Professor Keller, chapter 1 (Rewrite)
Oct. 18th, 2015 09:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
scripsiTitle: Professor Keller
Fandom: Doctor Who
Rating: Teen and up
Genre: Horror
Word Count: 1966
Chapter: 1/?
Characters: Delgado!Master, Original female character, Original male character
Pairings: The Master/OFC, the Master/OMC, OFC/OMC
Warnings: Mind games. Mental dominance. Brief scenes of violence, but nothing too graphic. Referenced dubious consent, both het and slash. Character death. Suicide attempt.
Summary: Alison and Peter Grey are living a charmed life, young, wealthy and in love. Until they meet a Professor Keller and find themselves trapped in a spiralling nightmare. Set between Terror of the Autons and The Mind of Evil.
AN: This story is mainly a horror story and that horror is mostly psychological. I have always seen the Master as a person who doesn’t mind a spot of violence, but his main kick is mental domination. So this fic is about the Master destroying the life of two people, basically just because he can and enjoys doing so. It sprung from thinking of how the Master got the resources for his scheme in The Mind of Evil. And what do the most evil being in the universe do for fun and relaxation when he is not plotting world domination?
This is a re-write. When I first wrote it I wasn’t quite sure where the story would take me and after I finished a few things continued to nag me. I think this is the best story I have written, but some parts felt clunky and some things didn’t feel properly grounded. And as I didn’t stop thinking of the things I would like to change, I ended up re-writing it.
Often when I write certain songs gets attached to it and I listen to them over and over. When I wrote this fic I somehow ended up listening to Elvis Costello. For some reason he has always been an artist I have connected with Doctor Who and without meaning to, Professor Keller got it’s own soundtrack. So the chapter titles are all songs by Elvis Costello.
A huge thank you tothisbluespirit who beta-ed this chapter and to flowsoffire who cheered me on and nit-picked the previous version.
Party Girl
They say you're nothing but a party girl
Just like a million more all over the world
Alison met Peter Grey in the unlikely place of one of London’s cemeteries. She had lost her parents in a car crash when she was nineteen and she often visited their graves. A few times she ran into a blond man of her own age until one day he asked her to have coffee with him. Peter’s parents, it turned out, occupied the grave next to Alison’s. His mother had died when he was a small child and his father of a heart attack when he was twenty. It quickly became clear they had more in common than just being orphaned and suddenly they found themselves heads over heels in love. Aside from Alison's older sister Janice, who was married and lived outside York, neither of them had any family to talk about and they thought it would make perfect sense to get married and be together forever. Alison felt she had stepped into a fairy tale: Peter was as handsome as any self-respecting Prince Charming ought to be and if he didn’t have a kingdom, he was very rich. The senior Mr. Grey had worked hard and succeeded when most people don’t and after he died, everything he had gained went to Peter.
At first Alison thought she was living in her own private paradise. She had a whole town house she could do what she wanted with, a woman called Maria who came and cleaned three times every week, and she could travel and shop to her heart's delight. But eventually she realised that for Peter, this paradise came with his very own mental snake. His father, who never remarried, had devoted all his time to his only child. But despite his pride that Peter would never have to work, he also managed to instil in him a sense that only hard work was something worth having. So, Peter had ended up with a complex where he felt he didn’t have any real right to enjoy his money and an earnest wish to be useful, but not knowing how. Alison often felt she would like to shake her late father-in-law when she saw how Peter fluttered about, looking for something worth doing, but never finding anything he truly believed in.
Then he met Professor Keller somewhere and suddenly he was the only thing Peter talked about. Alison didn’t really register it at first - there had been other projects Peter had been excited about, which then came to nothing. Later, after everything had fallen apart, she thought there should have been some kind of omen the first time you heard the name of the person who would destroy your life, but she hadn’t even been listening.
Eventually she gathered that Emil Keller was a brilliant Swiss scientist, specialising in the rehabilitation of criminals. He had constructed a machine that could remove all criminal tendencies, turning the culprit into a useful and law abiding citizen with the minimum of discomfort, or at least he would be able to make one with the proper funding. It sounded terribly boring in Alison’s ears, but undoubtedly worthwhile. And if Peter felt it was something he wanted to engage in, then it was fine by her. Peter had time to talk about the fabled Professor quite a bit before Alison finally met him. They were holding a small party and Peter had invited his new friend. After hearing so much about him she had had time to develop a certain curiosity. Her idea of a professor was an absent-minded old man with a flowing white beard, an image she knew was a cliché, but which she couldn’t quite shake off.
