It's a Wonderful Life, Martin Crieff (Chapter Two)
Title: It's a Wonderful Life, Martin Crieff (Chapter Two)
Author: Jenny Starseed
Rating: PG
Word Count: 1626
Warnings: Depression, Suicidal thoughts
Character(s): Martin Crieff, Douglas Richardson, Arthur Shappy, Carolyn Knapp-Shappy
Summary: Martin Crieff thinks the world is a better place without him. That is until a guardian angel appears to show him a terrible alternate reality of MJN Air without Martin Crieff.
A re-telling of It's a Wonderful Life.
Author's Notes: Thanks to pb-jwaffles for beta-ing this fic waaay back in March. She caught all my terrible newbie writer mistakes and gave me wonderful suggestions.
It feels a little rediculous posting Christmas fic in March, but I'm pretty determined to post this no matter what time of year this is.
The angel appeared with a pop that startled Martin that he dropped his paracetamol. He apologized and clumsily got to his knees to pick up the pills before shaking the angel’s outreached hand. The angel could have been one of the agricultural students but he had never seen her before. At least he was fairly sure he hadn’t seen her before. She was one of those non-descript, plain-face girls that were crafted to go unnoticed by the masses. She could be someone’s girlfriend or somebody’s sister that was introduced to you at parties but you could never remember the name of. Even her clothes were forgettable: horn-rimmed glasses, jeans, a blue jumper and a blackberry in her hand. The only recognizable thing was her rude and no non-sense attitude when she rolled her eyes when Martin shook her hand with a pill still stuck to his palm.
“So, you’re the first one on my roster today,” she said in a non-descript American accent, turning her attention to her Blackberry.
Martin gaped at her. “Roster?”
“You’re one of the poor souls who want to kill themselves tonight, am I correct?” she asked, still not looking up from her Blackberry. Martin didn’t like her dismissive tone. Who was this stranger making him feel unwelcome in his own flat?
“Excuse me, but this is a private room,” he said, using his best authoritative voice. The one he used with naughty children and unruly passengers. “You have no permission to be here.”
“Oh I don’t doubt that. It’s almost Christmas Eve and no one wants to do what you’re about to do in front of an audience,” replied the girl, finally putting the Blackberry away. She held out her hand to be shaken, obviously forgetting that she already shook his hand already. “Anyway, my name is Tabitha and I will be your guardian angel for tonight.”
“Guardian angel?” repeated Martin, shaking her hand numbly, not knowing what to do.
“And don’t ever call me Tabby,” she said, squeezing his hand hard to emphasize the point. It made Martin wince before she let go. “I’m your angel, not your best mate or chum or whatever you call your best friend over here. Heaven has sent a red flag against your name, and I’m one of those sorry angels who have to come down here and talk you out of it. Because idiots like you never think of others when you do this, only yourself. And believe me; no one is as useless as they think they are.”
“So I haven’t succeeded...in...ah...”began Martin, not knowing how he wanted to end that sentence.
“Offing yourself, as you Brits like to call it?” finished Tabitha.
“Yes, that.”
“I can’t see how you could have. That useless bottle of paracetamol is on the ground. You can’t kill yourself with that anyway. Shit, I wasn’t supposed to say that, you know, give you tips,” she said, catching herself in her mistake. “I’m part of Heaven’s Suicide Prevention Team; it would be against our rules. I have a long night ahead of me, you know? We guardian angels often have to work very long hours during this holiday season. People always get so grumpy during the holidays just because they can’t see their kids during Christmas or their wife cheated on them. In your case, you’ve nearly crashed your plane and now you anticipate being jobless and useless for the rest of your life.”
“For a guardian angel, you’re not a very nice one,” remarked Martin peevishly. The shock of having a guardian angel had given way to annoyance.
“No,” agreed Tabitha. “I can’t say I am. Listen, the Suicide Prevention Team where angels demonstrate their care skills to earn their wings by preventing suicides. It’s like a driving test or your CPL test, except it’s for angel wings.”
“And how many times have you tried to take this angel test?”
Tabitha didn’t look like she wanted to say. Martin crossed his arms and stared at her, wordlessly demanding an answer. Eventually she relented. “Twenty-three times.”
“Bloody hell.”
“I know!” she moaned. “So they sent me to save a pilot who failed his CPL exam four times. Call it Heaven’s sense of humour.”
“That means,” Martin began slowly, “you haven’t been able to save twenty-three people. And they’ve all died?”
“Correct!” she answered cheerfully. It was as though the cheerful tone would diminish or distract Martin from how terrible she was at her job.
