Dib was glad to be able to work on his latest school project with someone else for once. Sure, Cal was an oddity in class, with overly long and greasy hair and a smell like seafood. Sure he was constantly sniffling as if always sick. And sure, he had creepily green eyes.
But Cal looked so...pitiful. And somehow Dib had found himself asking to work on the project with Cal. And it wasn't too big a deal. Just taking care of an egg as if it was an actual baby. Every school did it.
"So you don't mind taking the egg first?" Dib asked gently of Cal as he wiped his nose on his dark sleeve, giving Dib a small, nervous smile.
"Nah, not really." He said, waggling his arm in the air a bit, snot flying everywhere as Zita walking nearby with some of her friends all went "EWWW" and ran off.
"You little freak! Use a TISSUE!" Zita screeched out, bolting across the street as Cal sighed, Dib and he approaching Cal's deep blue house. There wasn't a lot of grass in the front yard, but one thing Dib did notice was a bunch of small little fences all set up around what was unmistakably ant hills. In fact, there were quite a few ant hills inside of Cal's yard, making Dib blink, scratching his head.
"What's with the fences?" He wanted to know, amber eyes confused as Cal knelt down, the egg in it's protective little "baby carriage" attached to his backpack as he looked over the ant hills.
"Do you know the kind of people who go about stepping on ants? They're bullies, that's what they are. If you just walked around deliberately stomping on ants, you'd be a disgusting individual who deserves a special kind of punishment." Cal muttered.
"Well I don't think most people DO go around stepping on ants, at least, not on purpose. Maybe once in a while by accident." Dib remarked with a shrug.
"And these fences remind me not to have accidents. Because if I'm not looking where I'm going, I hurt myself on the little barbed wire here. Stuff like this helps me be careful." Cal said with a small smile. "It's kind of a tiny thing, I know, but-"
"No, it's...I actually think it's kinda nice of you." Dib admitted with a small nod and a bit of a smile in his eyes. "It shows you care. You'll probably be a great real dad one day." He added as Cal took the egg off his backpack and held it in his hands with a nervous grin.
"Thanks." He said with a nod at Dib, heading inside the house. "See you tomorrow at school, Dib. Sweet dreams, "honey"!" He laughed, Dib rolling his eyes a bit behind his glasses and heading down the sidewalk as soft rain began to slowly fall from the darkening skies above.
A few hours later, Dib was in his room, typing away on his computer, looking over his camera feed on Zim. To defeat his enemy, he had to study his enemy constantly. And always be one step ahead.
You might wonder why this means studying Zim even when he was bathing himself, naked, in paste.
"Imustalwaysstayonestepahead." Dib insisted to himself, deciding to get some hot chocolate before he kept watching. He rose up from the chair in front of the computer as the rain kept pitter-pattering against the window, the inside of his room becoming very dark like the inside of a cave. He flicked on a nearby lamp as it cast some shadows across the dark blue room with a flick of a switch, then stopped when something flickered across the screen. He blinked, faintly seeing something reflected in the screen as-
THWUMP.
He turned around. A book had fallen off his shelf and onto the floor. He blinked slowly, picking it up, looking the title over. "The Hellmouth over Hadley", an old pulp horror story, part of a pack he'd bought at a library book sale. He scratched his head a bit before putting the book back in, then blinked as another book fell out, taking a nervous step back before he reached down to pick it up as well. Another old pulp horror story, what-
Then ALL of them flew out of the shelves, flopping down onto the ground, bobbing Dib over and over, crashing to the floor as he stepped back, gasping in surprise-
All the books now back on the shelves, as if untouched.
He blinked slowly, eyes narrowing slightly as he took his glasses off and rubbed them over, looking over the bookshelf as he bit into his lip. Wh...what? What had happened, he thought to himself, shivering a bit as he shook his head and headed for the door, deciding to get that hot cocoa to forget about what he'd seen-
A voice. A faint voice echoing through the air. Deep and dark and ethereal, cold and haunting, a voice echoed out from behind the door as he reached for the doorknob.
"Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there, wondering, fearing, doubting..."
Dib's hand slowly moved away from the doorknob before he locked the door, and moved the bedstand in front of it, deciding NOT...to get the hot chocolate.
THE NEXT DAY...
Zita wasn't in, and Dib had not had good dreams. No, not one bit.
