The Doctor was busy trying everything from voodoo to applying heavy make up to hide the horrendously huge spot on her cheek. She was well past her teenage years, indeed she was more middle aged than she appeared, but not as much as she was prepared to admit to, not even to herself. Instead she preferred to think of herself as being just on the right side of twenty and left it at that. Ok so she was actual 1327, but who was counting? She told everyone she was 900 of course, even when she'd been a man she'd lied about her age. Maybe she could say she was 850? She didn't think she'd get away with that though.

The summoning chamber was empty of everything except long deep shadows that could hide all sorts of evil things and a mocking mad laugh that contained nothing but insanity and dark joy. The macabre scene was filled by one figure, a human prepared to surrender their humanity for mad power and evil domination. His frame bent with the pressure of demonic glee and his flesh warped into unnatural shapes as raw energy transmuted him into other elements unknown to human science. The thing that was left crawled out of the room on insectoid legs and a terrible reptile hunger.

A warm, mild night, disrupted only by the displaced air molecules as a hole was torn in reality to make way for the arrival of a strange blue box of mysterious dimensional angles and cyclopean architecture. Inside of it was a realm of infinite proportions, where nothing made sense and everything was not what it appeared to be. Not even the pilot, for want of a better word, she alone knows what most of the buttons do, but not all and one day she might find out what they do.  Two people emerged from the blue device known as TARDIS. One was wearing a scarlet dress and matching shoes and purse, the other was wearing combats and a hoodie and looked like he had a grudge against the world.

"Where are we then?" The man asked.

"I'm not exactly sure myself. I think we're on Earth, maybe." The woman looked around. "Do you recognise any of this?"

"Great, just great. If you don't know where we are, then how am I supposed to know?"

"It's your planet; I'm just a weekend guest at best, although I do have a deep love of this world. My mother..." She was cut off however, when a giant creature attacked her and her associate.

"What the hell is it?"

"I've never seen one before."

"You don't know what's going to kill us?"

"Brave heart." The woman reached into her purse and took out a sonic device. It emitted a shill blast of sound higher than any human could hear. "Put your fingers in my ears!" The woman shouted to her colleague. "It's deafening me."

Elsewhere...

The doorway between realities can be accessed at certain points by means of a key, the key however is also the gate and the gate is the gatekeeper too. Travel is only permitted upon payment and the payment is always incalculably high, the price is never worth the paying, but many try because they think that they are special and they will some how get away with it where others have failed. The gatekeeper might tear the living flesh from a traveller's bones, or they might transport them to a world other than that intended by the traveller. The gatekeeper might even absorb the traveller into itself, transforming their flesh into a new portal, a terrible misshapen beast screaming for a death that will never come to its deathless existence. However some travellers have devised a means of travel that renders them immune to the deadly winds of the empty eternity known only as the vortex. Here small bubbles of calm serenity travel through it like air bubbles in a fizzy drink, although it must be said that occasionally one of them will pop.

Eyes like candles contained the full fury of a million seething suns.

The Doctor and Mickey had wandered quite far, looking for the alleged shopping centre that promised bargains and regular cola for Mickey and mineral water for the Doctor. However all they saw was a blasted heath land, where nothing grew and an empty hunger was carried on the wind like the voices of angry gods at war with each other.

The thing with a thousand knife-like teeth pounced, salivating eagerly at the thought of an easy meal.

Mickey screamed as a nightmare monster leapt upon him, crushing him under unnatural weight and powerful limbs of no human size of shape.

The Doctor delved deeply into her purse, looking for the right something to wield as a make-do weapon. Alas all she found was hair spray, but coupled with her toy gun shaped lighter... She released a mini-fireball at the beast, scorching its naked flesh with searing heat. "Stay calm, Mickey." She shouted as she tried to bury the heel of her shoe in the swollen red burn. "Try to get free of it."

The monster screamed as its soft innards flowed out of the hole in its tough leathery hide. It tried weakly to tear the throat out of its prey but death claimed it too quickly and instead it collapsed in the twitching spasms of the freshly dead.

"Get it off me!" Mickey began to cry, hot wet tears plastered his cheeks.

The Doctor helped Mickey up to his feet. "You're ok now. We should get back to the TARDIS before something else attacks us. I don't know where we are but it's not where we should be."

"Its miles away." Mickey complained.

"It's either walk to safety or wait to be lunch."

Mickey set off walking. "I never thought it would be like this. I want to go home."

"I understand." The Doctor took hold of Mickey's arm. "I've rarely seen a planet this inhospitable myself."

