Bad Wolf From Space

3. Hints to a Distant Future

Life as Rose Tyler was not how I expected.

When my cognitive reasoning skills had grown, I was able to access my Mind Palace. There were still locked doors but I would receive small hints here and there that I had allowed myself access too. Hints became protections as I grew, and my gift grew along with me.

Sometimes these hints would tickle the back of my mind when my mother and her Wednesday gals gossiped about some event that had happened recently. Like when the Kenilworth house burned down when I was four.

I would hear the faintest song in the back of my head but I couldn't seem to make it out. It would bug me for mere moments before something else would capture my attention, like being told to play nicely with young Mickey while Jackie babysat him.

Jackie would get the saddest look in her eye when she looked at Mickey and it took me a couple years before I found out what happened to his mum when his dad left. I had then made it my responsibility to always get my 'lil bro' to smile (he was always annoyed when my younger self would call him 'lil bro', he'd angrily say with a pout, 'I'm older!').

Mickey's song drifted through my mind faintly, it only grew louder when he was having a tantrum.

Mickey wasn't the only person that would bring a song into my mind.

There was an old man with a fluffy grey beard that would sit at the corner by mum's work. Leapy's song would whisper at the back of my mind.
I would always ask my mother for something to give him.
If I already had a sandwich in hand, I'd give him half or if I'd found a 'lucky' coin on the streets I would put it in his cup. His grin always semi-lost in his beard, "Thank you lil Marion."

It was a habit I'd gotten into since I'd been told never to give my name to strangers. In the back of my mind there was a whisper that names hold power. So instead I always gave my middle name to new people, until I got to know them.

One day Leapy wasn't in his usual spot, but the song was louder in his place and it had changed. There was an almost adventurous soaring quality to it now with an undertone that felt like sadness. It tickled the back of my mind.

Sometimes the song was more organic.
I learned later it came from people who didn't have direct contact with the other song.

My mother would flip through channels on a Sunday, bored with all the commercials before pausing on a man flipping his skateboard and showing up with a golden medal on the screen.

"Ooh he's fit."

I'd shake my five year old head at my mother before looking at the screen a sense of familiarity from the dark but kind features of the man with arched brows and large grin. A soft song singing in the back of my head.

Mum would turn up the volume and the announcer of the event would speak up, "Alan Jackson wins King of Concrete for Summer 1992."

"Alan Jackson." The name rang a familiar bell in my mind but when I'd search for the hints I'd hit closed doors, so I'd sigh before going back to finishing up my homework.

I always left it to the last minute, driving my mum bonkers but I found it all boring. Skipping grades would just bring unwanted attention though.

There were moments where I remembered my other life in sudden flashbacks.

Like when my mother enrolled me in community dance.

I excelled. Dance felt natural to me as if I had been doing it all my life, as if it were deeply ingrained in my soul.
It all came crashing down one day when I heard a rumour I might get a scholarship to a fancy arts school.

I had my first panic attack in my new life.

I couldn't breath, my heart beat erratically and tears filled my eyes as I ran and hid. I couldn't dance again, not when it felt as if the very walls were moving to imprison me in their suffocating embrace.

I would feel Jackie's curious gaze when she'd catch me still doing my stretches each morning. Dancing might have no longer been a possibility but deep down I knew to survive in the new world I found myself I would need to stay healthy and fit.