TROUBLE - peaky blinders

56. the undelivered word

[read the chapter titled Act Four before this]

☆

A collection of unsent letters addressed to Mr Thomas Shelby OBE, 1924, retrieved from the Archive of St. Jude's Church and Rehabilitation for the troubled youth.

—

Dear Thomas Shelby,

Do not think for one second that I am writing this letter willingly. Today marks the fourth day of being here at Saint Jude's. Today is a day of reparations, a weekly tradition here from what I've learned. They allow us to write to those who sent us here as well as family so that we can confess to the sins we've been accused of committing and so we can begin our journey of forgiveness.

Well, Thomas Shelby, I have something to confess.

I wish you were dead.

I wish you were stone cold, six feet under and so far below that even your large ego is buried under the weight of the dirt. With each waking minute, my blood boils at the thought that we share the same cursed last name. I despise you and your being and have since the moment I was taken away.

My hatred for you fuels the strength I have to wish you dead, because to me, you are nothing more than the devil dead set on making sure I rot in hell alongside you.

I truly wish that if there was a higher power, they would strike you down and leave you to burn amongst the ashes.

I have no sins to confess apart from that, I haven't much of anything to give to you anymore.

So fucking sincerely,

Clara.

☆

Dear Thomas Shelby,

My sin this week?

If I ever get out of this place, alive or dead, you're going to wish you left me to rot alongside my family in jail. I saw an old paper, I saw what you did to them.

I've deliberated countless ways in which our reunion will turn out and each of them end with your severed head on a spike. It floods my best dreams and allows me a semblance of comfort and relief.

With worst wishes,

Clara.

☆

Thomas,

Death has become a friend of mine. I've seen so much of his face. I'm slowly withering on these hallowed grounds. No higher power can cure the illness I do not have, and no greater god can force me to be something I am not.

I doubt you will get this letter, I doubt you got any of them. I don't get any of them in return unless that is your doing. I wouldn't be surprised.

So whoever is reading this letter, burn in hell. I hate it here and I will torment you beyond my own grave.

From,

Clara Shelby 

☆

Tommy,

They've taken everything from me. I am dying. I can feel myself being torn down brick by brick, drop by drop and I know they won't stop until I'm their bald porcelain-painted doll with no attributes of her own.

This place isn't as it seems and the patrons are far worse. I don't know why I'm telling you this, you don't care. I know you don't, but you'll never see this letter, so what does it matter?

Perhaps in the future, these letters will be discovered and read in my eulogy once my body decays, I hope they are.

I hope the world will see the torture behind the penance you've forced me to partake in. A penance that perhaps I deserved, but a penance far beyond any gloried religion.

This is your doing, Thomas Shelby, and the day I see your face after I'm released it will be too soon, and any day after that will be too soon and until my dying breath, the day you rear your ugly head in my life will be the day where you feel the world crushing down on you, suffocating you until you are nothing but the shell of a man I know you are.

Ever so seriously,

Clara Martha Shelby

☆

THIS IS MORE OF A PROLOGUE FOR THIS ACT, rather than a chapter, I'm very sorry to disappoint!! This act will be structured a bit differently, I won't be delving into what happened to Clara until further in so this is just a taster until then!

ANYWAYS, HELLO MY BEAUTIFUL READERS, how are you and are you excited as I am?!

I love you all and I'll see you soon <33

[ and don't think I forgot your weekly meme ;) ]