Chaos
Things might go by a little fast in this chapter, despite its length, but I want to try and get all that I can into the prologue.
"Chaos is when a man walks ahead, but his soul lags behind." -Harlan Ellison
Disclaimer: I don't own Invader Zim.
Prologue: Part 1
"C'mon, dad! Everyone's parents are going to be there! Even Zim's robot parent…things! Can't you just pay attention to me for more than a minute?"
"Now son," Membrane began in a sturdy but bored voice. "You know that I can't take time off of work. The world will fall into chaos if I take a break. Maybe if you studied REAL SCIENCE, you'd understand."
He bent down over the flame of the blowtorch in his hand until his goggles were centimeters away from the fire; I backed away slowly, shaking my head in annoyance. It was just another cheesy Parent's Night up at Skool, but he didn't even go to the last one. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed a dull green folder with dust covering the surface laying on one of the abandoned lab tables in my dad's laboratory. Taking a closer look, the folder was tattered and fraying, with edges of its contents spilling out of the sides.
I took it and ran upstairs, planning to stuff the new found treasure in my book bag and examine it at school.
We were too late to catch the bus, again, but I managed to make it through the morning without getting any new bruises or scars. When the Skool was eventually looming over my sibling and me, she contrived a short, meaningless farewell and continued towards the faulty and decaying educational facility, prodding the buttons on her Gameslave2 harder with each step.
Waiting until she was out of sight and earshot, I dashed to the double doors with a grin so wide that it lasted through the catcalls of my classmates, and didn't fade until I reached the men's restroom.
Panting so hard that I couldn't hear much of anything besides my own breath, I unzipped my bag and grasped the folder tightly with both hands. Ratiocinating over the possibilities that the contents of the papers might hold, my hand hesitantly brushed the grime off of the cover. Why I had thought it looked like an interesting object worthy enough to be stolen out of the world famous Professor Membrane's laboratory is still a mystery to me today. But hey, one man's trash…
It was blank. Besides a few scratches in black permanent ink in the center, the void olive was blandly there. Almost taunting me. I snorted in disgust and sarcasm and readied my self to flip open to the first page, praying that there would at least be something worth getting to Skool a bit earlier for.
I was on the ground. I tried to sit up, only to meet a cold, metal…something head on. Crying out in pain, my head laid itself back down automatically. Opening my eyes, I was staring at the rusty, moldy pipes under a sink. I blinked and looked up towards a chuckling noise, but all I saw was a thin body in a magenta dress-like shirt with a sink for a head. Sitting up in curiosity, I was knocked back down by a silver pipe. Gripping my head, the better idea was to sit up slowly. So I eased myself out from under the white porcelain torture chamber and balanced myself with the wall before I stood up.
"Pathetic Dib…."
"Shut up Zim…" I could barely manage a full sentence right now, so trying to figure out what he was up to was a little out of the question at the moment.
"You know, I almost feel sorry for your…lack of….parental units…" Tapping his foot impatiently, he threw my temporarily forgotten find in my face and walked out of the room. I scratched the back of my neck and glanced at myself in the mirror.
There was a spurt of blood slowly trickling down from my nose and a bruise appeared to already be forming under my eye. Wincing, I grabbed a handful of paper towels from the dispenser and pressed them down against my wounds.
"Hey, look who we have here! I haven't seen you since before first bell!" A forceful hand twirled me away from my unguarded stance at the sink and flung me into the nearest bathroom stall.
Torque Smackey is making his daily bullying raid around Skool now, I guess. Wait, he usually doesn't do that until right before lunch. How…did I pass out or…funny, I don't remember…anything.
Punches were thrown and my skin was purple by the time lunch was over. Staggeringly, I made my way back to the old classroom. Ms. Bitters greeted me with her usual hiss as I took my seat, folder tucked away safely in my backpack.
