The next morning, everyone was at the set to shoot the next scene. They had to reset up the stage, as Happy Noodle Boy and GIR had knocked it over earlier. They had not done it directly, but had actually spilt hot coffee all over the director, who then, in turn, caused much of the set's destruction in his rage. They were still to blame of course for the agitation; Mr. Lancer was generally not at fault, one, because he supplied their salary for this stupid movie and two, because he generally lost accountability for his actions and was considered more of a force of nature in his anger moments.
It goes without saying that there were some injuries.
As Zim walked in, he nonchalantly stepped over several of the wounded crew. Since injuries on the set were so frequent with this film, it was commonplace and not worth him looking back at the weak humans with their weak skin and weak organs.
"Hey," Gaz said, coming out of nowhere and violently poking him in the ribs and kissing him on the cheek.
"Hey, yourself," Zim said, nursing his side, "Did you sleep well, even after what the Cybil beast told you."
"Yeah," Gaz said, "You should know not much gets to me. Anyways, did you prepare for the role this time?"
"But of COURSE!" he said triumphantly, "Zim is always prepared for the Shaky Spear."
"Last time, it seemed like you weren't putting much effort into it and reading it verbatim."
"If only that fool monkey beast would hold the cue card right," Zim began, referring to the person behind the camera who held cards up so Zim would remember his lines, "then I could actually capture the spirit of this Macbeth creature I am playing."
"Well, most actors memorize their lines before they go on," Gaz plainly stated as she and Zim walked towards the set, ready for the next scene to film.
"Ah, but shouldn't this spirit of the theater I've heard so much about possess me, without me having to memorize lines?" Zim asked, "Your old English can be hard to follow. And wasn't this dialect even dated during the Shaky Spear's time? His spirit should come and give me the correct lines; Zim should not have to bend his mind to understand a now erroneous way of speaking a should-be simple language such as human English."
"Well, best of luck, hon," Gaz said, pulling her hair out of her eyes and in place for how it should be, "because the cue card guy is among the injured you just stepped over. You're going to have to go off memory today"
"Wait, what?" Zim said.
The director called for action. Zim ran backstage for the scene, and the lobotomized lummox playing the servant shambled onto the set.
Act 3, Scene 2: Within Macbeth's castle.
Gaz paces the room for a moment or two and then turns to her servant, WILLY, who is standing and staring at the ceiling, drool coming out of his mouth and dressed only in boxers with rubber duckies on them.
GAZ: Is Banquo gone from court?
Willy then finally comprehends what he's staring at, which is indeed a rare type of beetle, found only in the Amazon and would surely be wanted by the local experts, this being Colorado. He then picks it up off the ceiling and eats it, finally giving Gaz's question its place in the cue of his mind.
WILLY: Dah, ay, madam, but heh returns aaaauh-gain tohnight!
GAZ (looking at this creature bewildered at why he was picked for the part): …Say to the king I would attend his leisure for a few words.
WILLY: Mahdam, ah will…
Willy then lumbers again through the wall of the set, completely ignoring the door. The audience can hear Zim screaming, "Put me down, I command you! Zim has had a major setback and is not prepare as of yet!"
GAZ: Naught's had, all's spent, where our desire is got without content. 'Tis safer to be that which we destroy than by destruction dwell in doubtful joy.
Willy then hurls Zim onto the set, causing him to land right in front of Gaz. Zim gets up awkwardly and stands there, nervous as hell.
GAZ: How now, my lord! Why do you keep alone, of sorriest fancies your companions making, using those thoughts which should indeed have died with them they think on? Things without all remedy should be without regard. What's done is done.
ZIM: Umm…we have scorched…something…some sort of lizard right? Oh the snake, but not killed it. She'll close and…be…herself? Wilst our poor malice remains…in DOOM of her former tooth. My meals and sleep shall be haunted by this ugly beast, but ZIM SHALL OVERCOME ALL!!! IT SHALL NOT HAVE ME!!! NOT WEAPON, NOT BEAST, nor the foul poisons from Willy's toilet, nor the FILTHY worm babies!!! NO ONE AND NOTHING!!!
GAZ (trying to go with it, patting him on the back): …Come on, gentle my lord, sleek o'er your rugged looks. Be bright and jovial among your guests tonight.
ZIM: So does Zim, my filthy swine of beauty. Remember the Banquo, and greet…eth his eye and tongue with joyous smileyness all around. Yet, unsafe are we that we must hide our intent…yes, Zim…Macbeth grow'eth anxious…I think.
GAZ (getting even more concerned): You must leave this.
ZIM: Oh, full of goo is Zim's mind, my love. You know that the Banquo and Fleance squid beasts still live?
GAZ: But in them nature's copy's not eterne.
ZIM: THERE'S RELIEF YET!!!! They are assailable. Then be thou jocund; ere the flying weasel has made his decent, ere to the dark booty of Cthulhu's summons the shard-borne beetle, with the dooky monster's stompings hath squinched his bad self into a bear suit, there shall be deed of DREADFUL PUDDING!!!
GAZ: Dammit, Zim, that didn't make a bit of fucking sen…
The screen cuts off and goes back to Gaz saying her correct line, whether they corrected Zim's stupidity or not. Gaz has little excuse for going off script because consensus says God miracled her skull with a brain, unlike many of the cast.
GAZ: What's to be done?
ZIM: Let us be stupid of the knowledge, dearest piggy, till we perform our evil deed. Come, blessed, liquidy black sky, scarf up the tender eye of the pitiful, doomed head of the day, like the Dib's giant head consumes the smelly corn of Indiana. Light thickens. Good things of day begin to fall out of their place to where all things eventually lead, into the wretched Filthy Piggy Toilet, with all its octopoid creatures in t-shirts!
