THE DOCTOR HAD HIS own problems. He was now inside Julia Fetch’s magnificent marble bathroom. The marble surfaces, the gold-plated taps, the marvellously soft Egyptian cotton towels were all of the finest quality and highly impressive. And if the Doctor had ever been that interested in luxury fixtures and fittings, the TARDIS would probably have provided them while he rattled across the universe. But he wasn’t. So she hadn’t. He’d now spent many lifetimes in adventures away from his ship, sleeping in caves, scuffling about on grubby floors with amazingly violent beings and scrambling up and down the dusty or muddy paths and scree slopes of the incredibly large number of planets which looked mostly like abandoned quarries. This meant that underfloor heating and Italian ceramics had rarely been available to him – while also never being a personal priority. He was mainly really pleased if there was sometimes a bit of soap available on loan near his location. Or clean water. Both being in the same place on the same day (or other convenient chronological unit) were usually a cause for celebration and elaborate thanks – if there was time for that kind of thing, what with all the scuffling and scrambling…

BREAK. SCREAM. FAINT.

The monstrous thoughts were back – punching into his skull, like a fist the size of an office block. And it was impossible to recall a number of details, including the ways in which a dashingly handsome genius Time Lord might need to spruce himself up now and then, just to maintain standards.

The specially imported mango onyx marble of the walls had started to sway back and forth as if the room was breathing. The floor was also beginning to swash up and down like a thick liquid under the Doctor’s abused shoes.

BREAK.

He staggered across towards the massive central bathtub, fell to his knees – because that felt more secure – and realised that his hip had thumped heavily against the side of the bath. In his hip pocket the Doctor almost always kept a bar of emergency Kin-Dahl Mint Cake. (It was amazing how many civilisations had developed a sucrose cake of similar type in a kind of parallel confectionary evolution.) Unmistakably, he felt the bar break.

Then his head was clamped by an incredible pain.

SCREAM.

He reached out blindly with what was very probably a shaking hand and tried turning on the cold tap so that he could splash water on to his face. He could halfway remember that sometimes this was a good idea.

The tap obligingly turned.

And turned.

And turned.

He couldn’t feel any water.

He looked up – the effort of this making a sort of red blur run across his field of vision. There was the tap. No water was emerging from it…And yet…The tap itself was beginning to move, to flow…

The shining, tubular end of the cold tap was no longer frozen metal, drooping down to aim water into the bath. It had reared up, horribly flexible and undulating, stretching and flaring – almost as if it were looking at him. And now the hot tap, too, had flexed into life and was snaking upwards, dancing with its fellow and making threatening little sallies towards the Doctor’s horrified face.

For a moment, the end of one tap closed over his eye. It felt like a warm, soft, wet little mouth, testing, perhaps tasting, trying to understand him.

He batted it away, the motion making his neck tingle with pain and his head swirl.

Both taps now lunged towards him and he covered his eyes as fast as he could, while – he was pretty sure about this – he let out as loud a scream as he ever had.

FAINT.

But the taps weren’t interested in his eyes any more. They sleeked past his sideburns, brushed through his unruly hair and found exactly what they were after.

The Doctor kept screaming as he felt the press of each tap swiftly burrowing into his ears, deeper and deeper, making his whole body shudder.

At which point, he did indeed faint, just as the Big Thought had predicted.