I'm doing a silly project where I write Hallmark movies for weirdos who don't even like Christmas. This is day 1: Weekend at Marley’s
Present focused all her energy on opacity and an expression of piety. She looked down at the clouds below her and thought humble thoughts. Holy thoughts. She thought about peace and goodwill towards all mankind. She probably looked so fucking holy right now.
“You’re smirking,” whispered Future.
“Some of us still have faces,” she snapped.
“Stop.” Michael, first among angels, champion of the righteous, rubbed his eyes. “Stop bickering, stop talking, and more importantly, stop taking creative liberties with the assignment.”
They stopped. Present tried for holy thoughts again.
“Now.” Michael shuffled through his papers before setting one before them. “This is your fourth and final chance. You three will go to Ebenezer Scrooge’s home near Leadenhall Market. You will appear to Ebenezer Scrooge and NOT an innocent stranger passing by. You will show him a vision of…” He trailed off, pointing expectantly at Past.
“His lonely past, so similar to the downtrodden that he now despises,” recited Past eagerly.
Michael pointed at Past next, and she hastily said, “The joy around him from which he has, uh. The joy he’s not doing.”
“And the suffering he has wrought upon good people,” added Past smugly, like the absolute suck-up he was.
Michael raised an angelic eyebrow before gesturing towards Future, who intoned gleefully, “His wretched fate in an unmarked grave, mourned by none, and the myriad souls he has sent towards an early death!”
“See, that’s the sort of thing we would really like you to tone down. You’re not supposed to enjoy the macabre task, you’re supposed to bear it as a cross.” Michael sighed. “This is your final shot at this, and I mean it this time. Get it right or remain in Purgatory. Got it?”
“Got it,” they spoke in unison.
And just like that, they were in London; wisps floating through the evening fog, swirling amidst the pedestrians and smoke and thick, wet air of the city.
“If you fuck this up again for me,” Past said, “I will find a way to beat you to a second death.”
Future hissed and Present remained silent. They all knew this one had to work.
They stopped on the doorstep but the door said “Marley,” not Scrooge, so they argued about it for a good thirty minutes until the bells tolled midnight.
“Shit!” Past shouted, shoving incorporeally through the door. He muttered “shit shit shit shit shit” until he was out of earshot.
Present and Future waited for the longest hour of their deaths. It was a quiet Christmas Eve, cold and damp, and even the most wretched of London’s denizens had found somewhere else to be.
“We’re gonna get it right this time,” said Present, trying to sound declarative instead of pleading.
“Yeah,” agreed Future. “Past is probably in there just stuffing his heart full of regret, nostalgia, and empathy.”
“We’re gonna get it right,” Present said again.
They waited.
-
Past stumbled out at 12:55, visibly distressed.
“Well?” Future asked eagerly.
“How was it?” asked Present.
“Was he regretful? Remorseful?”
“Is he wallowing in nostalgia?”
“Does he long to change his ways?”
Past seemed paler than usual. “I mean, maybe?”
“Maybe’s not fucking good enough!” growled Future.
“What happened?” asked Present.
“I don’t know!” Past floated in circles on the porch, round and round like a slow, spectral whirlpool. “He said his past self was whiny. That he was glad he pulled himself by his bootstraps and stopped being such a snowflake.”
“Bootstraps?” Future shrank a foot. “A snowflake!”
“Damn it!” Present shouted. “This is going even worse than last time!”
“No, no, no,” Future muttered. “We can’t. We have to turn this around.”
“Yeah,” said Present, reaching for him. “Yeah, if he’s this sort of asshole, we can’t just appeal to empathy and regret. We have to go big.”
“We have to scare him!” Future grew to his full height again, and then some. The white glint of a skull shone from behind his black cowl.
“No, we have to terrify him!” shouted Present. “No more pussyfooting around! We’re gonna scare this bitch into reforming, and then we’re gonna get into heaven!”
“We’ll show him the fate awaiting the greedy and the wicked!” said Future.
“Yeah! And we’ll show him all the grossest ways greedy men have died!” Finally, some real ghostly shit. This was going to work. Michael’s boring shit hadn’t worked but this? They were basically already through the pearly gates.
“No! No!” Past tried to grab their arms, but he was hilariously incorporeal. “You heard Michael! No creative license!”
“Well, maybe Michael’s script worked fine when the Black Death was everywhere but it’s 1843 and modern times call for modern tactics.”
“I have ex wives down there, Past. Four of them!” Future’s form became even more tattered and ghastly as he thought of them. “I can’t go down!”
“And you’re not gonna!” Past beckoned to him. “Come on. You’re coming with me! Together or not at all!”
“He’s gonna change his ways RIGHT NOW.” The air shook with the final words, and the two of them bolted upstairs.
