The Traveling Man

I was in a bed.

Why am I in a bed? I lay there--still mostly asleep--pondering those same words over and over and losing all sense of time until someone entered the room. There was the click of a door opening and the tap tap tap of footsteps entering the room. I gasped and sat up with a start.

The man standing before me was one of the most interesting people to look at that I'd ever seen. He had radiantly orange curls cascading out from underneath a cream colored pinstripe fedora that matched his skinny-legged pants. He wore a navy blue long sleeved shirt that looked like it was cotton underneath a sweater vest. And that tap-tap-tapping I heard when he came in? It was from the tap shoes he was wearing.

He looked slightly uncomfortable, standing there before me in my bedroom.

Why is he in my bedroom? I thought. Then it dawned on me. I'm not in my bedroom. Where am I? Who is this guy? He looks familiar. I think...

Oh.

Realization flooded my thoughts as the memory rushed back to me. I was going to school. I was going to school when this... thing trapped me. I must have fainted. He was there.

"Who are you?" I asked.

"Call me the Doctor. Look, I'm sorry about all this. It's just that I--"

"Where are we? How did you trap me in that room? Am I drugged? That's it--you're fiddling with my memories, right? I'm on three different prescriptions, you know. You could have killed me! Unless this is just me accidentally overdosing? Maybe I'm hallucinating? What if I overslept? Good Lord, I have strange dreams. But at least it--"

"Please stop talking," he interrupted me, "I can explain everything."

I stared at him expectantly. This was obviously not real.

"You're not dreaming. Or drugged. Or... whatever else you think. Everything you see and did see is real. Including my TARDIS materializing around you--and I apologize again for that."

"Prove it."

"Step outside."

He motioned to the doorway. I strode out--still believing I was asleep at home somewhere--and into the room I'd come into initially. He stepped over to the front doors and opened them outwards. There was London all right, just outside the doors. I followed him into the open air.

I was standing outside a pathetically small Police Box. Yes, one of those weird ones from the way back when. I walked a quick circle around it.

"Woah," I said, "It's smaller on the outside."

The Doctor blinked.

"I suppose you could put it like that."