Martin didn’t know how to feel about that. He hated incompetence, even if it was to his advantage. It was offensive to him to be assigned to such an inept guardian angel even if it meant Martin would surely get his wish to die in peace by the end of the night. His guardian angel talked like a lucky sidekick he had seen in a lot of American television shows, except bossier and maybe a bit intimidating. And Martin really disliked bossy people. He couldn’t help but be defensive and contrary as he sat silently while Tabitha was typing furiously on her blackberry again.
“Is this going to be like that American film with Jimmy Stewart?” Martin inquired. “You’re going to show me an alternate universe where I never existed?”
“Yup. It’s what Frank Capra was sent to do: Make a movie that everyone is familiar with and watches during Christmas so that we angels don’t have to explain this process over and over again. But it took years for that film to be popular enough to get it through people’s thick heads as to how this angel suicide prevention program works.”
“What happens if I decide to kill myself after this grand tour of my life?” Martin asked.
“You die, meet Jean-Pierre, who will give you a very bad smack down for being an idiot,” Tabitha snapped. “And will fail to get my wings again. You know how hard it is to manoeuvre around Heaven without wings? It’s like going through life on Earth without a driver’s license.”
“Listen, I’m a thoroughly useless bugger,” Martin retorted, suddenly annoyed that his life was nothing but a stepping stone for her to get her wings. “I’m not going to live just so you can have your wings license to move around Heaven.”
“Ah! But according to this, you’re not a useless bugger,” said Tabitha, showing him the screen to her Blackberry. Martin squinted at the squiggly symbols that reminded him of calculus equations done in calligraphy. He was unimpressed. But Tabitha continued, “Apparently, all sorts of things wouldn’t have happened if you weren’t alive. In fact, God thinks you’re a pretty swell guy. He wants you to stay on Earth and do more pilot-y things. Maybe have a kid or two and keep Carolyn from firing Douglas. But we’ll get to that later.”
She tapped some more on her blackberry, before she glanced up with a smile. Martin didn’t smile back.
Tabitha gave a tired sigh. “Listen Mister, I have a lot of suicidal people to go through. You have the option of doing the past, present and future tour a la Charles Dickens style, or the Jimmy Stewart style. I’m partial to the Jimmy Stewart style since I do have a lot of people on my roster tonight. Or do you want to see your childhood again?”
“Not particularly,” said Martin. He thought of all the painful and embarrassing memories of failure. “My childhood was boring and rubbish.”
“Don’t knock it, Mister,” she scolded. “I’ve seen a lot of rubbish childhoods and they’re nothing like yours. Yours was a picnic with dancing teddy bears when you compare it with theirs. I’d say you came away relatively unscathed. You’re a working man, no one hates you-“
“Ok. Can we get on with it?” Martin interrupted. “My landlord might come in at any moment, I’d rather get my...er...death over with.”
“Such impatience. You’re thirty-two. You should be taking this slowly. You’re not fifteen. Oh God, the teenagers!” she exclaimed. She then winced as if she was reliving a bad memory. “I had such a hard time
circa 1994 when I failed to convince that Kurt Cobain to keep living and bam! I’ve got One-hundred and fifty teenagers on my roster, all with guns and the Nirvana Unplugged CD on loop.”
“Who?”
“Right, never mind,” said Tabitha with a dismissive wave of her hand. “I’m showing my age. Listen Martin, do you want to see your alternate non-life? What your non-life would look like if you had never lived?”
“I’m sure the world would be all right,” said Martin slowly. “I’m sort of rubbish at my life. I doubt would be missed.”
Tabitha snorted in disbelief. “That’s what they all say, or else I wouldn’t be here, telling you and twenty other people ‘hey! Don’t stick that head into the oven, your mom loves you!’ ‘Step away from the ledge, your son will miss you!’ Or ‘put that aspirin away! You can’t kill yourself like that!’ Oops, I wasn’t supposed say that about the aspirin.”
“It’s called paracetamol,” said Martin, taking petty joy in correcting her. “And you talk a lot for an angel.”
“Bethany, the other angel, she goes through her charges a lot quicker than me. It’s her meaningful looks and soft words,” Tabitha explained with a hint of envy and a lot of sarcasm. “Well, this is my style. I talk. I talk a lot.”
“That’s probably why you don’t have any wings if this is how you go about saving people from themselves.”
Tabitha patted Martin hard on the back. He winced.
“Cheeky!” she said. “The charge talks back. Your depression hasn’t sucked all the spark of life out of you. There might be hope for me yet, ginger boy.”