-
Ebenezer lay on the bed, eyes wide and bloodshot, mouth agape in a rictus of horror, the grayest man Present had ever seen. One hand clutched with long, curling fingernails at his throat, the other at his heart.
Present poked him in the eyeball this time. He did not move.
“I told you so,” said Past yet again.
“We’re all going to hell,” said Future grimly.
“No, no,” said Present. “Maybe we can scare him alive? No.” She started to pace.
“Maybe we can say he was dead when we got here,” suggested Past.
“We could flee,” said Future. “Purgatory isn’t so bad. London’s a great place to haunt.”
Present’s mind raced. She opened the file she’d been handed and leafed through the contents. “Cratchit. Bob Cratchit. We go to him.”
“Is he a necromancer?” asked Past.
“Even better: he’s a decent guy who’s easy to bully. Come on!” She rushed downstairs and into the dark, foggy night.
-
To his credit, Bob Cratchit did not scream. He stared at the three of them for ten wordless seconds before whispering, “Am I dead?”
“Not yet,” said Future.
“Stop it, you’ll kill another!” said Past.
“You’re fine, everyone you love is fine,” Present said quickly. “You have been, uh. You’ve been called by the great beyond to do us wretched, forgotten souls a favor.”
“But it’s also a favor for you.”
“And your family.”
“A way to right the wrongs of the Past,” Past whispered.
“And grasp hold of the Present,” she said.
“To make a better Future,” he said, then added, “Wow, we should have been doing this as a team the whole time.”
“It’s not bad,” Past admitted.
“What?” Bob squeaked miserably.
“We need your help and we’ll get you a lot of money if you do it,” said Present. “Come on, out of bed. You’re going to work.”
-
“So let me get this straight.” Bob hadn’t taken his eyes off of the corpse for the entire time he’d been upstairs. He spoke clearly and calmly, but his gaze remained fixed on the nasty old man. “You want me to write a fraudulent will for my notoriously evil and miserly boss.”
“Right,” agreed Past.
“And then you intend to puppet the corpse of my boss around London on Christmas Day in order to give me and the other men in his employ a raise.”
“And to cut the interest rates and forgive accrued interest of anyone who took out a predatory loan from Scrooge’s accounting house,” Present reminded him.
“And you want me to imitate his voice to declare all of this in public so that everyone - including literal angels - can hear it.”
“It all sound so much more simple when you say it that way.” Future sounded relieved.
“I’ve died,” muttered Bob. “This is hell and I’m dead.”
“Oh, none of us are going to hell,” said Present firmly. “We’re all working together on this one and none of use are going to hell.”
“This cannot be what our Lord and Savior, Je—”
Past slammed his incorporeal hands down on the table with a startling bang. “Look, do you want to save your son’s life? Does that seem like a moral good worth a little fraud? Does it seem more important that the wishes of the biggest trash can of a man I’ve ever seen? Does that possibly seem like something worth shutting the fuck over?”
Present exchanged a delighted glance with Future. Maybe Past wasn’t so bad after all.
Bob looked away from the corpse at last. He looked at the paper in front of him, then around the dusty old room that had belonged to two dead men. He considered the fine bedposts, the embroidered curtains, the mahogany dresser. He looked once more at the corpse.
“We’ll need to get him dressed,” he said.
-
“Move the feet more naturally!”
“What do you mean, more naturally?” Present crouched down, studying the feet again. She lifted the left foot, then the right, and the body of Ebenezer Scrooge trod right down Leadenhall Market.
“You have to bend the knees!” whispered Bob from where he hid amidst Future’s shadows.
Present tried, she really did, but it was hard to hold the feet and the knees at the same time. She tried to push the left knee up with her head but clearly that wasn’t going to work. She tried lifting just the knees and - “Look, I’ve got it!” She glanced up at at the upper half of the corpse. “Past, you’ve got to keep his head up!”
“Well the arms are a lot to keep track of!” Present wrenched the head back, letting one of the arms fall slack at his side.
“It’s more important than the arms, if you’re not careful the damn thing will snap right off!”
“We can say he had a stroke!” said Future helpfully. “Then you only have to worry about one of the arms!”
“This cannot be the will of the angels,” murmured Bob.
They ambled through the Market through an entirely reasonable and unsuspicious amount of gawking and fainting.
-
They burst through the doors. “Merry Christmas, Timothy!” said Bob nervously, pitching his voice low and adding a bit of a quaver. “I’ve come to give you a raise!”
Timothy Mallory sat at his table, spoon halfway to his mouth, eyes fixed upon the corpse of his employer. “Mr. Scrooge?” he asked in disbelief.
Bob stood in the corner, glancing around nervously, but he was completely concealed by Future’s dark cloak. “Well of course! Who else would give you a raise? The king?”
