"Mark!" Erin shouts out in the corridor. A muffled, quiet, distant, "Yeah?" was heard down the hall.
"Keep an eye on Talia, I have to go to the post office!" she shouts in response, pulling on her coat, and grabbing her purse.
"Got it!" he shouts back.
She rolls her eyes, and leaves the house, feeling like she's about to lose her mind. In all honesty, Erin felt like marrying Mark was a mistake. Sure, she loved him, and all, but she didn't feel as though he was mature enough for a family--for a proper one, anyway. She thought he'd be better off as a single bachelor.
Getting into the car, Erin decided to hit her head against the horn, really hard. "Shut the fuck up!", one of her neighbors shouted at her. Rolling her eyes, she shut the door and sped off to the post office.
She felt comfort in the post office, really--the smell of envelopes and mail from all around the world really made it a nice place to spend even a small amount of time in. Pulling her empty mailbag out of her purse, she unlocked her P.O. box first, dumping all of the mail in it. Then she moved onto Mark's, and doing the same. Once she locked the P.O. boxes, she clambered back into her car, and groaned. She needed alcohol. She was sick and tired of her daily life--take care of the kid, provide for the family at her dead-end developer job, and cry herself to sleep. It got so bad to the point where she refused to share a bed with Mark--she slept in the guest room instead.
Driving to a nearby, 24/7 convenience store, she looked through everything. She tried to think to herself, do I really want to throw my life away to yet another alcohol addiction? Frowning, she pulled out her phone and went to text Leah, someone she rarely talked to ever since she got with Mark. It had been two and a half years since Tom's trial, where she fucked up and didn't speak up, and it had been two years since Tom was released, and it had been two years since Tom overdosed on cough syrup in Tucker's bathroom.
Erin felt tears in her eyes. Fuck it, she thought to herself, pressing the call button instead of send.
After the second ring, Leah picked up.
"Erin?" she asked.
"Leah! Hey, how are you?" questions Erin.
Leah smiled on the other line. "I'm great! How are you, Erin?"
"Well, uh, you see..."
"Oh boy," says Leah, her tone dropping, "Hit me with it."
"Wanna come over and get wasted?" asks Erin, reading the label on a bottle of wine.
"Is that even a question?" she asks, laughing.
Erin smiles, "Good shit. I just didn't wanna be alone, ya know?"
"Yeah, I get you. Fuck it, you wanna invite Sonj, too?"
"Of course!" Erin shouted.
"Great!" Leah exclaims, "Be over in an hour, I gotta put on my face."
Erin laughed. "See you, Leah."
"C'ya!" exclaims Leah, the line dying.
Erin smiled to herself and picked up two different wines, a bottle of vodka, and some rum.
She shook her head. "Boy, am I going to regret this tomorrow..." she mumbled, going to check out, showing the clerk her ID.
Once Erin got home, she put the bags of alcohol in her purse and grabbed the mailbag. She then proceeded to sort through the mail the couple had received.
Erin, not being an active YouTuber anymore, rarely got fanmail, and mainly only ordered stuff online to get in her P.O. box. She dumped the bag on the large table and started to move Mark's mail to the left, and hers to the right.
Mark obviously ended up having tons more, Erin only having about twelve letters, and eight packages, compared to the hundreds of letters and packages Mark had received. She flipped through her letters. "Bills, bills, bills, fanmail, bills, fanmail, bills..." she sighed and slowly started to open the ones that weren't bills.
Unaddressed... she thought to herself, tearing open the flap of the envelope, and pulling out one of the contents very slowly. Confused, she looked at them--one was a tied batch of letters, and the rest were polaroid pictures. She turned the polaroid pictures over, seeing pictures of her and Tom, mainly, but Jordan, Leah, and Tucker were featured in some of them. There were around eight pictures. What the hell? Erin thought to herself, opening the nearly-crumpled batch of letters.
She untied the ribbon holding them all together, and they all immediately fell to the table. She grabbed the first one she could, and it was dated the day of Tom's suicide.
It read:
Dear Erin,
I don't know if this is going to work. I really hope it does, I need to get out of here.
You might be confused if you're seeing this. That's okay, it's normal. Take some deep breaths, love.
Let me explain, and please don't be angry at me.
It's me, Tom. I faked my suicide.
I don't know how you feel. I don't. You're married to Mark.
Erin. I can't do this.
I have to fake this. I have to get out.
I don't know if I'll mail this out to you.
I love you, Erin.
L̶o̶v̶e̶ Sincerely, Tom.
YOU ARE READING
letters from tom // thesyndicateproject / tom cassell au // sequel to yin yang
Fanfiction"Who thinks sending letters to me, unaddressed, saying they're Tom, is funny, Leah? Who actually is that sick?" Erin asks, anger evident in her tone. Leah looks down. "Maybe it really is him, Erin. You never know." In which Tom's been dead for two y...