Author: Jenny Starseed
Rating: PG
Word Count: 1626
Warnings: Depression, Suicidal thoughts
Character(s): Martin Crieff, Douglas Richardson, Arthur Shappy, Carolyn Knapp-Shappy
Summary: Martin Crieff thinks the world is a better place without him. That is until a guardian angel appears to show him a terrible alternate reality of MJN Air without Martin Crieff.
A re-telling of It's a Wonderful Life.
Author's Notes: Thanks to pb-jwaffles for beta-ing this fic waaay back in March. She caught all my terrible newbie writer mistakes and gave me wonderful suggestions.
It feels a little rediculous posting Christmas fic in March, but I'm pretty determined to post this no matter what time of year this is.
The angel appeared with a pop that startled Martin that he dropped his paracetamol. He apologized and clumsily got to his knees to pick up the pills before shaking the angel’s outreached hand. The angel could have been one of the agricultural students but he had never seen her before. At least he was fairly sure he hadn’t seen her before. She was one of those non-descript, plain-face girls that were crafted to go unnoticed by the masses. She could be someone’s girlfriend or somebody’s sister that was introduced to you at parties but you could never remember the name of. Even her clothes were forgettable: horn-rimmed glasses, jeans, a blue jumper and a blackberry in her hand. The only recognizable thing was her rude and no non-sense attitude when she rolled her eyes when Martin shook her hand with a pill still stuck to his palm.
“So, you’re the first one on my roster today,” she said in a non-descript American accent, turning her attention to her Blackberry.
Martin gaped at her. “Roster?”
“You’re one of the poor souls who want to kill themselves tonight, am I correct?” she asked, still not looking up from her Blackberry. Martin didn’t like her dismissive tone. Who was this stranger making him feel unwelcome in his own flat?
“Excuse me, but this is a private room,” he said, using his best authoritative voice. The one he used with naughty children and unruly passengers. “You have no permission to be here.”
“Oh I don’t doubt that. It’s almost Christmas Eve and no one wants to do what you’re about to do in front of an audience,” replied the girl, finally putting the Blackberry away. She held out her hand to be shaken, obviously forgetting that she already shook his hand already. “Anyway, my name is Tabitha and I will be your guardian angel for tonight.”
“Guardian angel?” repeated Martin, shaking her hand numbly, not knowing what to do.
“And don’t ever call me Tabby,” she said, squeezing his hand hard to emphasize the point. It made Martin wince before she let go. “I’m your angel, not your best mate or chum or whatever you call your best friend over here. Heaven has sent a red flag against your name, and I’m one of those sorry angels who have to come down here and talk you out of it. Because idiots like you never think of others when you do this, only yourself. And believe me; no one is as useless as they think they are.”
“So I haven’t succeeded...in...ah...”began Martin, not knowing how he wanted to end that sentence.
“Offing yourself, as you Brits like to call it?” finished Tabitha.
“Yes, that.”
“I can’t see how you could have. That useless bottle of paracetamol is on the ground. You can’t kill yourself with that anyway. Shit, I wasn’t supposed to say that, you know, give you tips,” she said, catching herself in her mistake. “I’m part of Heaven’s Suicide Prevention Team; it would be against our rules. I have a long night ahead of me, you know? We guardian angels often have to work very long hours during this holiday season. People always get so grumpy during the holidays just because they can’t see their kids during Christmas or their wife cheated on them. In your case, you’ve nearly crashed your plane and now you anticipate being jobless and useless for the rest of your life.”
“For a guardian angel, you’re not a very nice one,” remarked Martin peevishly. The shock of having a guardian angel had given way to annoyance.
“No,” agreed Tabitha. “I can’t say I am. Listen, the Suicide Prevention Team where angels demonstrate their care skills to earn their wings by preventing suicides. It’s like a driving test or your CPL test, except it’s for angel wings.”
“And how many times have you tried to take this angel test?”
Tabitha didn’t look like she wanted to say. Martin crossed his arms and stared at her, wordlessly demanding an answer. Eventually she relented. “Twenty-three times.”
“Bloody hell.”
“I know!” she moaned. “So they sent me to save a pilot who failed his CPL exam four times. Call it Heaven’s sense of humour.”
“That means,” Martin began slowly, “you haven’t been able to save twenty-three people. And they’ve all died?”
“Correct!” she answered cheerfully. It was as though the cheerful tone would diminish or distract Martin from how terrible she was at her job.
