't even know what to say to him. Yell at him for abandoning me, maybe.

   A door opened. Not the door to my house nor the door to my neighbors house. This door only creaked slightly as it opened, revealing its age and material. It was wooden. It was old. And I knew just what it was attached to.

   I turned back to my canvas and easel that stood in the middle of my yard. I was afraid to move it. To see what was behind it. Fear didn't stop me, though. My hands slid under the wooden bar that my canvas rested on and I raised it off the ground. And quickly, the way someone would rip off a bandaid, I moved the easel to the right and set it down.

   "No." I whispered. It had to be a mirage. A trick of the light. Anything but real. Because after seven years of an empty yard, there couldn't be a TARDIS sitting at the edge of my property. 

   The Doctor's head popped out of the open door, surveying his surroundings. I stood frozen in place, wishing that I could melt under the hot June sun and avoid this inevitable confrontation. He stepped out of the box, sliding his glasses on and squinting because of the intense glare of the sun overhead. He shook his head and took the glasses off before fishing in his pocket for something. And that something was his screwdriver thing. The same one that I was just picturing only moments again.