As Shorty launches its own fanfic site for summer, Joseph Moore writes a FanFiction imagining Chris Warner’s sad, inevitable death in a classic season finale about five or so years into the future. //
The Death of Chris Warner
“Prepare to die Warner!” the gang member who was kind of good at acting yelled, a gun in his outstretched hand. “It doesn’t have to end like this,” the once-attractive senior doctor responded, gritting his teeth behind his doughy cheeks. He was in no position to defend himself. In one hand he had a fire extinguisher, with which he was courageously battling the blaze that had engulfed the hospital café. The other hand was deep inside Rachel McKenna, assisting the delivery of their twelfth child.
“Look, we can talk this through,” said Warner, trying to buy some time. But there was no time. The clock on the bomb attached to Harry Warner was running damn close to zero, and the rescue helicopter TK had bought and taught himself to fly was on the other side of Ferndale. Chris Warner closed his goldfishy eyes. This sure as shit was a Shortland St season finale.
[OPENING TITLES ROLL]
Having chilled out for the duration of the opening titles, Warner heaved back into action and pulled a newborn child out of his stern but loving CEO wife. It was a beautiful baby girl. “What shall we call her?”, Rachel asked, out of breath from all the acting you have to do in a childbirth scene.
Chris thought for a moment. Then, staring deeply into Rachel’s assertive green eyes, he said, “I want to name her after the thing I love most in the world.” After a bit of debate, they eventually agreed that “Lasagne Topper From The Shortland Street Cafe” was not a very good name for a girl, so they settled on Sarah or something.
“I’m serious Warner, I’m going to shoot!” the gang member pulled the thing on the back of the gun that makes guns ready to shoot. Click. Warner washed the baby goo off his hands and palmed his newborn off to the babysitter who looks after Shortland St babies until they are 12 and ready for their an underage-drinking subplot. He stood to face his potential murderer. “Stuff off!” he said, using the most offensive word allowed in a 7pm timeslot.
“Easy, easy!” The gang member edged towards the doctor. His Hallensteins leather jacket was slightly too large for his torso, but it was the only thing that said ‘gang member’ in the Shortland St wardrobe. “I gave you enough chances, Warner. I trusted you to put the drugs in the scones they sell at The IV, so as to repay the debt you owe me from when I lent you money when you had that topical-at-the-time gambling addiction storyline. I trusted you!”
Warner backed away as the gang member drew nearer, stepping closer and closer to flames slowly eating through an old metal lunch cart. “What did you expect me to do?” he stammered. “The health inspectors were due at The IV any day. I wasn’t going to jeopardise Murray’s ‘A’ hygiene rating for a stupid drug debt.”
“Murray’s dead!” the gang member yelled. And as Warner turned the corner of the caf, he noticed bits of shiny bald head, strewn around on a pile of lifeless extras – victims of one of the five bombs that day.
The flames licked at Warner’s back, bronzing his once-pristine white doctor coat. He knew he was out of time. Across town, TK was hoping to get into his rescue helicopter to come and save everyone, but a late one at The IV had resulted in him losing his helicopter licence for a minimum of six months.
Warner dropped to his knees and pleaded for his life. Not only for himself, but for all of Ferndale. With seven murders, three abortions, eight homophobias, one drowning, lots of explosions, and at least 19 teenagers caught doing either drugs or cyberbullying, it had been a rough year for the community.
“Not now!” A tear began its way down the doctor’s weirdly likeable face.
“I’m sorry, Warner. You’ve been here at Shortland St long enough.”
The gang member pulled the trigger. And time began to slow. Slow, like the diction of a fresh Unitec graduate playing a bed-ridden patient. Like any administration-heavy storyline involving Boyd.
Warner could see the bullet spinning toward his head. And for a fleeting second, he saw his reflection in its shiny gold tip. He saw his past. He saw a man they once called Dr. Love, who could bed any woman he chose by making a PG sex pun. He saw a family man, who had fathered 37 children in 20 years to 19 different women (and one to a man, in a quickly scrapped storyline from 2016). He saw a survivor, who had been falsely jailed for murder, who’d pulled through a horrific car crash in the ’90s, who’d recovered from a brief stint of flying-fox-induced brain damage*.
Most people live their lives hoping to achieve at least one thing of note. If his ended right now, here in this cafe, it wouldn’t matter. In his 30-odd years at Shortland St, Chris Warner had lived a thousand lifetimes, and each one of them had thrilled an entire nation. He saw his reflection in the bullet once more. He smiled. This time, he saw a man who was content.
The bullet went into his head, and came out the other side. Dr. Christopher “Chris” Warner was dead.
*This one is totally real
Check out Joseph Moore’s FanFiction Comedy group here. Also – Shortland Street are running their own fanfic competition right now called Love Hurts – click through if you want to read even weirder, more earnest tales than the above. Mystifyingly, most seem to involve Chris dying or having some kind of medical emergency.