Fallout || Stranger Things [2]

one || boxes and belittlement

Billy's thoughts were already detained as he dropped the first folded shirt into the nearest box.

Flashes of the early days of summer battered him, an abundance of good flowing over him.

Late night quarry trips, breaking into the pool after hours, countless times climbing up and down the rungs outside her window.

Her laughter.

Billy smiled for the first time in a long time, but within moments it was banished as her contagious laughter turned into her screams.

He winced at the residual sound of the Mind Flayer's limb puncturing clean through Tatum's shoulder.

It should have been me.

Billy slammed shirt after shirt into the box, sealing it off with a loud rip of tape once it was filled. The songs changed as he continued packing, but his thoughts remained starkly on Tatum.

In her last moments, all Tatum cared about was the fact that she kept him safe like she promised.

She had kept them all safe, and that's all that mattered to her.

The bedroom door flung open, Neil arising with a red face.

Billy barely looked up from his fourth nearly filled box, cigarette burning low between his lips. He blinked several times, taking in his father's expression as he remained seated on the floor.

"Where the hell is Maxine?" Neil asked, voice booming.

"She's with her friends," he calmly replied, wedging a belt among a stack of jeans and shorts. "One of them is moving today. She's helping pack."

Neil paused, his heavy chest beginning to slow. "Fine." He trailed the mess of his room, regarding the boxes mildly. "Don't waste that man's money. You won't last a semester."

Billy remained quiet, adding a pair of joggers that Tatum often stole from him to the box he was nearly ready to tape off.

Neil scoffed with a cruel smile, shaking his head. "I'll be surprised if you last a month."

His eyes closed as the door slammed shut, his father's footsteps thundering back through the house. He let out a light sigh as he added another pair of pants to the box.

Neil hadn't given much thought to Tatum Rivers' death, even when Max calmly told him that she had been Billy's girlfriend. It didn't faze him, granted he never cared enough to ask his son if he had been seeing someone since their move to Hawkins the year before. Maybe he didn't yell as much for the first week or so after the fact, but it didn't change the malice towards his son.

To what he knew, a girl he never met had died in a freak accident at the mall that was only rumored to be a communist ploy.

Billy checked his watch several times as he continued to fill box after box with his entire life. It was an odd race and pull between time. He wanted to get out of the house as soon as possible, but he was also running out of time to have all of his things ready by the morning.

Not the mention the anxiety of seeing her again.

The woman who gave birth to him, who raised him for the first half of his life, would be crossing the town border in less than twenty minutes.

Billy grew anxious, his folding technique turning into tossing items into boxes haphazardly.

He didn't know if he wanted to leave, run, or lay in bed forever.