Martin didn’t know how to feel about that. He hated incompetence, even if it was to his advantage. It was offensive to him to be assigned to such an inept guardian angel even if it meant Martin would surely get his wish to die in peace by the end of the night. His guardian angel talked like a lucky sidekick he had seen in a lot of American television shows, except bossier and maybe a bit intimidating. And Martin really disliked bossy people. He couldn’t help but be defensive and contrary as he sat silently while Tabitha was typing furiously on her blackberry again.
“Is this going to be like that American film with Jimmy Stewart?” Martin inquired. “You’re going to show me an alternate universe where I never existed?”
“Yup. It’s what Frank Capra was sent to do: Make a movie that everyone is familiar with and watches during Christmas so that we angels don’t have to explain this process over and over again. But it took years for that film to be popular enough to get it through people’s thick heads as to how this angel suicide prevention program works.”
“What happens if I decide to kill myself after this grand tour of my life?” Martin asked.
“You die, meet Jean-Pierre, who will give you a very bad smack down for being an idiot,” Tabitha snapped. “And will fail to get my wings again. You know how hard it is to manoeuvre around Heaven without wings? It’s like going through life on Earth without a driver’s license.”
“Listen, I’m a thoroughly useless bugger,” Martin retorted, suddenly annoyed that his life was nothing but a stepping stone for her to get her wings. “I’m not going to live just so you can have your wings license to move around Heaven.”
“Ah! But according to this, you’re not a useless bugger,” said Tabitha, showing him the screen to her Blackberry. Martin squinted at the squiggly symbols that reminded him of calculus equations done in calligraphy. He was unimpressed. But Tabitha continued, “Apparently, all sorts of things wouldn’t have happened if you weren’t alive. In fact, God thinks you’re a pretty swell guy. He wants you to stay on Earth and do more pilot-y things. Maybe have a kid or two and keep Carolyn from firing Douglas. But we’ll get to that later.”
She tapped some more on her blackberry, before she glanced up with a smile. Martin didn’t smile back.
Tabitha gave a tired sigh. “Listen Mister, I have a lot of suicidal people to go through. You have the option of doing the past, present and future tour a la Charles Dickens style, or the Jimmy Stewart style. I’m partial to the Jimmy Stewart style since I do have a lot of people on my roster tonight. Or do you want to see your childhood again?”
“Not particularly,” said Martin. He thought of all the painful and embarrassing memories of failure. “My childhood was boring and rubbish.”
“Don’t knock it, Mister,” she scolded. “I’ve seen a lot of rubbish childhoods and they’re nothing like yours. Yours was a picnic with dancing teddy bears when you compare it with theirs. I’d say you came away relatively unscathed. You’re a working man, no one hates you-“
“Ok. Can we get on with it?” Martin interrupted. “My landlord might come in at any moment, I’d rather get my...er...death over with.”
“Such impatience. You’re thirty-two. You should be taking this slowly. You’re not fifteen. Oh God, the teenagers!” she exclaimed. She then winced as if she was reliving a bad memory. “I had such a hard time
circa 1994 when I failed to convince that Kurt Cobain to keep living and bam! I’ve got One-hundred and fifty teenagers on my roster, all with guns and the Nirvana Unplugged CD on loop.”
“Who?”
“Right, never mind,” said Tabitha with a dismissive wave of her hand. “I’m showing my age. Listen Martin, do you want to see your alternate non-life? What your non-life would look like if you had never lived?”
“I’m sure the world would be all right,” said Martin slowly. “I’m sort of rubbish at my life. I doubt would be missed.”
Tabitha snorted in disbelief. “That’s what they all say, or else I wouldn’t be here, telling you and twenty other people ‘hey! Don’t stick that head into the oven, your mom loves you!’ ‘Step away from the ledge, your son will miss you!’ Or ‘put that aspirin away! You can’t kill yourself like that!’ Oops, I wasn’t supposed say that about the aspirin.”
“It’s called paracetamol,” said Martin, taking petty joy in correcting her. “And you talk a lot for an angel.”
“Bethany, the other angel, she goes through her charges a lot quicker than me. It’s her meaningful looks and soft words,” Tabitha explained with a hint of envy and a lot of sarcasm. “Well, this is my style. I talk. I talk a lot.”
“That’s probably why you don’t have any wings if this is how you go about saving people from themselves.”
Tabitha patted Martin hard on the back. He winced.
“Cheeky!” she said. “The charge talks back. Your depression hasn’t sucked all the spark of life out of you. There might be hope for me yet, ginger boy.”