Bit-ter Memories

Chapter 5

Weird things had been happening in your apartment. Your socks began to disappear, cupboards left open and packages of food left half emptied. The scampering of feet in the middle of the night. If you didn't work with bitties every single day, you might have thought it a very clever mouse. So here came your dilemma. What exactly should you do about it? Was there some sort of wild bitty extraction company you were supposed to call? Perhaps it was a neighbor's bitty searching for essentials they weren't getting? Should you call the BRPA (The Bitty Rescue and Protection Agency)? You didn't think a bitty followed you home from the shop, but anything could happen.

Hell, at this point the bitty might as well be yours, as often as this was occurring. Either way you couldn't just let a bitty go uncared for. If you were somehow the parent of a bitty, you'd be damned if you didn't give them what you could. At least until you could figure out what to do. With that in mind you set about making breakfast. This bitty was lucky it was your day off. You were going to spoil them. You set aside a reasonable sized portion for a bitty you assumed to be starving, then went about your day of very thrilling procrastination.

By the time you dragged yourself away from your Netflix binge and up off your couch to make lunch you realized that the three pancakes you had set aside were gone. The plate itself was completely bare, not even syrup remaining. Maybe it was worse than you thought. You made two sandwiches, one conveniently left on a plate atop the counter. You set aside a few grapes for good measure, then went right back to your shows.

You had started to drift off halfway through the fifth episode of your show, snuggled up into the arm of your couch. Your blanket was wrapped snugly around your body, making you the most comfortable burrito. You would have stayed like that, cozy and warm. But your guest had other plans. It started with a tug near your feet, snapping you into awareness.

You were very quickly being climbed. You tried not to panic, you really did. But as the prickle of claws scratched at your skin through the blanket and a tiny skull came into view, your resolve quickly broke. The bitty looked awful. It looked like a Sansy. He even had the trademark jacket and shorts. His shirt was no longer white, streaked with a dark red substance you were pretty sure wasn't ketchup. His skull had a gaping hole on the left side, small hairline fractures radiating along the edges. His teeth looked sharper, as though they had been filed, sharpened points twisted into a frown. A single bright red eyelight shivered in his left socket.

You might have screeched and tossed the blanket aside, engulfing the bitty in fabric as you bolted into the kitchen. You leaned against the counter, trying to catch your breath as you stared at the empty plate before you. It occurred to you that it was nearly dinner time. The bitty was probably just hungry and had come to ask you for food. After all, you had just fed them twice. Poor guy. What was wrong with you? You had seen bitties in awful conditions before. Yet here you were, panicking over a bedraggled and probably severely injured bitty.

The quiet clack of bone and something latching onto your leg caused you to flinch. You suppressed a shiver, telling yourself that you were being silly. It was perfectly fine. The bitty made its way up onto your arm, using the appendage as a bridge over to the counter. He settled down by the plate, looking up at you with that unsettling, shaking gaze.

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to freak out like that." The bitty seemed surprised by your words, eyelight expanding to nearly fill the socket. It was somehow even worse than the tiny wobbling light from before.

"Food?" Ah, right. You weren't sure what you were expecting. You moved away from the counter, opening your fridge. Welp. Spaghetti leftovers it was. You pulled out the Tupperware container, popping it into the microwave while you pulled out a plate. You didn't have any bitty sized silverware, but you had a feeling he wouldn't use it anyway. Once warmed you set aside a reasonable portion for yourself, plopping the rest down in front of the bitty.