A/N: Hi there, The Clever here. I've actually written an Invader Zim fanfic that isn't idiotic or humorous. I still think it's pretty good.

Read, review, flame.

xxxxx

It wasn't his first day on the job, but he was kind of stupid.

You didn't have to be particularly smart to work at the Crazy House for Gerlz. They didn't have to worry about that one kid who was always escaping, and getting sent back, and escaping, and getting sent back—come to think of it, no one had seen that kid in months.

He idly tapped his fingers against his name tag- Jeremy, but his real name was spelled Jaramee- and wondered what happened to the kid. He was kind of entertaining. Sometimes Jaramee would sneak to the boys' house across the street and they would play Crazy Eights and the kid would blather about aliens and he never did learn his name.

But it was really stupid to snoop in the residents' things. They had a preternatural sort of sense, and could tell if their belongings had been messed with.

Jaramee wasn't very bright.

So he fished the diary out of the forest of books and clothes and knives and teddy bears. There was some foreign kind of writing on the front in green, then underneath it, as though it was translated from it, a name.

Gazlene.

It was written in a very harsh script, jerky letters, underlined several times in purple pen.

He opened it up and he read:

They told me I should write my thoughts down. They claim I've got to face up to what happened, or I could go to jail. This practically is a prison anyways.

I'm honestly just going to write gibberish until they stop looking at me.

Monkey tuba sandwich pickle face t-shirt birthdays sunshine penknife pigeon nebula starlight.

That was… therapeutic.

xxx

So apparently they're reading this and I need to write something down or they'll leave me in the bat cage again. And I really do not like bats.

My name is Gazlene, and I forgot my last name. Everyone just thinks it's Membrane because of my father but that's his first name but I tell people it's our last name and now I've forgotten what it really was. Amazing how poisonous stupidity is.

If he were here he would agree with me. He's actually the one who put a word to what I am. I can't write his language, but I found out the Earth term is 'misanthrope'.

I guess I'm as crazy as my brother now what with my throwing around words like 'the Earth term is' and 'why won't you people believe me' and 'I'm not crazy I swear'.

I've been acting more and more like him since he died.

Well, since I killed him.

My brother was fighting with him again. They never shut up, either of them. It's sickening really. It's completely sickening how your entire existence can be so wrapped up in that of someone you don't even love platonically. That you don't even tolerate. You can get so wrapped up in something or someone so pathetically stupid. I at least limit my unstoppable rage to a few days, unless I live with the person.

Not that you should get too obsessed with someone you love, either. All the girls at skool talk about that one book with the sexy zombie guy, I think it's called 'Sunset' or 'Starlight' or 'Sexy Zombies vs. Sexy Robots'. Either way, he just follows this girl around and everyone thinks it's so romantic and I think somebody really should have called the police on him.

Anyway.

So him and my brother are fighting like animals, one of them in the living room and one of them just outside the door, and I think 'what if they weren't fighting?' because I'm trying to beat this game and their voices are extremely distracting. And then I think 'they'll never stop fighting until one of them stops living' and I guess my brother was closest. So I paused my game and hit him in the side of the head with the controller and then I think I knocked him out, and Zim came barreling into my house because suddenly all the yelling has stopped and that's a little unexpected. And I'm still hitting him with the controller and it's really not the best weapon in the world, but I killed him.

There's a lot of blood on the carpet when he finally dies. Our dad probably was more upset at the stain than at the dead body.

They're bringing me some kind of soup so I'll write more later.

xxx

So about two minutes after the whole 'murder' thing I started screaming a bit, because I dented the side of my controller, and I'd got a bit of blood under my nails. It's kind of weird that I wasn't screaming because I'd killed a person, my brother no less, but because of dents and stains. I think I'd snapped a little bit.

Then there was this sound like a car pulling up outside and it was my dad and he wasn't supposed to be there, especially not before I figured out what to do with the body, and Zim picked me up like he did that one time when we were kids and hauled me into the backyard.

We ran a fair distance away from the house, and I don't know why Zim was even there. I didn't think Irkens really had that much of a murder taboo, but maybe he understood the Earth one. Which is pretty far-fetched, because he's too idiotic to understand much, but I guess he knew getting arrested for being an accessory to murder would put a damper on his plans to blow up the planet or impregnate the President Man with his alien spawn or whatever he was here to do.