"Ok, class, today your putrid assignment is to write a horrible essay. The doomed topic is what you want to be when you grow up. Put all your effort into this paper, for your hideous future will be nothing like it. You will all amount to NOTHING!" With that said in one breath, she slithered back to her desk, hissing in a way that indicated she was sickly satisfied.
I smirked, knowing exactly what I was going to write about, and connected the pencil to the paper.
"DIB! The office has requested your pitiful presence immediately. Take the hall pass." She pointed to an old, slimy trashcan.
I glanced down at my desk to find it empty. Shocked, I shot my eyes back up to the old woman's gnarly, wrinkly face.
"But I didn't even get to write my paper! And it's gone!"
"I know. Go to the office. Now!"
Slowly I stood up; ignoring the taunts of my fellow classmates, wiping my palm on my thigh and trying to avoid the grime that covered the aluminum can as I gripped it.
"What has he done this time?" An orderly, disappointed male voice whispered from behind the textured glass.
"Well…It's sort of difficult to explain. Here, take a look at this-"
"Ahem." I turned sharply and came face to chest with a tall, stocky man in a blue suit and sunglasses. His hair was neatly combed back and his face held no emotion as he pointed to the door. Hesitantly, I placed my hand on the knob and turned it.
The shocked expressions on the faces of Mr. Dwicky, who had gotten a promotion to principal, and my father, were enough to notify me that I had done something seriously wrong. Maybe this was about the folder thing. I began to cook up an alibi in my head. I could tell them that I accidentally found it on the kitchen floor, and thought it looked interesting. No, maybe if I just tell them that I had never seen the contents of folder, then they'd go easy on me.
The tall man walked past the main office and entered a back room.
"Have a seat." This order had not come from Mr. Dwicky, but my father.
"I-I'm sorry!" I stuttered, sliding down into the seat across from Mr. Dwicky. "I d-didn't know that it was t-that important! I haven't looked inside of it, and I don't even remember-"
"Son, son, you're not making any sense. Take a deep breath." I listened to every syllable he said, but didn't take a breath. I wanted to know what this was about. "Now, you must know exactly why I was called out of work today-"
He paused and glared through his goggles at the thin, cowardly man sitting behind the desk in front of us.
"-and I hope you know that I am very disappointed in you! Not only are you the future of the Membrane Empire, but you are also abnormally intelligent, and that intelligence is not to be used in the homicide of other human beings."
"What!"
"Pretending like you don't know what you did won't get you out of this."
"But I really DON'T know what I did!" My voice was steadily rising.
"Yes, you do!"
Mr. Dwicky, who had been cowering back in his seat with each word that had passed between my father and I, cleared his throat and placed a paper on his desk, hands shaking as he did so.
"Dib, maybe this will…make everything clear to you…." He nearly whispered.
I glared at my dad and then snatched the paper off of the desk, skimming over the title.
"Hey, this has my name on it!"
"Really?" The professor stated sarcastically, crossing his arms over his chest. Funny, because that's the only time I've ever heard him use any emotion in his voice towards me.
"But I didn't write this! I didn't even get to finish this assignment because I got called here."
But I glanced back down, saw my name on the top right corner, and flipped the paper over. There was a crude pencil drawing on the back of a pile of bloody corpses in a dark room, and standing atop of the whole mess, holding a knife and grinning madly, was myself. I sunk down in my chair. I didn't draw this. I didn't….Flipping the paper over; all eyes were on me as I read the first sentence of the essay aloud.
"When I grow up, I want to be a…homicidal…maniac….Dad…" I glanced at my father pitifully. "I didn't write this, you've gotta believe me."
His blank stare answered the question that my mind had been silently asking.
"Well, I don't remember writing this. All I remember was Mrs. Bitters assigning an essay about what we wanted to be when we grow up, and I was thinking, I know exactly what I wanna be, a paranormal investigator. Then everything from there up until getting called to the office is gone."