“When did you learn my first name?” Timothy asked, bewildered.
Present kept one hand on the corpse’s waist and the other on his jaw. She tried to match the movement’s to Bob’s words, but he wasn’t sticking to the script anymore. “Don’t worry about it!” She moved the jaw with the words and tried to tuck the corners up into a smile.
“Are you quite all right, sir?” Timothy stood from his table, dropping the spoon. “You don’t look well.”
“I had a stroke!” Bob glanced down at his paper once more, remembering the script. “And it’s brought about a change of spirit! I saw an image of my own death! But I did not die, no! I live another day to right my wrongs! And one of those wrongs is your salary, old chap! Catch!”
Past moved one of the arms as if to throw something.
“The money!” Present hissed. “You have to throw the money!”
“Where the hell is it?” asked Past, dropping Scrooge’s head to pat at his pockets. Scrooge’s head slumped sharply on his shoulders.
“Why don’t you sit down and I’ll call you a doctor?” Timothy took a cautious step closer.
“Nonsense! It’s Christmas!” Present patted at the other pocket, finding the pouch of coins and remembering to move his jaw a full two seconds after Bob had spoken. She handed the bag to Past, who flung it at the man without attempting to move Scrooge’s arm
“Well!” said Bob. “Merry Christmas!”
“You really don’t look well,” said Timothy, reaching for the man’s arm.
Present picked the body up firmly by the waist and hauled him out the door, trying to at least kick the feet a bit as she moved. Future ushered Bob out with equal speed and slammed the door behind them.
“Wow!” said Future as the propped the body against the wall. “This is easier than I thought!”
-
They argued about it for a while, then decided to drag the corpse back to Scrooge’s. They opened a window, bribed two dozen urchins very handsomely, and waited until the crowd had gathered.
“Are you ready?” Future asked.
Bob nodded, eyes fixed on his paper. “Yes. This is… I’ve done a bang-up job, actually. I can do this.”
“We all can!” said Future. “As long as Past remembers to hold up his head.”
“Well it’s a lot easier when I’m not holding up his shoulders, too,” Past grumbled. They’d stuck the corpse onto a coat rack and since then he looked much, much more believable.
At the twelfth bell, they opened the windows. “Merry Christmas!” said Bob. His Ebenezer voice was improving.
“Look, it’s him!” said someone from below.
“I bleeding told you, didn’t I?”
“I didn’t know he even knew what Christmas was!”
“Now,” whispered Future.
Past lifted the right arms and threw a generous handful of shillings out into the crowd. Gasps and giggles rose from the crowd as they scrambled for them. That had their attention.
Present moved the jaw along with Bob’s words. “I have gathered you all here today to witness my change of heart. In the night, I was moved by the Christmas Spirit! My heart has softened and my soul has broken free. I have known shame and sorrow! The scales have fallen from my eyes, and I have repented to the Lord. It is now to the people of London that I repent!”
Present lifted a hand again and threw another handful of shillings to the astonished crowd.
Bob turned his page over. “I have spent a long career fattening my own wallet at the expense of the poor. I have lived as a parasite amongst you, sucking you dry as I took and took. I have stolen joy from the proud citizens of the city, and I have seen the error of my ways!”
The crowd murmured in appreciation.
Present tried to make the lips smile again, but the facial muscles had stiffened past the point of clear movement. She hoped the jaw wouldn’t tense up too. “Starting this day, all my employee’s wages will be tripled! Yes, all of them! And they will no longer work all night, but only eight hours each day!”
Excited cheers rose from a few employees at the front, who hugged each other in joy and called out their thanks to the corpse.
Bob smiled warmly, looking out at them, before returning to his script. “And anyone with an outstanding loan will have the interest - no you know what? All those loans will be forgiven! The entire sum!”
Present moved the jaw frantically to keep up. He was going off script again.
A raucous cry of amazement rose up, and the people below starting chanting, “Scrooge! Scrooge! Scrooge! Scrooge!”
“In fact, you know what? I lobbied for that policy in the first place! Yes, I secretly lobbied amongst the House of Lords to ensure that any bills about regulating interest on short-term loans never made their way to an actual vote, even if my clever clerk can’t prove that I did it. It was definitely me. But that was back before I had a stroke! Now I will lobby for a revision of the calculation of compound interest to be more equitable to those borrowing small amounts and to decrease debt burden in lower-class estate calculations!”
A more confused cheer rose from the crowd.
“You probably don’t need to talk policy to this lot,” said Past nervously, throwing a few more coins. He forgot the hand again, but no one seemed to mind.
