𝐔𝐧𝐢𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐞𝐬 𝐀𝐩𝐚𝐫𝐭

Parting Is Such Sweet Sorrow

"Thanks for listening Delbert." Sarah sighed against her tender hand, allowing herself to slump idly against the sanded slabs of the wooden chair.

"It helps."

Delberts gaze softened, sympathetically traipsing towards his friend, placing a comforting hand on her shoulder.

"It's going to be ok." He mumbled knowingly, giving Sarah a warm smile with an encouraging raise of a bushy eyebrow. "You'll see."

Sarahs eyes creased as she smiled back up at him.

"I keep dreaming that I'll open that door and there he'll be just the way he was, smiling, happy little boy. Holding a new pet, and begging me to let him keep it." She laughed, her weary eyes tired of reminiscing who her son had been, and wishing he had not become what he was.

A violent crash of lightening lit up an unseemly sight. Through the half cracked door three pairs of eyes glowed with the vile weather, haunting the doorway where Delbert stood. Jim held up a half dead Billy Bones, his ghastly neck hanging low, dropping over his shoulder, with Holly's clothes clinging tightly to her shivering form, her hair clamped to her neck that appeared like white swirling spirals engraved into her skin due to its light colour against her tan hue.

Sarah forced a breath into her tired lungs, sprinting to the door as Jim heaved Bones inside. "James Pleiades Hawkins!"

"Mom he's hurt! Bad!"

Thump.

Sarah dropped to her knees, hovering her fingers over his throat, his slowing pulse jumping at the cold.

"Me chest, lass." Bones breathed huskily, weakly lifting his arm to point at the box in the blonde girls arms. She quickly pushed the chest over to him as gently as she could at his command.

"He'll be comin soon." Bones said worriedly, looking around before entering an elaborate code in a forgotten language of shapes and symbols, the soft clinks of the metal lock slotting into place.

"I can't let him find this." He kept saying. "You can't let him find this."

The chest eased opened, and he reached inside, only to pull out a runed sphere wrapped in brown cloth, tied with an old piece of rope that dug into the markings encasing it.

"Who's coming?" Jim asked, grunting as Billy yanked him down to the floor where he lay. He brought the boy impossibly close to his dry mouth, smacking his lips against eachother like rock against rock.

"A cyborg." Billy strained, elongating the phrase so solemnly, so full of fear, that it was to stay front and centre in Jim's mind the way a fresh nightmare would, depriving you of sleep. "Beware the cyborg!"

He croaked and groaned, before finally falling to the floor. Simply, he was dead.

Jim watched on. His cheeks slumped against his open mouth, the colour seeping out from his eyes into the Benbow, lapping it up through the slabs of the floor. Fear, guilt and curiosity beginning to flood his thoughts; What cyborg? What was going to happen? What had this mad man gotten him into? The situation had dug itself into the banks of his memory, every trench, nerve and vein ran with Billy's white eyes, bloodshot and empty, lifeless.

Sarah's hand clasped over her mouth, unlike Jim's mind hers was empty, unable to form a coherent idea of what to do. Her hair flurried over her face, her chest panting against her thrumming heart as she looked between her son and the young girl, staring as if she'd been caught in a void.

Leaving only a brisk moment of mourning for the stranger, an unexpected beam shone through the window of the Benbow. Another space craft, spotlighting the Inn.