Bully Eater's Return 1

Prompt from DailyPrompt.com

“You’ve come back, but I no longer need you.”

The doggish shadow tilted its head and let out a soft, confused burble.

Pat sighed. He knew he shouldn’t encourage the figment. But he felt sorry for it. He was struggling not to ruffle its many ears and hug it.

“I know why you’re here. I made you, and I guess what’s happening called you? But I don’t need a Bully Eater anymore.”

It stood silent. Watching him. An amorphous muddle of fear and resentment and impotent rage. The vicarious guardian of a scared kid who… well, let’s be honest, that kid never stopped existing. He just got older. A bit wiser. Got a job and friends and worked through therapy.

“Look, yeah, my boss fucking sucks. A way worse bully than Rose. Than her whole gang put together. And… I guess I’m not any less helpless than I was back then.”

That hurt to admit. Nothing burned quite like gall.

“But I’m working on it, ok? I’m building a way out.”

Bully Eater gave a low, contemptuous huff.

“Hey!” Pat scowled and folded his arms, the picture of his young self when his wistful dreams where challenged. “Don’t give me that! I-I’m planning and learning and all sorts. Just you wait and-”

Bully Eater yawned, its mouth splitting wide enough to eat a nine-year-old in one gulp and lined with shark-like rows of teeth. A sight so familiar, so comforting, that Pat didn’t twitch. He just bristled.

“Humph. Of course you wouldn’t understand. You don’t have to care how the real world works.”

Pat turned away to fiddle with his phone. Trying to remember how he’d made the figment leave before. It existed to protect him from bullies, but that didn’t apply anymore. He couldn’t just show his boss a figment and send the asshat crying home to his mother.

Well, ok, he could but it would only make way more trouble.

Funny how the figment could stare without eyes. It was waiting for something.

“…What do you want from me?”

A silly question, given that the figment couldn’t talk. But he was at a loss.

While Bully Eater didn’t have a tail, that serpentine wavering of its undefined rear was definitely based on a dog wagging its tail. Then it caught his hand in its mouth, a manacle of loving velvet sandpaper, and pulled him to his laptop.

“Uh… k?”

Pat bemusedly watched as his hand opened the computer, typed in his password, and opened his ‘escape plan’ doc.

His todo list was a mile long by now. The references page was a veritable library yet he still had so much to learn…

His hand highlighted the “start sharing art” item. The twentieth on the list.

“Tsk. There’s a process-”

His hand opened a note and typed [learning isn’t doing]

“It’s-”

[planning isn’t doing]

“I-”

[EXCUSES ISN’T DOING]

Bully Eater released his wrist and stared him down.

[Prompt was the first sentence.]