Flash Fiction: Aw, She Has an Imaginary Friend

No one believed Tiffany. She didn’t do it. She never did. Bob, always damn Bob. One slight problem — no one else could see him.

As a child, adults humoured her, patronised her — “Aw, she has an imaginary friend”. Some pretended to engage with Bob. “Hi there Bob” they would say, leaning down and patting his imagined head.

Bob, of course, would smirk with amusement from across the room. Tiffany couldn’t help but laugh as Bob pulled faces and mocked the grown-ups. 

“Such a happy child.” Outsiders labelled her, and she earned the moniker, Giggles, for laughing at nothing. Her sunny disposition and ability to chuckle at dumb jokes made her popular. But even the sun is cloaked by clouds from time to time. Bob started acting out. 

At first, his antics were minor; hiding keys, putting sugar in the salt shaker, giving Whiskers a makeover, taking the batteries out of remotes just because he could — normal kid stuff. Cute.

Years passed and Bob began upping his antics.

“Please, don’t” Tiffany often pleaded to no avail. 

Bob hacked her mother’s phone. Emails went astray. Profiles renamed. Dirty pictures sent to FaceBook and beyond… 

Bob looked at Tiffany innocently. “What? She’s a dirty —”

“Don’t you finish that sentence, that’s my mother.”

Tiffany wrestled with her smile. Never a dull moment with Bob.

“I was going to say beast, but yeah, that too.” 

“You’ve had your fun. Now undo, quick.”

“No can do, Sweetie. What is sent can’t be unsent.”

“There has to be a way!”

“What’s viral is viral, baby.”

“Oh, Fuck.”

Tiffany collapsed to the ground and began to rock, “Oh fuck, oh fuck.” Food rose up her throat. Snaring pantihose was one thing, hacking quite another. Her mother’s obsession with social media and what people thought fueled their household income. Only perfect posts. Never a soiled coffee mug or strand of hair out of place. An influencer’s career. 

“Come on, you l-o-l when I hit send.”

True. She always laughed at Bob, sometimes til tears ran down her face and her stomach ached. What started as fun ended in trouble more often than not. 

Bob looked at the phone’s screen with pride.

“Oh look, the trolling’s begun. That was fast.”

“She’s going to kill me.”

“Don’t be so melodramatic. Just claim that Russian hackers did it.”

~*~

Story Background

Bob and Tiffany were born from a prompted writing exercise I wrote eons ago. On review, the story was in bad shape but the concept has merit. As I started editing The Muse took the story to a different place. Obviously, I went with the flow. I have a strong suspicion we’ll be seeing the pair again. This story marks the first time I have created something new out of scraps. Writers, never bin these “useless” exercises.