Professor Keller was punctual, arriving well before most of the other guests and he didn’t look at all as Alison had imagined. He turned out to be a well-dressed man in his fifties with a greying dark hair and beard and a rather lovely voice. Somehow Peter’s tale had projected someone very tall, but in her high heels Alison found she stood eye to eye to the Professor, and there was nothing distracted about him at all. To her surprise she didn’t like him. He was exquisitely polite, pronouncing himself entranced, but he also had strange hooded eyes. They burned an odd hazel colour while his penetrating gaze seemed to take stock of her and then deem her of little value. Alison felt intimidated, and a little confused; she was so used to making an impression on men that she took it for granted. It was humiliating both to realise that, as well as being so indifferently dismissed. But she shrugged inwardly, gave him a pleasant smile and turned to her other guests. It wasn’t necessary, after all, to like all of Peter’s friends; she was quite sure he found some of hers less than amusing as well.
She quite forgot the Professor until she passed him and Peter just as the former complimented the beauty of their home. Peter, who clearly felt it was important for Alison to get to know his new friend, promptly roped her in to provide a guided tour:
“My wife would love to show you the rest of the house. She is the one who has worked wonders with it. You should have seen it when my father lived here; it was absolutely horrendous.”
Alison gave Peter a glower over her shoulder as she showed their guest out, but he just grinned. She was proud of her redecorations; the town house had been dreary before she started. Peter’s father’s sense of style had left a lot to be desired. Normally she relished the chance of showing off her home, but she sensed Professor Keller wasn’t in the least interested; he was merely too polite to refuse. Besides, if he found her uninteresting, she found him a little frightening and didn’t really want to spend time alone with him. So she only briefly opened a few doors before she led him to the library, gauging that if any room would interest him, it would be this one.
Ironically enough this was the only room she had left untouched in her redecorating frenzy. Her father-in-law had not been interested in books but had wanted a library nevertheless. He had done it up the way he believed such a room should be, a knowledge mostly collected from old movies, and had filled it with leather and beautiful books with gold lettering on their spines. The result reminded Alison of a comfortable stage set - a room that had looked out of keeping with the rest of the house even before Alison and Peter had moved in. She liked it as it was and often spent time there, the old armchairs much more comfortable than the modern sofas in the living room.
Professor Keller seemed to like it too as he roused himself to speak instead of just nodding.
“A beautiful room,” he remarked.
“Yes, isn’t it? It was my father-in-law's idea; but I like it; it’s a very nice room to read in.”
“So you read?”
Alison laughed to hide how annoyed she felt over his surprised tone. “Why, did you think that I spent my whole time shopping?”
Professor Keller, who had been studying the books, turned and looked at her.
“I have insulted you,” he said, but he sounded interested rather than apologetic. “Why? You are very beautiful. I had the impression that your purpose was to be decorative and provide a suitable home life.”
He looked intently at her, and Alison could almost physically feel the full force of his attention focusing on her. She had a peculiar sense of being analysed as if she was a previously discarded specimen he had already placed and labelled only to have it do something unexpected that warranted his reevaluating. It was a disturbing feeling, and she took refuge in an unusually hot-tempered reaction.
“What do you mean? Are you telling me I’m stupid just because I never studied? Is there something wrong with taking care of a home? I can’t imagine you would appreciate it if your own wife ran all over the place and did other things besides taking care of you!”
Alison’s imagination had no problems conjuring up a suitable wife for the Professor. A somewhat stout woman with practical shoes who made sure he always looked immaculate and had plenty of undisturbed time for his important research. Professor Keller, however, instantly punctuated that little fantasy.
“I’m not married,” he said rather distantly. “But if I had a wife I would certainly expect her to make full use of her capacity. You have this strange custom here of allowing gender to stand in the way of a person's true aptitude. I admit I made the assumption you were using your mind to the best of your ability already.”