Professor Membrane had never been one to show much expression. He always thought that emotions were a weakness that just got in the way of real science. And he never had any problems with hiding his emotions. Until his twelve-year-old son started showing symptoms of a horrible and rare "disease". You see, this so-called "disease" was a mental illness that made the person inflicted forget random moments in their past, be it recently or long ago. And it was the threat of this "disease" that made the Professor insist on a visit to a very familiar mental institution.
"Dad, I'm not crazy!" The small teenage boy declared from the passenger seat, slamming the journal shut and throwing the pencil on the floorboard. "I mean, I know you think I am, but…I'm not! Why can't you at least listen to me, or talk to me every once in a while? Maybe then I wouldn't be crazy! Am I too much of a disgrace or something? And why do I have to keep this dumb journal?"
The grown man sighed and kept his eyes on the road, away from his sickle-haired son. Unfortunately for him, this was not a good enough answer for Dib.
"Why are you taking me here! I just want to know why…." He collapsed in an incoherent mumble of sighs and grunts, with the occasional dirty looks that shot themselves towards Membrane.
After thirty minutes of a relatively quiet drive, they arrived at their destination and got out of the car, making their way to the giant white building.
"I'm not going in, you can't make me." Dib stopped at the bottom of the stairs and stuck out his lip, crossing his arms over his chest.
Membrane took a step towards Dib, holding out his hand in an extremely rare indication of worry. "Son, you have to see-"
"My name is DIB. D-I-B, Dib. Not son…" He turned his head sideways to turn away the Professor's hand.
"Sorry…..Dib…" He winced inwardly at the use of his son's actual name. "But you must come see this. There's something of utmost importance that you need to know."
"Tell me here."
His father looked around; shrinking back a bit at the stares he was receiving from the few people in the parking lot retrieving their cars.
"Fine." He stepped down to level ground and obstructed his son's view. "We're going to visit Jaki. Now come on."
He turned on his heel and walked up the steps, knowing quite well that Dib's curiosity was forcing him to silently follow, mentally trying to interpret what he had just heard.
In a few moments, and after his father had received a keycard, they were standing in a high, thin hallway surrounded by muscular men in uniforms.
"Are you ready?" The Professor asked him, and without waiting for an answer, swiped the keycard through the lock on the door in front of them.
Dib was told to sit in the chair, to not try to touch her, and to remain calm, no matter what, and then was nudged into a pure white room. In the center, there was a white table with a white chair on each side, and there were no windows besides the small one on the door he had just entered. He hesitantly sat down in one of the chairs and began to feel quite small. A buzzer sounded from somewhere, and he noticed another door, exactly like the other one, open across from where he sat.
A purple-haired women dressed in clothes to match the rest of the building was led towards him in leather handcuffs by two other women who were in uniforms. She showed no signs of insanity or mental illness. In fact, she looked perfectly sane. And she was physical attractive, if Dib knew her and was twenty years older then he was. She was shoved roughly down in the unoccupied chair and the two burly women retreated back against the wall behind her. She glanced around; observing her surroundings for a moment, then seemed to just realize that Dib was there. She smirked knowingly and leaned forward to get a better look at him, making him back away. His eyes reflected her own conviction.
"Are you….Jaki?" Dib squeaked in the smallest voice he had ever heard himself use.
"Yeah," The familiarity of the voice startled him and he froze, not sure of what to do.
"I haven't seen you in a while. How old are you now, fourteen?" He nodded, still uncomfortable with her.
Jaki glimpsed towards the door where Membrane was staring through the window. Then she locked her gaze back on Dib.
"Do you know who I am?" He shook his head. "You mean he didn't tell you?"
Again, he shook his head.
"I'm your mother."
I was shook violently into consciousness, and a pressure was wrapping itself tightly around my neck. I gasped for breath, but couldn't get any air. I reached up to pry whatever was choking off my oxygen supply and felt warm, smooth skin. I opened my eyes and saw the angry face of Jaki, sitting on top of me with her hands wrapped around my neck and shaking me with all her strength. I saw other shapes running towards us, but I couldn't make out the details.