He'd been trapped in a dark, deep abyss, as if stuck in the bottom of the ocean, hearing screams faintly echoing out through the waters. He struggled to turn, looking around, trying to find where they'd come from and he'd approached a figure off in the distance, floating...pale and silent.
He'd come closer and closer, the screams getting louder, piercing through the walls of water as he'd reached out but...then he'd woken up before he could figure out who the figure was. Their image had been so blurry due to him not having his glasses and being underwater.
But he had a horrifying, sinking feeling it had been Zita, because Zita wasn't in class, and Ms. Bitters had remarked she "was no longer going to be attending our school" in a tone that indicated something was clearly off. She sighed, looking out the window. "Oh, it reminds me of my first love, truth be told. My darling valentine. I had eagerly waited for him to return only to find horror had struck..."
"Wait, she's DEAD, isn't she?" One of the kids asked, Ms. Bitters quickly turning.
"I didn't say that." She said a bit too quickly, but all the other kids all flinched or gasped or cringed, Dib turning pale as a shudder rose in him, Cal sitting nearby handing him the egg from across the aisle.
"You alright?" Cal asked quietly.
"I...don't know." Dib mumbled as he took the egg.
A few periods later, he and Cal were in the cafeteria, sitting together as Dib kept an eye on the egg whilst munching on a sandwich he'd brought from home. "I don't like it, Cal. Zita was just fine yesterday. How can she be dead so quick?"
"I heard from the kids that her mother found her, like, braindead or something." Cal admitted with a sigh. "My dad wouldn't have cared enough to check on me. He always hated me. Said I was his least favorite son."
"Oh?" Dib asked.
"He wanted me to stay with the family. But screw that. Besides, forget Zita, my DAD's scarier than anything on this street." Cal sheepishly admitted.
"What's really scary is you two think you're actually passing for normal." A familiar voice rang out as Dib turned, groaning as he saw Torque with HIS egg...and it was clearly cracked. Torque looked at their egg, then at them. "Now gimme your egg."
"Torque, you know that won't work. Ms. Bitters wrote names on all of the eggs, she'll know you stole an egg that wasn't yours." Dib reasoned.
"Shut up!" Torque snapped, holding up a fist. "You do what I say you little nerd!"
Cal quickly moved up, grabbing Torque's fist and digging his fingernails into Torque as he did so. "OW!" Torque yelled out, dropping the egg and falling to one knee, howling a bit as he reeled back, Cal wiping his hands on his pants as Dib frowned a bit at this, seeing the teacher on lunch guard duty finally approaching. "You dirty little!-"
"Alright, what's going on?" Mr. Elliot inquired, shaking his head back and forth. "What's all this about?"
"Mr. Elliot, he darn near broke my freakin' hand! And now my class project egg is broken!"
"You tried to punch Dib!" Cal reasoned. "What was I supposed to-"
"Cal, I'm sorry, but no fighting's tolerated. You and Torque are going to have to serve detention." Mr. Elliot apologized with a sad shrug. "Now if you could come with me?"
Cal sighed, looking over at Dib and giving him a quiet wave. "Just take care of the egg, okay?" He asked, being escorted out of the cafeteria as Dib took hold of the egg and sighed, watching Cal leave with a too-smug-looking Torque. Dib frowned as he gave the overly large kid a dark frown.
"You JERK." He muttered before he bit his lip, looking the egg over.
That night, Dib decided not to skip out on hot chocolate. Putting the egg on his desk on a plate, he headed for the doorway, shaking his head back and forth as he kept thinking about Zita. How had she died? What had happened? And was someone responsible? It may have been something normal that killed her. Something unsupernatural. But...something he didn't think so.
He took hold of the doorknob, taking a deep breath before he slowly opened up the door. Nothing odd. Just a normal hallway, the stairs at the middle section leading down. He made his way down the hall, shaking his head back and forth. "I know what I really saw. And I know none of this is actually happening." He said.
Or at least, he wanted to. Because when he opened his mouth to speak, though he knew he was saying words, he couldn't really hear much of anything. It was if everything was muffled, like he was underwater and-
He stopped in place, blinking a bit, mouth slightly agape before he took a step back, eyes wide, holding his hands over his mouth. He slowly took them away from his mouth, trying to speak again. "Wh-what?" He muttered, shaking his head back and forth before moving forward. "Hot chocolate. I'm getting hot chocolate." He insisted as he rounded the corner. "I'm JUST getting hot chocolate and-"
The stairway was endlessly repeating, going down, down, down, down. He couldn't see an end to it all, as faint sobs rang through the air, haunting and melancholy as a dark coldness crept into him. He shuddered as he took a step back, closing his eyes, covering his face with his hands and taking a few deep, strong breaths before opening them again. Sure enough, the stairs were normal once more and he shook his head back and forth before descending the stairs.
