Susie’s arse was starting to hurt.  But then, it was that time of year again.  The decorations had all been unpacked and it was time for her to take up her usually position.  Sitting there with her toilet roll tube torso stuffed atop the highest bough, Susie couldn’t help thinking that little Rebecca, for all her cute and adorable ways, was actually a bit of a twat.  I mean, for starters what kind of a name is Susie.  All the other kids had given their angels rather more grandiose names like Gabriel, but no she was just plain old Susie.  Plain old Susie destined for one month of the year to look as though she was perpetually shitting out a Norwegian spruce.

A whole host of crafts had lain before the sticky palms of that blonde headed little twerp, and yet here she sat not a sparkly pipe cleaner in sight.  The faintest globule of glitter glue clung to her grey cardboard wing, most of it had melted off in the winter of 2008 when dad had left the fairy lights on all night, and Susie began to feel that 2014 had not been her year.  She had been stuck in a box with the Santa tea light who always got pride of place on the coffee table and my god was he an arsehole.  Always banging on about some utterly mundane thing like how whilst Ikea tea lights lasted longer than Asda’s they did not smell as good as Tesco’s own brand – fuck off Santa.  She much preferred her summers with the singing Rudolf.  His batteries had died many years back and the family had deemed him not interesting enough to bother changing them.  This tumultuous winter had left Rudolf with a kind of dark cynicism and dry wit that Susie found appealing.

She longed to discuss the status quo of this year’s tree layout with him.  She wondered if he had noticed that the china reindeer with the jiggly legs had fallen below the Cyclops snowman mum had brought from the Salisbury craft fair because ‘she felt bad for him’, and if perhaps he had any thoughts (she figured he sure as hell might) about that unsightly chip on the nauseatingly glittery snowflake.  She cast her googly eyes across the room but Rudolf was slumped starting out of the window.  Whether he had turned himself around or whether the family had put him like that was unclear, the years had been cruel to him.

Oh, if only mum and dad had had another child who might have made their own angel.  Then she could have been retired amongst the vegetable peelings to live out her life as any normal toilet roll tube might. But she had been chosen for a higher purpose, and as much as she had enjoyed this in the beginning Susie was beginning to feel the pressure weighing down on her ping pong head.  She longed for that fateful day when mum would “accidently” break her, or a leak in the roof might cause her to fray and unravel.  Till then she was resigned to the role, to forever be the female lead never the funny friend, always the bride never the bridesmaid, the perennial star of this lametta strewn show.

A sharp glare of light jolted Susie from her day dream, and blinking away the yellow spots that now appeared in her vision she searched for the source.  Tiny slices of turquoise and white light reflected onto the walls and she realised whatever it was must be on the tree.  Glancing down through the branches she locked eyes with a new ornament she hadn’t noticed before.  A tiny glass angel twirled conceitedly against a well placed blue fairy light, and she was affronted to find this tiny glass angel staring straight back at her, intently, with a look that said (and she would have to double check this with Rudolf): I’m coming for you bitch.  Next year, that top stop is mine.

Susie shuffled nervously, a few pine needles dug into her undercarriage and she looked back down prepared to throw some serious shade into those delicate beaded eyes, when she noticed her movement had unsettled the tiny glass angel.  It swung backwards and forwards in slow motion as if caught in between time and space.  Susie froze unable to watch yet unable to look away as the angel’s loop of string edged over pine needle after pine needle, closer and closer to the end of the branch.  Susie recalled the Christmas of 2011 when she had have been saved from a fatal fall after one of the three purple woollen strands on her head (she supposed little Rebecca had meant them to be hair) had thankfully become tangled on the tree mid-descent.  Phew, she thought, before remembering with a jump why she has recalled this memory.  This minute movement once again rippled through the tree and the tiny glass angel’s loop slipped off the final pine needle and she plunged 2ft crudely shattering all over the recently hoovered floor.

Mum, having not seen the cause of the accident, screamed at Rebecca for touching the tree, Dad in turn screamed at Mum for screaming at Rebecca and accused her of not getting in the Christmas spirit, despite the fact that she had spent all yesterday baking mince pies for him and his co-workers.  A wry smirk tugged at the faded felt-tip mouth on Susie’s face.  Well she thought; that’s that. She couldn’t wait to tell Rudolf.