"Jaki! Jaki, stop, please!"
The women guards tried to stop her from behind, but she was just too dead set on choking me.
"IT…..WON'T…..WORK!" She screamed, shaking me harder and harder with each syllable.
Everything was closing in on me when one of the tall, hefty women lifted a club high above her head. All I could do was watch as the wooden bat came down on the fragile flesh of her head. Instantly the weight on my stomach slid off, and I was pulled to my feet by a tall, white blob. It handed me my glasses, and I glanced down at the limp body of Jaki. Maroon blood was pooling around her, and in the immobilized moment, her face, blood-stained and lifeless, held an expression of placidity. My father wrapped one arm around me and began to drag me towards the door, but I fought him until they brought out a sheet to place over her corpse.
That same green folder lay in his lap, all within his reach, just a turn of a page away…And he couldn't do it. He couldn't just open it after what happened. Certainly it held all the answers to the chaotic events of the day, but the knowledge of his…mother…it actually scared him.
"Well, open it," The Professor stared straight ahead as they neared their house. It registered in Dib's brain that he had been lied to, but he didn't speak or move. "Open it or I'll take it away."
He placed his fingers delicately on the edge of the soft fibers, worn from years of sitting in dust. Sighing, and after one last look to his non-responsive father, he pried open the folder with shaking hands. Words and numbers jumped out at him from the text, and graphs drew him in for fractions of seconds. His name, in bold, black letters at the top of the first page, glared at him, screaming silently for the truth to be known.
"Read it."
Hesitantly, his eyes moved back and forth, mouth opening slowly with each line. By the time he reached the end of the first paragraph, his eyes were no longer open, they were squeezed tightly shut. He prayed and prayed that it be a practical joke, that his father had somehow found some sense of humor in all his seriousness and decided to play a huge prank on his only son. Glancing at his father through one eye, his hopes sank as he realized that there was no way in hell his father would ever play a joke on anyone. In rage, he threw the book at the windshield and glared out the window.
Now in their own driveway, Membrane contemplated whether he should try to provide some comfort for the small boy, but once he placed his hand on his shoulder, the Professor knew that he would most possibly strangle him to death.
"You weren't going to tell me?"
"What?"
"You weren't gonna tell me. You were waiting until I found out myself…"
"No, son-"
"God damn it! You can't even pretend like you love me, can you! You can't just act like a real father for once!" The adolescent screamed at the man.
Dib turned, giving a lasting look at the folder, then back at Membrane, and opened the door, slamming it, and stalking up to the front door of the Membrane home.
6 Months Later
"Oh wow!" All that I could get out of my mouth was that short sentence that held so much enthusiasm my voice cracked. I raised the video camera to my eye.
A slender green form fell out of the sizzling cockpit and lay there, static. Hesitantly, I lowered the camera, worried that something could seriously be wrong, considering that it wasn't showing any signs of movement. I leaned down over her, checking for a pulse. My heart raced and I felt my eyes starting to sting slightly, as if I were going to cry. I don't even know why I would; she had lied to me, abandoned me, she made me feel like I had found someone who actually…cared. She was the closest thing I had ever had to a friend. Not getting a response from her stiff body, I scooped her up in my arms and staggeringly carried her to my room. Once she was safely on my bed, she began to move her arm slightly. I pulled my computer chair over to the bedside and placed a hand on hers.
"Tak?"
She moaned and began to shake her head slowly. And tediously, she opened her eyes, the purple orbs that had haunted my dreams for years now. They squinted for a second, then blinked quickly and noticed me. For a moment she paused, terrified that she had been caught without her disguise on, and as quickly as she had seen me, the bluish-haired girl flicked into existence again, backing away from me until she fell off the edge of the bed.
We stared at each other with a strange fascination for what seemed like hours, both trying to figure out what the other was going to do, until I smiled crookedly and held out my hand to help her up.
"Hi. Remember me?" She ignored my hand and balanced herself against the wall before brushing herself off.