He smiled which dispelled the haughtiness of his features and made him look much nicer. “Come now, Mrs. Grey, we shouldn’t quarrel this early in our acquaintance. Please accept my apology and let us be friends.”
Alison felt obliged to apologise in return. “I’m sorry; it was I who was rude.”
“Not at all. As a scientist, I should never forget not to reach conclusions without sufficient data. Shall we go return to your other guests? I am sure your company is sorely missed.”
“History,” Alison said abruptly when they were leaving the library. She wasn’t sure why, perhaps to prove that she could use her head.
“I beg your pardon?”
“I wanted to study history, but Daddy said university would be a waste of time and money and history was such a useless subject anyway. I suppose it’s silly, caring about things long gone.”
But the Professor didn’t seem to think so. “No, no; here you only have the past to learn from. How can it not be important to know it?”
Alison gave him her first genuine smile. She still found him a bit alarming, but he seemed determined to make her feel better. When they came back to the party he had managed to make her laugh, and she had decided he was rather charming, after all.
Much later, when Alison and Peter had gone to bed, he turned to her eagerly.
“So, what did you think of the Professor?”
“I think I liked him. But he is a little scary. Don’t you think so?”
“I’m sure it’s just because you don’t know him yet.”
Alison sighed sleepily. “I’m sure you’re right. We actually had a pretty interesting conversation when I showed him the house.”
Peter continued to talk about the Professor and his project, but she lost the thread. She had her own things to think about. When her father had convinced her to not go further with her education she had believed that door was closed for good and she hadn’t thought about it since then. But it wasn’t, not really. She and Peter wanted children, but not just yet and she had both the time and money to study if she wanted to. Her conversation with the Professor felt as if it had brought her an unexpected gift, opening up a new path for her and she could feel a small stir of expectation.
“I think I would like to do an evening course or something. Keep up a bit,” she said, interrupting Peter mid-sentence.
He laughed. “What? Something important like napkin-folding or flower arranging?”
She threw a pillow at him, but then she became serious. “Do you think that’s all I’m good for? Being pretty and keeping the house nice?”
Peter stopped laughing. “Of course not. I was just teasing. I’m sure you will be fantastic at it - you’re much smarter than me.”
And with that he pulled Alison closer, and they both stopped thinking of anything but each other.
Fandom: Doctor Who
Rating: Teen and up
Genre: Horror
Word Count: 1966
Chapter: 1/?
Characters: Delgado!Master, Original female character, Original male character
Pairings: The Master/OFC, the Master/OMC, OFC/OMC
Warnings: Mind games. Mental dominance. Brief scenes of violence, but nothing too graphic. Referenced dubious consent, both het and slash. Character death. Suicide attempt.
Summary: Alison and Peter Grey are living a charmed life, young, wealthy and in love. Until they meet a Professor Keller and find themselves trapped in a spiralling nightmare. Set between Terror of the Autons and The Mind of Evil.
AN: This story is mainly a horror story and that horror is mostly psychological. I have always seen the Master as a person who doesn’t mind a spot of violence, but his main kick is mental domination. So this fic is about the Master destroying the life of two people, basically just because he can and enjoys doing so. It sprung from thinking of how the Master got the resources for his scheme in The Mind of Evil. And what do the most evil being in the universe do for fun and relaxation when he is not plotting world domination?
This is a re-write. When I first wrote it I wasn’t quite sure where the story would take me and after I finished a few things continued to nag me. I think this is the best story I have written, but some parts felt clunky and some things didn’t feel properly grounded. And as I didn’t stop thinking of the things I would like to change, I ended up re-writing it.
Often when I write certain songs gets attached to it and I listen to them over and over. When I wrote this fic I somehow ended up listening to Elvis Costello. For some reason he has always been an artist I have connected with Doctor Who and without meaning to, Professor Keller got it’s own soundtrack. So the chapter titles are all songs by Elvis Costello.
