Eerie fic: Email

[froodle]

Marshall Teller is 29 years old, an entire decade and thousands of miles away from Eerie, Indiana, when his mother tells him in an email that Mister Radford has died.

The funeral was lovely, such a kind man, always asked about you, remember those ice-cream floats he would make you, you loved them when you were a boy, there was a huge turn-out, won't be the same without him...

Marshall makes an ok-ish living as a writer of short stories, and a better and certainly more reliable one reading the news and running phone-in competitions on the local radio. It pays for a two-bedroom apartment in a converted warehouse loft, and means that he can invite his parents up to spend the holidays with him, rather than the other way around. He takes them out to dinner, and to plays and musicals performed by a surprisingly talented local theatre troop.

It's not that he's avoided returning to the town he grew up in; it's simply that he's too busy, and as Syndi and her family are only a two hour drive away, and he does, after all, have the room to spare, it makes sense for his parents to come to him. He likes to share his modest success with them - in small doses, no longer than a holiday weekend, of course - and show off the happy life he built on the foundation of the childhood they gave him.

Marilyn and Edgar, when they visit, arrive with hand-knitted jumpers and home-baked cookies and sound advice for a young man living alone, and they beam with pride when their wonderful son is recognised in the street, and they tell him how impressed all the neighbours in Eerie are with him, and he smiles and can barely place the names and faces that go with the well-wishes of these long-forgotten neighbours.

His return email echoes Marilyn's sentiments in slightly different words, and he asks about his father, and he attaches some pictures of Syndi's eldest from the day she spent at the park last weekend, playing frisbee with her favourite uncle. He signs off with love, and gets in the shower to prepare for a night out with some friends from work.

Marshall Teller is thirty years old when Simon calls him in the dead of night, to tell him Mister Radford has returned.

Comments

[yarol-2075.livejournal.com]

...Ooooookaaay, why does that last line creep me out so much? Seriously, chills down my spine.

[froodle]

hopefully, because came back wrong is always a scary possibility, but when its the one non-Teller adult who has consistently been a benign (occaisonally somewhat misguided) presence in the show, it gets extra creepy...

[eviinsanemonkey.livejournal.com]

OMFG

brilliant

also pls tell me there is more.

because.

omfg

[froodle]

I havent really planned anything more with this.one, BUT if you feel like writing some super creepy adult Mars returns to eerie and finds stuff is way darker than he remebers off the back of it, then you should ABSOLUTELY GO FOR IT.

[eviinsanemonkey.livejournal.com]

>:)

*rubs hands together*

[froodle]

*anticipation face*

[lipstickcat.livejournal.com]

Gahhhh..... Love it! So awesomely creepy.

[froodle]

thank you :)

[deifire]

I love it!

That last line...nice.

[froodle]

thank you :D