There are days that are full of sunshine and warm light and candy and happiness, there are days so grey and astoundingly average that one can't recall they've even passed, and then…
…there are days like this one.
Ones that aren't even worth the letters they are written in, or the breath used to say their name.
I, paranormal expert and belittled champion of Earth, have had two straight years of those.
Of course, I think this as proudly as I can while my desk does its very, very best to suffocate me to sleep and the teacher continues shattering our feeble dreams with her cynical hissing of just how doomed we really are.
"Sara!!"
"Yes, Ms. Bitters?"
"What is your greatest hope and aspiration?"
"To bring peace to all the world?"
"Silly and pointless and DOOMED!!"
-
My day had started off as it is prone to Monday through Friday and especially Tuesday, with the horridly repetitive shrieking of my Happy Noodle Boy-brand alarm clock. The little stick-figure statue on top screamed at me, told me to wake up and to "throw of the oppressive shackles of hair gel," whatever that meant. I groaned, gathered up enough strength to tug my blanket to the side and rolled over to shut the stupid thing off.
"Dib. Waffles."
I've never quite figured out just how my purple-haired devil of a sister can yell without actually yelling, but somehow her voice manages to shoot its way to my room without regard to how quiet she's being. I didn't reply, knowing it wouldn't matter if I did, and instead focused my energy onto standing up and struggling to the closet for clothes.
A shirt, pants and a trench coat later I was hobbling down the stairs, pushing my glasses up my nose and praying to whatever superior being what happened to be listening that I didn't finish my trip in a heap at the bottom.
My wishes were granted and I made it to ground level without so much as a minor scrape, let alone the few broken ribs that a tumble down the steps would mean. I sauntered dizzily into the kitchen, where a floating hologram of my father's head was keeping my sister company as she plowed through a stack of chocolate-chip waffles.
I just barely choked mine down, my muscles still not working properly enough even to manage something as seemingly simple as eating breakfast.
"Have an educational day at school, son and daughter!" the hologram spouted as soon as we were done; it grew mechanical arms from its base and pushed us out the door with our backpacks being dropped next to us soon after.
"I hate you, Dib."
I sighed. "Yeah, Gaz, I know."
-
The walk to school was as dreadful as always, with my sister and I walking side by side in silence, punctuated by the occasional wave of pure hatred she sent my way. We met up with Zim halfway through. I looked at him, he looked at me, he declared his blind hatred for me and vise versa while Gaz murdered away at her handheld. The three of us then walked to school in a neat row that took up the width of the sidewalk, clearing other pedestrians and the occasional weak-spirited squirrel or puppy to the side like an ice-scraper sloughing off the slush from a windshield. Cockroaches were simply squished.
We proceeded as such up until the school's steps were reached, after which Zim and I watched my sister scuttle off alone to her classroom, still staring fixated at her console's tiny, back-lit screen. He and I glanced at each other, then silently made our way to the class of the demon-teacher, Ms. Bitters.
We took our seats.
Hell.
My day so far has been complete and utter burning, crackling Hell, just like every other day since a truce was finally reached between megalomaniacal green alien and Earth-defending, bespectacled human. Hell hell hell hell HELL. Hell.
Apparently, my teacher's circuits have been blown because she's not even providing an explanation or reason why anymore, she's simply sitting at her clawed desk repeating her beloved catch phrase. Just sitting there and saying "DOOMED" as if she's getting paid thirty-two dollars and six cents each time the word slithers its way past her probably mechanical or at the very least spookily supernatural lips.
I glare at the clock as it mocks me and somehow counts backwards from noon and my beloved lunch break. I stare at it, it stares at me and it starts to cry. Giving up, it finally admits my superiority and lets its hands point to twelve and twelve just as the piercing shriek of a bell resounds off the desks and walls.
"Go on, class," my teacher hisses, "continue your DOOMED lives in the lunchroom."
Of course, none of my fellow classmates have heard her, as they had all flown out the door before the bell had been halfway done with its screaming. I'll take my time, assuming I'm alone in here as always—
"Dib-stink!! Must you take so terribly, terribly long with the simplest of Earth-child tasks?"
I don't need to look, I could recognize that voice even if its owner was suffering from a foreign equivalent of a head cold, stuffing his face full of disgustingly crazy tacos and doing an impersonation of a deep southerner who also happened to be sick and eating all at the same time.
"And just how do you know they're simple, Zim? For all you know, these could be the most complicated errands on the entire planet!"
The alien's eyes change size in their annoying and slightly nauseating way, until one's bigger than the other and he looks like a genetic mutation of confusion and mirth.
"But is this not a simple gathering of the tools in your immediate area?"
I glance down at the papers I am currently sweeping into my arms.
"Yes, well…no," I say, hoping my irrelevant answer will suffice. He continues to give me that strange, I'm-not-really-sure-if-I'm-right-but-you're-definitely-wrong look until I break eye contact with him and run out the door to shove said papers in my locker.
-
Lunch is Hell. I glare at the semi-food with a half-sickened grimace, praying that the greenish, transparent, pudding-like substance in the main dish part of the yellow plastic tray wasn't really moving, and that it was just my imagination making my mashed potatoes writhe at me. I feel like vomiting as I scoot the tray off to the side.
To my right, Gaz is ignoring her food as well, though whether or not the reason is because she is revolted by it escapes me, as she is, after all, squinting at her Game Slave 3. The second had become obsolete about a month ago, the same month that my entire class had greeted with a groan as we returned to school only to find that this year, Ms. Bitters would be teaching eighth grade instead of fourth. It had been four years since we'd seen her, and she hadn't changed one hate-filled, psyche-scarring bit.
Zim sits across from me, spooning dark violet powder from a metal lunchbox labeled as "NORMAL EARTH-STUDENT FOOD" into his mouth. I lean forward and try to see what other Irken food is in there, hoping that something inside would be more edible than what's in front of me but his gloved claws click the lid closed and he gives me as piercing a glare as he can manage and trust me, that's pretty damn piercing.
Now, mind, he's only sitting in the same oxygen radius as I am because he's as rejectable as Gaz and I and one or two other freaks are and there's nowhere else to sit. Oh yeah, and the truce-thingy.
I hate that truce-thingy.
Gaz forced us to sign it after the fourth time one of our battles found its way up to her room, and this time one of her precious broken-glass-stuffed, murderous cyborg plushies had been shattered as a result. I can't say I was too sorry, as those plushies are one of the few things in this world that I will gladly kill another human being to avoid solely because of creepiness. They. Are. Creepy.
Anyway, she wrote up a contract and on threat of horrible, piggy-based doom had us sign our names at the bottom, mine in English, his in Irken. She pulled us to her by our collars, looked us in the eyes and described to us in great detail exactly how her and the piggy, if we broke our word and started fighting again, would extract each of our various organs, human and otherwise, fill the empty cavities with molten pizza and send us to be eaten by tiny, starving housecats in China. I don't think Zim knows where China is but I'm pretty sure he got the gist of it, because he looked as anxiety-stricken as I felt. Everything has been calm since.
No new plans for world domination, no information-gathering, not even any of GIR's Crazy Taco runs have seemed to be cover for an ulterior plot. In short, no rivalry bigger than that of classmates has existed between Zim and I for almost two years now.
HELL.
This tranquility is tearing me apart, and I don't know what to do.