Mickey screamed in agony as a giant snake with a human head bit into his chest. He tried beating it away with his fists, but it ensnared him in loops of its body, to trap him while it took another bite.

The Doctor threw her shoes at the brute trying to eat her boy...her companion. "Get off of him!" She shouted in a shrill voice that was only a few moments away from hysteria. She pushed her fingernails into its eyes and it began to thrash about in maddening pain. "Quick." The Doctor said as she got Mickey free. "Let’s make a run for it. I badly need to wash my hands." She wiped them on his top.

The hunger out of time and space cried out in futile gesture as its path of straight lines was cut off by the double blue doors that were strong enough to hold back the whole of the universe. The teeth without a form gnashed and a throaty keening filled the air as despair filled its senses.

The TARDIS seemed quiet. Too quiet. A dread pervaded the air as soft footsteps approached. Mickey and the Doctor hid behind each other and the TARDIS console as from inside it came, a terrible demon in a pink dress and with long blonde hair. "Did you miss me then?" Alice asked the others.

Mickey fainted a few microseconds before the Doctor caught him. "Typical." She said to herself.

Alice picked up a pillow. "Did you miss me then?" She handed the pillow to the Doctor. "I see you both forgot how to tidy up."

"It's some sort of untidiness virus." The Doctor said to her mechanical friend. "I accidentally caught it from an unwashed teacup."

"That would explain why her underwear is hanging from the roof." Alice said to herself. "Honestly I get abducted in time and space, have lots of thrilling adventures, two children, a husband and I come back to find you can't even tidy up a bit?" The fembot picked up a large cardboard box. "I'll tidy up, while you stop Mickey mutating into a giant scorpion creature."  She took out her favourite mop, which she called Mrs. Moppy Moppalot, and began to mop the gungy floor.

The Doctor saw that Mickey had grown several more legs in the last minute. "Stop that at once. Did you always have that stinger?"

"Fooood!" Mickey the mutant cried out. "Must feeeeed."

Alice held back the giant claws while the Doctor tried to force-feed Mickey his medicine. "How long until we know it works?" She asked.

"Not long, I hope." The Doctor replied. "A few moments, maybe half an hour."

"Just enough tome to show you my photo albums then." Alice picked up the other cardboard box, the one with the 28 albums. "Some are in barcode format."

"Shame." The Doctor smiled. "This one's drawn with crayons."

"Yes, some I made myself, before I got the camera."

"You certainly liked to use a lot of different colours."

"Well I like them all."

"I can tell. Is this a planet or a sandwich?"

"That was the giant sandwich planet. We got drive through."

Mickey convulsed in pain as his human form reasserted itself...

Mickey opened his eyes to see the room was tidy, very tidy. "What happened? Why does my head hurt so much?"

"It was a dream." The Doctor replied. "Just a bad dream."

"Something bit me." Mickey looked at his chest but there was no teeth marks, no blood. "What happened to my clothes? These aren't the ones I was wearing."

"Are you sure?" The Doctor tried to repress a grin.

"I think so." Mickey replied and sat up. "Did we have a few bevies?"

"We had a pizza and I let you have two cans of lager. You started singing a very unusual song about my..."

"Never mind that now." Mickey wondered what had happened. He had gotten wasted, on just two cans? "So who tidied up?"

"Oh, I just did a spot of spring cleaning. For the new year."

"What new year?"

"It's 2006." The Doctor replied.

"We're on earth?"

The Doctor opened the TARDIS doors. "Venice, midnight, 2006."

"Happy new year." Mickey said.

"I hope so." The Doctor kissed Mickey. "For luck."

Mickey paused for a second. "Ok." he paused again. "So what now?"

"You could kiss me." The Doctor suggested. "It is the new year."

"I'd rather play on my play station." Mickey replied.

The Doctor rolled her eyes. "This is the most romantic city in the world. Can't you be at least a little swept off your feet?"

Mickey took hold of the Doctor and swept her off her feet, kissing her in a grand fiery cinematic fashion.

The Doctor didn't need to say anything as she enjoyed the passionate embrace.

Mickey woke up from the nightmare. He was strapped down to a stretcher and he was being wheeled through a hospital. He heard the Doctor's voice and he felt a pulsing, hot sticky warmth in his side, where that thing had bit him.

"Please don't die." The Doctor repeated again and again...

Outside of time and space the thing with no eyes spat out the flesh of Mickey Smith, adding it to the wall of flesh that catalogued all the tastiest morsels inside the realm of existence known as the Universe. It laughed insanely as its tube body sprouted crab claws and its face became that of an eagle. It squawked loudly and then plunged its beak into the dread portal of eternity and swam away on the currents of timelessness.