I actually was convinced it was the last one.

So we're pretty far away but not far away enough to hear my dad start yelling and I tripped over something and we were in this ugly sort of foresty clearing. The trees all look two seconds from dying and the sky is even more disgusting looking, if that's possible. There were these grossly mutated butterflies that almost looked like little winged clowns.

I have to go back to the bat cage. Supposedly I did not make my bed the correct way.

So we wrapped up the daring escape through backyards and creepy forests and Zim informed me that he was taking me to his base. I said no at first, but he started rambling about how his base is the most secure building- why doesn't he just call it his house? - around and that he can't leave me alone because if the 'Earth authorities' find me I'll rat him out. Evidently the whole arrest thing would mess up his plans. I said no again, and he whipped out this metal tentacle thing and held the tip against my throat. It was pointed on the tip and could probably kill a person, and I was, possibly for the first time, afraid of another person.

Well, not a person. A being. A being who although he was a few inches shorter than me, could probably hold his own against me.

I let him kidnap me, because that's sort of what happened. He did threaten me and force me to go with him. Oh hell, I'm a kidnap victim now too.

I get into his house and his retarded robot tackled me. I threw it at a wall and it cried as best as a robot could. Then this little levitating moose thing floated into me and bumped into my arm. I picked it out of the air and squished it a little and asked Zim what it was. He said it's name was Minimoose and it had always been there. I started to say I had never seen it before, but Zim started screaming and flailing so I threw the moose thing at him.

I asked him what I was doing here, besides the ratting-out-thing, because he could have just killed me. Killing me would have prevented the whole thing.

And he explained that Irkens have a serious thing about having a nemesis. It's what – besides invading – they base most of their lives around. You find a nemesis. Doesn't matter if you're their nemesis, they just have to be yours. And until you can become the Tallest or something (their whole system is based on being tall, which is weird) you devote your whole life to attempting to destroy this person. Not just kill them, destroy them.

But here's the thing – this person could also be someone else's nemesis. So if that person kills them first, you've got to change you plans and spend a year learning from that person.

Because if they're good enough to kill your nemesis and you aren't, you're doing it wrong. Irkens, apparently, don't have time for you if you've been doing it wrong.

So you get two more chances to destroy your own nemesis. Once you've done that, you can go invade or something. It's like a training ritual. Makes sense, because if you start invading, a whole damn planet is gonna be full of your nemeses.

So Zim didn't actually destroy his nemesis, before. He says his nemesis was one of the Tallest, not the current one, and he may have accidentally killed her after she became Tallest. If your nemesis becomes Tallest you kind of have to quit bugging them, because you can't just go assassinating your leaders as part of training.

But he did kill her eventually, and he insisted that it counted. So to get him to shut up, they said he could invade something as long as he had a specific nemesis on that planet, and killed them before doing any serious invading.

And he picked my lovely brother.

Understandable. I've pretty much wanted to kill him ever since I understood the concept of killing.

So apparently Zim kidnapped me because I'm now officially his mentor. I started to leave, but something came up on the TV- apparently GIR was watching it- about me and Zim being missing.

It said to be on the look out for a girl, about 5'6", 140 pounds, Caucasian, purple hair, brown eyes. And a guy, 5'3", 120 pounds, green skin, bluish eyes, black hair.

Me and Zim.

And I realized that if I left, I'd be taken in. And I'd have to see my dad all slumped over like he does sometimes when he thinks I'm not looking, because he'd know it was my fault. There's a dented, bloody videogame controller covered with my fingerprints next to a dead body. Everyone would know it was my fault.

Contrary to popular opinion, I really do love my dad.

So I shut the door and started to talk about laying down some ground rules, but Zim just started yelling about his victory in the third person, and there wasn't anything small enough to throw at him, so I just sat down on the couch under the weird looking monkey painting and took out my GS3.

Apparently I need to go take a shower.

xxx

The showers here are ridiculous. I'm not even going to get into it because they'll think I'm crazy for bringing it up.