"Maybe…" The voice that she articulated that one word with was crackly and breathless, not at all like the one I remembered. She had always carried herself with a sense of supremacy, but now she appeared…unprotected, vulnerable.
"You're that human that helped…" She gasped and her eyes narrowed. "Now I remember. You're the Dib…human….You helped launch me into space without hope of ever reaching another intelligible planet!"
Tak shoved me back down into my chair, glaring down at me with hatred and revenge.
"Hang on a second. You betrayed me, tricked me into believing that you actually liked me! You lied to me! You can't possibly blame me for what I did," I stood back up, regaining control of the situation considering my height to hers. "If you were in my position, you would've done the same."
She glanced down. "I don't understand. What is it with you humans? Always…fractious with your emotions…"
I ignored her unpretentious insult. "Yeah, well I didn't think you would. It…it really hurt me when I found out what you really were. You used me Tak."
Pondering over my words, she opened her mouth to say something but though better of it. "Well, thank you for doing….whatever it was that you did for me, but I must get my ship." She smirked knowingly. "And I know that you have it, so you'd better give it to me."
I crossed my arms over my chest. If she thought it was going to be that easy, then she had another think coming.
"And what would I get out of that. I wouldn't have a ship anymore…"
She didn't have an answer for this, so she was honest. "You wouldn't get anything. But that ship rightfully belongs to me. My personality is etched into its hard drive…"
"So? I could've easily over-ridden it with my own."
Her mouth hung open slightly. "You wouldn't have dared!"
"Maybe…" I turned my head upward.
Although she was only a little over half my size, she tackled me to the ground in an instant. I yelped as she pulled my hair. I rolled over, pinning her to the floor underneath me. She screamed and swung a punch at my face. I dodged it, grabbed her fist, and pulled her forward with it, causing our faces to be centimeters apart. I stopped, breathing heavily and staring into the purple eyes of her disguise. Something in her hologram flickered for a split second and she gasped, looking up at me with anxiousness in her eyes.
I felt myself leaning closer to her, if that was even possible at that point, and forgot all the differences between us, and the betrayal I was reminded of just moments ago. As I closed my eyes, I heard my door open.
"HEY!"
I tripped over someone's foot and landed face first on the ground. A pale hand was offered to me and voices were screaming angrily at me to move. I tried to comprehend my surroundings without losing my balance again. Tak had helped me up and was now running beside me, and behind us, Zim and Gaz were barely keeping up, one arm wrapped around the other's back. Gaz was wheezing horribly, almost to the point where she couldn't run anymore, and Zim and Tak were breathing extremely heavy. I stopped, unintentionally blocking everyone else from going any farther.
"What happened? What's going on?" I caught a glare from Gaz and Zim nearly dropped her as he caught his breath.
"Just keep…running, you…filthy…human!"
"No. Someone tell me what happened!" Tak glanced at the ground, then up at the trees behind us at the sound of sirens approaching. We were running away from them. Away from the sirens.
We made it out of the woods and onto Zim's front lawn, where Gaz pushed herself away from Zim and, limping over to the fence that lined the yard, sat down and leaned up against it, clutching one arm tightly to her chest.
"Ok. What was that all about?" Sounding my words out slowly, I glanced between the two Irkens, both keeping their eyes downcast from mine.
Tak mumbled something.
"What?"
"I said shut up! Just shut the fuck up, ok?" I backed away from her and she held her head in her hand.
"Zim….?"
"Dib, don't talk to me!" He warned.
I sat on the edge of the sidewalk, rocking back and forth. Tears threatened to break free from their prison behind my eyes, and soon they were dripping off of my chin. Holding my head in my hands, voices carried through the woods to our ears and antennae. A woman crying, screaming about how such a young child could be taken from her, sobbing at how life treated her.
I cried and cried that night, but I didn't have a clue why.
Be honest. I hope it wasn't too…boring. Read and review please!