Gaz and the rest of the crew look at him in the weirdest of ways; they've given up trying to make sense out of it, or for that matter, editing this entire scene to make proper sense. Zim then looks directly into the camera, as if addressing the audience.
ZIM: Thou marvel'st at my words, but HOLD THEE STILL! Things bad begun make strong themselves by ill. So prithee go with ME, ZIM!!! AH-HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!...ha, ha, heee…I am normal…
SCENE CUT!!!
Gaz wanted to beat the ever living crap out of Zim. She made a slight growl, fists clinched, but instead calmed down, walked over to a nearby chair and sat down, crossing her legs. She was doing what her anger management specialist informed her to do, to bottle it away and suffer the stupidity of others, as many people her age had to do. She did have something to calm her down, as Gir walked over with his head open, roasted nuts inside for her to eat.
"You wants da nuts?" Gir asked, drawing out the syllables. He walked over next to her and squatted down, wiggling his butt to prepare his empty head to be eaten out of. "And after that, I've gots me some piggy poo. Wouldn't you like?"
"Umm, maybe later," Gaz answered, knowing that if she said no, he was going to throw a maddening fit her nerves really weren't ready for. She then began eating the nuts out of his head.
Zim looked at this scene with some sense that it just sounded dirty. Then he looked at her one exposed leg through the slit in her dress and realized that the dirtiness fit. His thoughts, however, turned to the victory he would surly have with what lay in his pocket.
"Zim," Gaz said calmly, but with a hint of something sinister lying beneath.
"Yes, my pig tasting human?"
"I have to congratulate you for single handedly ruining that scene," Gaz said in a now biting tone, "I'm sure that if Shakespeare could have heard you, he would rise from his rotting box and personally come over and eat your brains for that atrocity."
"If only the card man had stronger organs," Zim growled in his excuse, "then maybe Zim would not have such difficulty with the lines of this zombie spear you speak of."
"Meh," Gaz said dismissingly, "There were worse productions, I guess, like the one Jimmy Neutron performed in. But I actually just had another thought."
"Eh?" Zim asked.
"Yes, this is random, but have you noticed during the late '80s and early '90s, Midway games like N.A.R.C and Total Carnage seemed to take great stride in making the last boss a giant tank in the shape of the main antagonist's head? I mean, what moron would do that? Oh, sure, I'll bet all the world's dictators are egocentric enough to design their doomsday weapons specifically to look like them." She then looked over at the giant Cthulhu statue backstage that the director was going to use for Hecate and reached some odd connection with what she was saying with this…thing that resembled the beast from her nightmares.
"Yup," Zim said, banishing some of the thoughts he had in his head about his own plans to conquer worlds, "They are…pretty silly." Hey, have you been having that dream still?
"You mean the one about the zombies?" Gaz asked rhetorically, "Yes."
"Yeah, they're starting to become a pain," Zim said, "They move a lot quicker than that mall-beast Slab's. They're a lot more like Zack Snyder's 'Dawn of the Dead' remake."
"Yeah, well," Gaz continued, "if they start saying, 'Join us,' or, 'Dead by dawn,' I'm drilling a hole in my head like that one guy in 'Pi.'
She looked into Zim's eyes with a puzzled look.
"Are you hiding something?" Gaz said, only a hint of psychic power being used for this one.
"Umm, no, love," Zim responded, putting his hand in his pocket, "What would Zim possibly have to hide from…" With that, all his inhibitions left and he jumped on top of Gaz, pinned her to the floor with his waist, and pulled the box from his pocket, which clearly contained a silver ring with a shining garnet inside of it. "MARRY ME! MARRY ZIM!!! WE MUST BE JOINED, YOU AND I!!!"
There was a long, awkward silence. They stared at each other for the longest time, both feeling a sense of indignation, yet the sense of passion and bestial desire for one another, instinct and intellect not matching at all, so much so that neither noticed the crowd that had gathered around them, Mandy, Olga, and Tak included. Mandy was thinking a mixture of things, one that it was the stupidest thing Gaz could do, marriage, and the other thinking it was the best and most logical of things going for her. Olga was hoping Gaz would say yes, as it was probably the most romantic thing she had seen in so long; she was only hoping Piff could be as such. Tak smiled, knowing the outcome that no one else did, even without psychic force.
Dib was there too, but at the same time, wasn't. His mind just couldn't comprehend the scene before him, his arch rival for so many years asking his sister to marry him. He could only stare, saucer eyed, as his mind was trying and failing to blot out this picture he had dreaded for so long, yet at the same time, believing it right. After all, Zim had shown some sign of reform…or maybe not.
The silence lasted two minutes, but those minutes felt like an eternity. It was Gaz, however, who broke the silence.
"Listen, Zim, and listen well," She then threw him off of her and, upon standing, pulled him up by the collar of his shirt. There was another pause, Gaz staring deep into Zim's eyes, wanting him to understand their cold implications, until finally she said, "We do this my way, too, without you over me. We're ruling our galaxy together…my love." She then pulled him to her, still holding his collar, and forced his lips onto hers.
Everyone cheered.
And the curtains fell with a thud, with the sound of Noodle Boy's incessant ranting and Gir shouting something about pig feces.
……
"Everything's set," Nyarlathotep said, sitting in the darkness, "All I need do is bide my time, and since I have stolen Yog-Sothoth's powers, I obviously have plenty of that." He then cackled, sending a maddening echo across the empty, black void.