A huge thank you to
thisbluespirit who beta-ed this chapter and to flowsoffire who cheered me on and nit-picked the previous version.Party Girl
They say you're nothing but a party girl
Just like a million more all over the world
Alison met Peter Grey in the unlikely place of one of London’s cemeteries. She had lost her parents in a car crash when she was nineteen and she often visited their graves. A few times she ran into a blond man of her own age until one day he asked her to have coffee with him. Peter’s parents, it turned out, occupied the grave next to Alison’s. His mother had died when he was a small child and his father of a heart attack when he was twenty. It quickly became clear they had more in common than just being orphaned and suddenly they found themselves heads over heels in love. Aside from Alison's older sister Janice, who was married and lived outside York, neither of them had any family to talk about and they thought it would make perfect sense to get married and be together forever. Alison felt she had stepped into a fairy tale: Peter was as handsome as any self-respecting Prince Charming ought to be and if he didn’t have a kingdom, he was very rich. The senior Mr. Grey had worked hard and succeeded when most people don’t and after he died, everything he had gained went to Peter.
At first Alison thought she was living in her own private paradise. She had a whole town house she could do what she wanted with, a woman called Maria who came and cleaned three times every week, and she could travel and shop to her heart's delight. But eventually she realised that for Peter, this paradise came with his very own mental snake. His father, who never remarried, had devoted all his time to his only child. But despite his pride that Peter would never have to work, he also managed to instil in him a sense that only hard work was something worth having. So, Peter had ended up with a complex where he felt he didn’t have any real right to enjoy his money and an earnest wish to be useful, but not knowing how. Alison often felt she would like to shake her late father-in-law when she saw how Peter fluttered about, looking for something worth doing, but never finding anything he truly believed in.
Then he met Professor Keller somewhere and suddenly he was the only thing Peter talked about. Alison didn’t really register it at first - there had been other projects Peter had been excited about, which then came to nothing. Later, after everything had fallen apart, she thought there should have been some kind of omen the first time you heard the name of the person who would destroy your life, but she hadn’t even been listening.
Eventually she gathered that Emil Keller was a brilliant Swiss scientist, specialising in the rehabilitation of criminals. He had constructed a machine that could remove all criminal tendencies, turning the culprit into a useful and law abiding citizen with the minimum of discomfort, or at least he would be able to make one with the proper funding. It sounded terribly boring in Alison’s ears, but undoubtedly worthwhile. And if Peter felt it was something he wanted to engage in, then it was fine by her. Peter had time to talk about the fabled Professor quite a bit before Alison finally met him. They were holding a small party and Peter had invited his new friend. After hearing so much about him she had had time to develop a certain curiosity. Her idea of a professor was an absent-minded old man with a flowing white beard, an image she knew was a cliché, but which she couldn’t quite shake off.
Professor Keller was punctual, arriving well before most of the other guests and he didn’t look at all as Alison had imagined. He turned out to be a well-dressed man in his fifties with a greying dark hair and beard and a rather lovely voice. Somehow Peter’s tale had projected someone very tall, but in her high heels Alison found she stood eye to eye to the Professor, and there was nothing distracted about him at all. To her surprise she didn’t like him. He was exquisitely polite, pronouncing himself entranced, but he also had strange hooded eyes. They burned an odd hazel colour while his penetrating gaze seemed to take stock of her and then deem her of little value. Alison felt intimidated, and a little confused; she was so used to making an impression on men that she took it for granted. It was humiliating both to realise that, as well as being so indifferently dismissed. But she shrugged inwardly, gave him a pleasant smile and turned to her other guests. It wasn’t necessary, after all, to like all of Peter’s friends; she was quite sure he found some of hers less than amusing as well.
She quite forgot the Professor until she passed him and Peter just as the former complimented the beauty of their home. Peter, who clearly felt it was important for Alison to get to know his new friend, promptly roped her in to provide a guided tour:
“My wife would love to show you the rest of the house. She is the one who has worked wonders with it. You should have seen it when my father lived here; it was absolutely horrendous.”
Alison gave Peter a glower over her shoulder as she showed their guest out, but he just grinned. She was proud of her redecorations; the town house had been dreary before she started. Peter’s father’s sense of style had left a lot to be desired. Normally she relished the chance of showing off her home, but she sensed Professor Keller wasn’t in the least interested; he was merely too polite to refuse. Besides, if he found her uninteresting, she found him a little frightening and didn’t really want to spend time alone with him. So she only briefly opened a few doors before she led him to the library, gauging that if any room would interest him, it would be this one.