"Something's clearly wrong." He muttered to himself as he finally made it to the kitchen and opened up the cupboard to get the hot chocolate mix, frowning. "What's happening to me? Is it because of...maybe whatever happened to Zita is happening to me. Maybe whatever got her led up to getting her by scaring at her at home and then finished her off-"
Drip...
...drip...
...drip...
Dib slowly turned around, eyes wide, seeing the blood dribble slowly down from the slowly-growing stain up on the ceiling. He could hear the faint, muffled sobbing, and he shook his head, closing his eyes, stepping away. "No. No, no, no. NO. This! ISN'T! HAPPENING!" He screamed out. "THIS! ISN'T! HAPPENING!"
...
...
...
...Dib's leg jittered nervously in his seat as Cal sat nearby, looking over at the desk where Torque was supposed to sit. "He didn't show up for class either. And I saw an ambulance rushing towards his home." He admitted to Dib with a quiet whisper as Dib handed him the egg. "...you alright?"
"I...I've not been having good dreams lately." Dib muttered. He'd had another one that same night. Dark and deep, hand grasping around the shoulder of a body, a body distinctly male, turning-
And then cut off by waking.
"What do you dream about?"
"I'm...in the ocean and I'm seeing so much dark around me. It feels cold and terrifying." Dib murmured as Cal sighed.
"I know how you feel. I once loved the ocean. So deep and mysterious and fascinating. In the unknown, it was so easy to feel at home. It was fascinating to me to lose myself in the abyss. But then the more time I spent in there the more unnerved I got with how comfortable I was in that endless blue." Cal admitted to Dib as he scratched his head, biting into his lip. "It started to terrify me. It's why I moved here. Especially to get away from my family. I started to hate living by the ocean with them. I just hope they stay there, I HATE being around them."
Dib rubbed his eyes as he put his glasses down, opening up his textbook. "Uggghhh. I'm sorry for zoning out a bit, I almost wish I could konk out in class without Ms. Bitters catching-"
He gaped. He was supposed to be looking at a World War II chapter of his history book that showed off allied posters. But instead of the cheery, albeit slightly uncanny-valley esque faces of soldiers, he was now staring at skeletons grinning gaudishly, wearing faint remnants of scrapped clothes, eyes sunken and hollow and alit against a dark abyss. That horrible coldness was creeping into him as he shivered and closed the book, biting into his lip. What was happening to him!?
"I-I have to go to the bathroom!" He said, immediately bolting out of his seat and grabbing the bathroom hall pass off the wall, Cal looking at him leave with clear concern in his eyes.
"Wh...whuh?"
Dib splashed cold water in his face in the bathroom, panting and heaving. "This isn't happening. This isn't happening. This isn't-"
He turned, looking at the little scenic paintings on the walls meant to make the bathrooms feel less dirty. Where once had hung happy little trees and sunny skies, now there was flayed skin on poles, flapping about in a disgusting mockery of flags as an acidic breeze seemed to linger in the air. The sky was alit with flames, the ground muddy and foul, all a monstrous landscape. He could hear that same horrible sobbing, now joined by a male voice as Dib shook his head back and forth, holding his head in his hands. "No, no, no, no, no, no..." He whispered quietly, mouth agape, seeing flies landing on the flesh on the painting, a faint buzzing echoing from their wings. "This isn't happening, this isn't happening!"
A few minutes later, Cal entered the bathroom, Dib looking up as Cal knelt down by him, Dib shaking and shuddering as his eyes darted around the room, wrapping himself up in his arms. "Th-this can't be real. This can't be real. This-this can't be real." He sobbed out, Cal blinking a bit at Dib's terrified tone. "This can't be real! This can't be really happening!"
"Dib, what's going on?" Cal wanted to know as Dib stiffened, loud banging echoing out through the room as he looked over at the stalls, eyes bulging wide as saucers.
