Author's Note:
I've had this story idea in mind for years. Today, I finally wrote it out. So...trigger warning. The follow content isn't for the faint of heart. The story you're reading is going to contain violent imagery. Harsh depictions of violence and death. I write this story not to make you disgusted, but in inspiration from a very famous song about this very subject matter, and as a warning to all who may be on the verge of becoming their own Jeremies.
"I want you to tell me what happened."
The air is sultry, choking the life out of those that sit in the room. It's quiet. Still. Uncomfortable. Every single person that's been in this room has to tell him what they saw. It's just them and the cop. The cop is trying to go easy on them, he speaks quietly, softly, carefully. There's a social worker just to his right, in case any of the children start to cry.
None of them have yet. That's good.
Right?
The first interviewed had blood splattered all over his right eye. It doused his glasses, his black jacket, a splotch falling on the dark blue undershirt he wore, with the "meh" looking cartoony face atop it. His black hair is slicked up in a scythe, his skin paler than usual. He's quiet and somber as he speaks.
"I would…see him drawing in class. Stuff he'd taken from home."
Dibbun Membrane kneads his hands together in his lap. His breathing is shallow, but he speaks all the same.
"Drawing pictures of mountaintops, with him on top. Lemon yellow sun, arms raised in a "v"." Dib confesses as he bits his lip, and looks down at the desk. If he closes his eyes, he can still see them, and see himself. He sees himself peering to the left, looking at Jeremy. Jeremy, who's got so little hair that the kids tease him for going bald so early. Jeremy, who has the kind of fat, sort of ugly nose. Who's got small ears, and a kind of skinny frame. Dib can see him, drawing at his desk, drawing himself as king of the mountain.
And the dead lie in pools of maroon below.
"I know he talked about…how his dad didn't pay attention to him. We had that in common." Dib goes on. "I'd bring it up to him too. My dad can't even remember exactly when my birthday is. The last time we ate out together as a family was when it was my birthday last year. My sister's having her's coming up soon, then it'll be mine. Every other meal, there this…robot. It asks us in our Dad's voice if we love him, and we gotta select "yes" on the screen before it lets us have our food." Dib confesses. "So I told him "How sad is that? I've had a dad replaced with a TV screen that keeps asking for love and can't show it"."
"What did he say?" The cop wants to know, though, deep down, he really isn't sure he wants to.
Dib sighs. "He said "Yeah. Sucks. But I'd rather have that than a Dad who IS there…and even though he's looking at you, he isn't seeing you". That's what he told me. His Dad never actually talked to him. Doesn't ask ONE question about how his day or week's gone. And his mom's no better. She doesn't care. She's only there every once in a while, she's always working, like…some kind of lawyer, I think. She's some kind of lawyer. And then there's the birthday gifts."
"What did he get?"
"A card and a little check." Dib sighs. "I know a lot of kids who'd love that, but there's never any parties. And they don't even put anything in the card. Not even their name. He showed me that too when he showed me the check. I think he used the checks to save up for that…for what he brought in to class." Dib murmurs as he rubs the back of his neck, feeling the air choking his throat again. "So his dad isn't paying attention, and his mother doesn't care. So what does he have left? Isn't it sad when I'M his only real friend and we're only really…like, we just talk sometimes at Recess or lunch. That's…wow. I mean…just…" He trails off.
There's silence for what seems like ages. Then he speaks up again, and says the same thing the other boy said, the one with the bad black hair, the green skin, who didn't have a nose or ears.
"Then one day he attacked Ms. Bitters."
"He attacked a teacher?"
"We all remember picking on the boy. Zim especially. He was a…what's your term? Lightweight? Pathetic. As Torque Smacky put it, a "harmless little fuck"." Zim goes on. He's wearing his normal dark maroon shirt, three small stripes across it, dark pants, boots, gloves. He looks oddly…cold. He's usually smug in class. Or frowning. His face is different. It's almost expressionless. It is as if he's trying to comprehend something but can't.
"How did he attack Ms. Bitters?"
"We had no idea we'd unleashed a lion." Zim goes on. "He was yelling at Torque. Torque had insulted him again. Jeremy actually does something Zim approves of, and kicks him squarely in the face. It's glorious, his nose is broken on the spot." Zim nods firmly. "Torque begins tearing the kid's hair out as they tumble about on the ground, and Jeremy, in turn, begins biting Torque wherever he can. Ms. Bitters slithers her way onto the playground and everyone turns silent. We had all been cheering and jeering, laughing, pumping our fists into the air, the cry of "Fight, Fight, Fight" stops at once. Zim sees her forcibly lift Torque and Jeremy off the ground. She shakes them, first Jeremy, then Torque. She's turning to Torque to admonish him after she's got Jeremy in one hand, but it isn't a good grip, and he breaks free, and then it happened."
"He bit her?"
"He bites her on the chest." Zim rests his hands on the desk he's sitting at, faint dust motes wafting through the air about him as he speaks. "I've never seen her look so…astounded. Jeremy is screaming. "I hate you, I hate you, I hate you", and he punches her in the face, and her glasses shatter. The skies are all cloudy and it looks like it might rain, and she just stares at him. Zim can SEE the slowly building rage. She's going to kill him on the spot. It was amazing. I'd never seen such raw fury in two human faces before."
He almost sounds…intoxicated. Impressed.