Ironically enough this was the only room she had left untouched in her redecorating frenzy. Her father-in-law had not been interested in books but had wanted a library nevertheless. He had done it up the way he believed such a room should be, a knowledge mostly collected from old movies, and had filled it with leather and beautiful books with gold lettering on their spines. The result reminded Alison of a comfortable stage set - a room that had looked out of keeping with the rest of the house even before Alison and Peter had moved in. She liked it as it was and often spent time there, the old armchairs much more comfortable than the modern sofas in the living room.
Professor Keller seemed to like it too as he roused himself to speak instead of just nodding.
“A beautiful room,” he remarked.
“Yes, isn’t it? It was my father-in-law's idea; but I like it; it’s a very nice room to read in.”
“So you read?”
Alison laughed to hide how annoyed she felt over his surprised tone. “Why, did you think that I spent my whole time shopping?”
Professor Keller, who had been studying the books, turned and looked at her.
“I have insulted you,” he said, but he sounded interested rather than apologetic. “Why? You are very beautiful. I had the impression that your purpose was to be decorative and provide a suitable home life.”
He looked intently at her, and Alison could almost physically feel the full force of his attention focusing on her. She had a peculiar sense of being analysed as if she was a previously discarded specimen he had already placed and labelled only to have it do something unexpected that warranted his reevaluating. It was a disturbing feeling, and she took refuge in an unusually hot-tempered reaction.
“What do you mean? Are you telling me I’m stupid just because I never studied? Is there something wrong with taking care of a home? I can’t imagine you would appreciate it if your own wife ran all over the place and did other things besides taking care of you!”
Alison’s imagination had no problems conjuring up a suitable wife for the Professor. A somewhat stout woman with practical shoes who made sure he always looked immaculate and had plenty of undisturbed time for his important research. Professor Keller, however, instantly punctuated that little fantasy.
“I’m not married,” he said rather distantly. “But if I had a wife I would certainly expect her to make full use of her capacity. You have this strange custom here of allowing gender to stand in the way of a person's true aptitude. I admit I made the assumption you were using your mind to the best of your ability already.”
He smiled which dispelled the haughtiness of his features and made him look much nicer. “Come now, Mrs. Grey, we shouldn’t quarrel this early in our acquaintance. Please accept my apology and let us be friends.”
Alison felt obliged to apologise in return. “I’m sorry; it was I who was rude.”
“Not at all. As a scientist, I should never forget not to reach conclusions without sufficient data. Shall we go return to your other guests? I am sure your company is sorely missed.”
“History,” Alison said abruptly when they were leaving the library. She wasn’t sure why, perhaps to prove that she could use her head.
“I beg your pardon?”
“I wanted to study history, but Daddy said university would be a waste of time and money and history was such a useless subject anyway. I suppose it’s silly, caring about things long gone.”
But the Professor didn’t seem to think so. “No, no; here you only have the past to learn from. How can it not be important to know it?”
Alison gave him her first genuine smile. She still found him a bit alarming, but he seemed determined to make her feel better. When they came back to the party he had managed to make her laugh, and she had decided he was rather charming, after all.
Much later, when Alison and Peter had gone to bed, he turned to her eagerly.
“So, what did you think of the Professor?”
“I think I liked him. But he is a little scary. Don’t you think so?”
“I’m sure it’s just because you don’t know him yet.”
Alison sighed sleepily. “I’m sure you’re right. We actually had a pretty interesting conversation when I showed him the house.”
Peter continued to talk about the Professor and his project, but she lost the thread. She had her own things to think about. When her father had convinced her to not go further with her education she had believed that door was closed for good and she hadn’t thought about it since then. But it wasn’t, not really. She and Peter wanted children, but not just yet and she had both the time and money to study if she wanted to. Her conversation with the Professor felt as if it had brought her an unexpected gift, opening up a new path for her and she could feel a small stir of expectation.
“I think I would like to do an evening course or something. Keep up a bit,” she said, interrupting Peter mid-sentence.
He laughed. “What? Something important like napkin-folding or flower arranging?”
She threw a pillow at him, but then she became serious. “Do you think that’s all I’m good for? Being pretty and keeping the house nice?”
Peter stopped laughing. “Of course not. I was just teasing. I’m sure you will be fantastic at it - you’re much smarter than me.”
And with that he pulled Alison closer, and they both stopped thinking of anything but each other.