"Wh-what?! What's that? What's that?!" He whispered, looking at the lack of people in the stalls. "How-how is someone knocking, there's-there's nobody there!" He whimpered, turning to Cal. "How in-"
He stopped, sliding back, eyes becoming pinpricks. Cal's face had split apart beneath the nose, off into many, many pieces, teeth sharp, elongated, covering with blood as his voice echoed in Dib's mind. "Dib, whatever's the matter?"
Dib fainted dead away.
...
...
...
...the next morning, Dib awoke, rubbing his head as he looked around in the hospital. The nurse smiled warmly at him as she handed him his chart. "A full checkout, and you're just fine. It just looks like you were suffering from exhaustion." She informed him with a cheery smile, the light filtering in softly through the window nearby as Dib looked the chart over. "Your friend from school dropped you off, and he was absolutely insistent we treat you immediately. You're lucky to have a friend as generous as him."
Dib rubbed his eyes, reaching around, grasping for the nearby bedstand by his white hospital bed as he put his glasses on. He looked back up from the chart then, seeing the nurse's concerned look. "I'm feeling much better, I admit. Have you called my dad?"
"Your father is on his way. I'm rather worried about your friend, though. He didn't do anything to you, did he? He looked very, very distraught and guilty when he dropped you off." The nurse admitted with a sigh. "I've seen the same look on people who hurt their friends in car accidents."
Dib tilted his head a bit to the side, but he stayed quiet. Maybe it would be good to go talk to Cal, he decided, as he looked up to see his father in the doorway, his goggles off and clear distress on his features for once in his life as Gaz nonchalantly played on her Game Slave nearby.
Within a few hours, he was back home, and making himself some hot chocolate. This time, no blood dribbled down from the ceiling, no haunting, melancholy sobs echoed through the air, no books flying off the shelves. He smiled warmly as he stirred the hot chocolate with his spoon, grinning a bit triumphantly, proud that he'd overcome whatever had befallen him as he made his way to the phone and began dialing.
Briiiing! Briiiiiing!
A few minutes later, Cal's voice echoed up from the other end. "...hello?"
"Cal, you alright? You...don't sound too good."
"...don't come over." Cal said, his voice hoarse and quiet. "I don't want you to see me like this." He muttered softly, before the line cut dead and Dib blinked in surprise, holding the phone reciever away from his head. What the...? What was Cal up to?
A nervous, unsettled feeling rose in him. He hesitated as he put down the phone, then looked towards the door. Should he? Cal had said not to but...something in his friend's voice really worried him.
He headed for the front door, getting his jacket on as he quickly walked down the sidewalk and made his way towards the house at the far end of the neighborhood, making for Cal's house, seeing the door was slightly open and an ugly, unpleasant smell was wafting through the air. Dib cringed a bit, making his way inside the house as he looked about.
Large pictures of bays and coves and the ocean hung on the walls, by large modern art statues that twisted and turned about, incomprehensible for Dib to "get". The walls were dark greyish blue with an ugly color pallete on the furniture, Dib sticking his tongue out in disgust as the ugly smell continued to assault his nostrils. It was like rotten seafood, and he kept walking forward, holding up his arm, cringing as he made his way up the stairs, towards where it was coming from. He had a horrible sinking feeling he knew what the smell was, and-
No. No, he didn't. He thought he had, but he'd had no...clue.
He stood there, for a long, long time, looking at the form that lay on the bed, a knife fallen to the floor and blood freely drizzling down. Stared at the face.
The FACE.
And then he slowly turned around...headed down the stairs...and out the door.
He wasn't going to tell anyone. No way. No way could he tell anyone.
But he had a understanding now. He had a feeling he knew why Zita and Torque had ended up the way they did. The two had been in such close contact with Cal. And Dib, Dib had been getting so close to him as well.
But now with him gone, now...now it was over. Or at least, so he hoped. But he remembered what Cal had said about his family.
"...especially to get away from my family. I started to hate living by the ocean with them. I just hope they stay there, I HATE being around them..."
A new fear was settling over Dib. A realization of how close he had come to total, and fatal insanity. All that he'd been had almost been lost, spared only by the whim and will of someone who had realized only just in time that he'd been about to step on an anthill.
Nearly everything Dib had worked for had almost been rendered meaningless by the thing that lay on the bed, eyes staring sightlessly up at the ceiling, proof that even things beyond death could die. Dib had briefly touched the veil, the shadow between worlds.
And he hoped that Cal Thule's family stayed where they were. In the dark corners of the Earth.