The Doctor’s Reflection

The Doctor stumbled down the wintry slope. The snow flung up from under his slipping feet, blinding and freezing his wide, frenzied eyes. He glanced over his shoulder frequently, searching the wood-speckled slope that led down from the shadowed, barely recognizable home that he'd just escaped.

He stumbled off of the hill and onto a lit, curving street, the only one that led to the house; and the only road that led away. He stared up the road until the cracked cement curved out of view, and waited anxiously for the sight of headlights.

When nothing came, he began to run down the road, tripping over his own stained, tattered lab coat.

He tried to block the thought of what his creation could be capable of, and tried to ignore the shame of what it might not be capable of. As a soul-infused human, he was morally shocked, but as a scientist, he was academically impressed.

At first it had been a black goo in a petri dish, a casserole of biological matter mixed with his own DNA and then exposed to a solar flare. It had begun to fidget and sigh, and soon it began to grow, and then, mirroring the terror on the own Doctor's face, it began to grow features, and soon the Doctor was staring at his own image before him, like God had with Adam. It's newly formed hands had clasped around a scalpel, but the Doctor was already out the door and running down the treacherous hill by the time it began to follow him.

He saw the distant lights of the town below him, and his heart either leapt with joy or skipped from his strenuous journey.

He came upon the bar first. Ignoring the muttering of the patrons, he stumbled through the bar toward the bathroom, bursting through the door. A mustachioed, flannelled man stationed at the urinal almost fell back onto himself.

“What the hell—“

The Doctor held up his twitching hand. “Shush. It might be here soon. Stay quiet.”

“Jesus H. Christ, you really did lose it up there, didn’t you, Theo?” The man chuckled, hopping up and down before audibly zipping his pants. “Drinking all those chemicals you get delivered?”

“You aren’t supposed to look through the boxes you deliver, Frank. And please, call me Doctor.”

“You aint got no degree.”

The man tried to walk past the Doctor, but stopped when, outside in the bar, they heard the front door burst open, and they both recognized the frantic voice of the person; the Doctor’s himself.

“Please, everyone, you must listen!” It said to the patrons. “I’ve created…or discovered something terrible!”

“Jesus H. Christ, Theo, he sounds just like you! What did you do?”

“I…I’m not sure what it is.” The Doctor began to scratch at his eyes as they began to burn. “My eyes…what is going on?”

Frank looked over at him and then chuckled. “Probably something to do with that mascara you got running down your face, Doc.”

The Doctor rushed over to a mirror and saw the black, gel-like substance flowing slowly from his tear ducts and from underneath his eyes.

“Oh.” The Doctor said as a mustache sprouted from his face and his lab coat bled into a flannel shirt. “Very interesting.”