"I was just…astounded by it. He gets hauled off, by his arms, into the school. He's got detention for a week. We find out he even got a paddling from Ms. Bitters, and as he walks by me in the hallway a day later, I look down and see his pants have been ripped. Ms. Bitters had been paddling him so hard that morning that she tore his pants and he can't go home to get new ones. So I laugh. I sing that human song, "I see Paris, I see France, Zim can see your underpants". Something like that."
The green-skinned child rubs his cheek. Not two hours ago, blood was dripping down it, splattered over his left eye to drizzle down his cheek and onto his shirt and his arm. Jeremy's blood.
"He hits me with a surprise left hook. He almost breaks my jaw. MY jaw." Zim speaks. "I had no idea humans could hit so hard."
"…it is a mortal sin."
Sara can barely bring herself to speak. She's from a very Catholic family and she commonly dresses as a nun. She's been clutching her rosaries and fumbling with her words and she won't look the cop in the face.
"He's done a mortal sin. You cannot ever, ever, EVER do such a thing. I don't understand why you'd damn yourself to Hell like that, he-his…his head. His head!" She murmurs. She grips the rosaries so tightly, her knuckles whiten. The cop almost thinks they're going to pop right out of the skin. "There was…yellow stuff. Not just…not just the blood, and all that pink but…yellow stuff. Wh-where does the yellow stuff even come from?"
"I understand this must be very difficult for you to talk about." The cop tries to say, Sara feeling the tears springing to her eyes.
"So much of it." She murmurs. "So much of that…yellow stuff. And…and the yellow stuff, it…it got all over the blackboard. They will never erase that. We will never, ever forget this." She whispers out.
"Did Jeremy ever talk to you or anyone else in class about his problems at home? Did he ever talk to anyone about being…mad? Or very angry? Or sad? Did he ever bring up weaponry?" The cop wants to know. Nick has that…odd expression on his face. He, like Jeremy, is missing a good chunk of his head. His skull needed surgery, his brain, like Jeremy's, exposed. But he has a polymer plate from the surgery, his brain is still intact. It isn't in pieces, splattered in splotches like a Pollock painting. Nobody's sure how Nick got the injury to his head, evidently there was some kind of drill that got stuck in his skull, and he had to be rushed to the hospital with a probe removed from his cranium. It's a miracle he can talk. But his smile is unholy. He's…
Laughing.
"Jeremy hardly ever spoke. But Jeremy spoke in class today! Jeremy spoke in class today!" Nick laughs. His smile is horrifying, his laughter sends chills down the cop's spine. "Spoke in…spoke in. Yeah…spoke in class today."
He knows he won't really get much else out of him. The cop dismisses him. He's the last child to be interviewed. Ms. Bitters remains oddly silent. She's waiting outside to be called in, but hasn't said a word. When it finally is her time to speak, when he asks her what happened, her voice is creaky and croaky and she seems miles away.
"I've never, ever had this happen." She takes off her glasses, rubbing them on a hankerchief in her pocket. "Ever. This sort of thing never happened in my day."
"When did you realize he intended to do what he did?"
"He said he had something from his parents that he had to give to me. He'd left it in his locker, he said. He walks out of my room. Five minutes later, he's come back. I don't see what's in his pocket. I should have realized something was wrong. Nick starts….laughing. Just this creepy, foul, laughter, and then, THEN as he raises his arm up, pulling his hand out of his pocket, he says "I've got what I came for." He puts the gun in his mouth, and then his upper head vanishes, and everything's all red and pink and…some…yellow stuff."
She can't say any more. The room is dead silent, and still. It's gone cold, too, as the pitter patter of rain turns into a low roar against the windows. The cop doesn't say anything as Ms. Bitters once again cleans her glasses and then looks out the window.
"It just got…everywhere. I didn't think that somebody could small could have so much blood in him. He's still standing upright for a good…twenty seconds. And we can see parts of his skull have flown up into the ceiling tiles. Then one of them falls out, and when it hits the ground, he collapses, and his blood is pooling out, and it's soaking into Dib and Zim's shoes. And that's when I hear Sara screaming, and Nick is laughing, and he keeps saying "Jeremy spoke in class today". Over and over and over…"
The boy's parents are being informed of what's happened. Neither of them have any explanation for how Jeremy got hold of a gun. They didn't even seem to be aware he even HAD been being paddled at school. Evidently Jeremy was supposed to tell his parents of his punishment. Whether he did or didn't isn't known, but the cop is fairly sure Jeremy did. They just weren't really listening.
The crime scene is a mess. Jeremy's desk even more so, scattered pictures lying inside, with the boy atop a mountain, arms raised in a "v", and the dead lay in pools of maroon below.
How do things get so bad that you resort to this? Why did nobody speak out? Reach out? Could anything any of the children have stopped this with some kind words? Or perhaps it really was all on the fault of the parents?
The cop doesn't know.
The children, however, do. Or at least…Dib does. And he'll remember what happened that day, and take it to the grave. He will never forget the way Jeremy's head vanished in the flash of the gunfire. The splattering of blood on his glasses, the bone fragment that shot up, up into the air, and plunked off his desk and onto the floor below. He can't forget that horrible, insane laughter from Nick. How Zim looked so...stunned. Almost broken.
Dib wonders if Zim's ever actually seen a dead body before in his life. Dib had, when his mother died. This was different.
He's not going to forget. Not ever.
He will always remember the day Jeremy spoke in class.
And he's going to have a little talk with his father. Before it becomes his turn to talk in class.