Bob was on a roll now. He stepped dangerously close to the window, script long forgotten. “In fact, you know what? I ask you on this day, you common folk of London! You law-abiding citizens! When’s the last time a law was passed that directly benefitted you? The House of Lords passed 61 laws last year, most of them pertaining to inheritance and foreign trade policies that only apply to luxury goods! They, too, are parasites feeding upon us righteous, hardworking people! I say we abolish them entirely! I say we look to our brethren in France fifty years hence, and I say we—”
“Too much,” hissed Present, no longer moving the jaw. They needed Michael to believe it, after all.
Future placed skeletal hand over Bob’s mouth. Bob yelped, struggled, then seemed to come to his senses. He shook his head rapidly, exhaled, and nodded at Present.
She moved the jaw to say, “Sorry, I think I had another stroke!”
There were a few polite chuckles, as well as some discussions of guillotines, but hopefully Michael wouldn’t hold that against them if anything came of it.
“Anyway, uh, Merry Christmas! Have some more money!”
Past chucked an entire purse out the window and slammed the shutters shut. “We cannot have another Reign of Terror,” he said firmly. “They really frown upon that sort of thing upstairs.”
“It’ll be fine,” said Present. “Come on. One more stop.”
-
Mrs. Cratchit opened the door and screamed.
“No, no, calm down, my lov— I mean, Madam. It’s me, Ebenezer Scrooge, your husband’s employer!” Bob’s voice was starting to get hoarse from speaking as Scrooge.
“You look like a bloody corpse!” she gasped. “You look like a demon come to snatch us!”
“Uh, no, just here to say Merry Christmas! I see your fine husband isn’t here, which is a shame! I came to give him a raise!”
Present tried to move along with the improvised words when a tiny hand tugged at her arm. A small boy stood before her, staring. “What are you doing to Mr. Scrooge’s mouth?” he asked.
“Hey, don’t give it away!” she whispered sharply.
“That child shouldn’t be able to see or hear us,” said Future darkly. “He is unwell.”
“What do you mean unwell?” asked Bob, then switched back to his old man voice. “I mean, I was unwell! Of the soul! And now I’m unwell of the body! But my soul is better!”
The child turned to Future. “Why are you covering my daddy?”
“Ho ho ho!” said Bob desperately. “Timmy, no, it’s fine! I’m covering your - I’m - I’m here to cover your daddy in money!” He stared pointedly at Past.
“Throw the money!” Present said.
Past threw a massive bag of coins on the table, once again neglecting to even jostle the hand as he did it. God, he was bad at this.
“Are you Death?” Tim stepped close to future, reaching out a hand. “Is it time?”
Future giggled in delight. “Aww, little buddy! That’s the nicest thing anyone’s ever said to me! Seriously though, you need to go to a doctor because you should not be able to see us.”
Mrs. Cratchit opened the bag and gasped, dropping it with a clatter onto the table. “Why, that’s two years’ salary right there!”
“No, no, that’s the calculated value of what Bob Cratchit saved the accounting house, minus the profits from unjust interest rates. After taxes, of course. Bob’s getting a raise and a promotion! I have his new contract right here!”
“Use your arms!” Present hissed.
Past used Scrooge’s arm to reach into the coat pocket, where it promptly got stuck. Past tugged at the wrist, then the forearm. He finally pulled at the elbow, wrenching everything free with a sickening crack. He sighed and threw the contract on the table, swinging the arm wildly.
“Merry Christmas! I’m having another stroke!” said Bob. “Tell Bob about the promotion!”
“Merry Christmas?” Mrs. Cratchit sounded more troubled than ever. She stepped close to Tim, drawing him up in her arms.
“God bless us, every one!” Tim waved to the corpse, the three ghosts, and his father.
Past and Present dropped the corpse on the stoop the second they closed the door. “We did it!” said Present. “Suck a dick, Michael!”
“I cannot believe I got stuck with you,” moaned Past.
“No, but seriously,” said Future to Bob. “It’s been great working with you but you gotta take your kid to the doctor right now.”
-
Michael rubbed his angelic eyes again and sighed the longest sigh in all of history. “This was not God’s plan,” he said.
“I told you so,” Past muttered.
“Four ex-wives,” Future moaned.
Present said nothing and focused on looking as pious as fuck.
It worked. Michael looked up. “This was not God’s plan,” he said again. “However, this is also true for much of human history. There may yet be a place for you amongst us.”
“What?” asked Past.
Present felt a glimmer of hope in her ghostly heart - as well as the glimmer of feathery wings erupting from her back.
“Look, Past, Present, and Future encompasses a lot of the space time continuum, while means that - walk and talk, come on,” he said as he unlocked the pearly gates and gestured them through. “Look, long story short, you might be the right prospective angels for a particularly vexing problem that pops up in about two centuries. Have you ever heard of cryptocurrency?”
