Chapter 28
A Sting In The Tail
Sandra Ciapor was a friendly, bubbly, thirty-something year old with a love of art, soap operas and cats. Or at least, that was the way that she described herself on her social networking profiles, and in the singles columns of magazines. She drove a battered old four-by-four with fuzzy dice in the windscreen and an air freshener in the shape of a daisy. Her wardrobe consisted of several pairs of faded jeans and a selection of blouses in various pastel colours. Today's shade was baby blue, and she had painted her nails and chosen eye shadow to match. Sandra was a social worker, and she had chosen this career because she wanted to help people. Sure, it was challenging, but that was the attraction for her.
The file that had been on her desk that morning was intriguing. A case involving the children of the famous Professor Membrane, it suggested that the Professor was neglecting his son and daughter. Dib, the older child, was not attending school, and neither was his sister. The Professor had not been seen at work for several months himself, and they could not be reached at home. This was the kind of case that Sandra took a special interest in, as she liked children. She hoped to have some of her own one day, and she was eager to take the case. So far, she simply had to visit the Professor's house and check things out, to ensure that everything was fine. The headmistress of the children's school had suggested that they could simply be ill, but she wasn't so sure.
Now she was driving up to the Membrane house, and she had to admit that it didn't look like the best place to bring up kids; there was an electric force field surrounding the front yard, and the walls were all grey. It looked bleak and cold. She pulled the four-by-four up to the drive and stepped out, walking up to the door but leaving her folders on the passenger seat of the car. She knew that clients often didn't like to hear that social service had files about you, especially when they were as thick as the ones she had. She knocked gently on the door and waited. Nobody answered so she knocked again. There was another period of silence. She was about to turn back to her car when she heard a scream, high pitched and so genuinely terror-filled that her body temperature seemed to plummet to below freezing.
The scream went on for nearly thirty seconds, and in this time, Sandra remained rooted to the spot. When it stopped, she shook herself out of her frozen stupor and grabbed the door-handle, turning it frantically. It barely moved in either direction, and she started to hammer on the door, opening the slot for letters and shouting in, begging for the occupants of the house to open the door, asking what had happened, if everyone was alright. Now that the screaming had stopped there was an eerie kind of silence in the house. No, that wasn't true. There was a very faint sound, coming from a room at the back of the house. It was a slow dragging sound, broken occasionally by a desperate grunting, as though somebody was trying to move something that was very heavy.
Fear enveloped her and she bent down to pick up a loose brick from the front porch to smash through the window with. Beetles scuttled out from under it, making her jerk her hand away in disgust, but not before she saw a faint glinting from under the brick. Bending down, she saw that it was the spare key to the house. She grabbed it triumphantly and slotted it into the keyhole, turning it. It stuck from rust, and her sweaty hands slipped on it. As she continued to battle with the stuck key, she thought she saw movement through the frosted front door window. Finally the key turned and she burst into the house.
--
The sound of a car pulling up outside the house registered distantly in Dib's mind as he slept, his face pressed against the hard, plastic surface of the kitchen table. He had been dozing there since his meal last night, and it was the first sleep he had had in a long time. He stirred, but didn't wake up. Now that his tortured mind was at rest, it was going to take a lot more than that to break him from it. There was the sound of footsteps, brisk and official, coming up to the door, and a gentle knocking. Again he stirred, his eyes flickering open briefly. He yawned and began to sit up, and stretch out, still half-asleep. When the knocks came again, his eyes flew open and he saw where he was.
Sitting at the kitchen table, one of his hands cut open, a half-finished tin of soup knocked over in front of him. On one side of him, the bloody corpse of his sister, her eyes wide and staring and sightless, gazing endlessly into his face. To the other side, a decomposing form that might once have passed for his father, but was now little more than some bloated, ghost-train mannequin, giving off the offensive stench of death and decay. Some terrible ichor was running down the side of his face, from a collapsed and rotting eye. His reflection in the shining pots behind these horror-show figures was exactly what he was; a terrified teenager with his eyes bulging in their sockets and his mouth pulled into an 'o' of horror, his face and hair splashed in dried blood, still wearing a stained lab-coat that was much too big for him.
He opened his mouth and screamed, the terror coming out of him in an unstoppable rush until his lungs burned and he had to stop for breath. It was then that he heard the worried shouts from the front door, the sound of intrusive, scrabbling fingers attempting to break their way in and find him. He didn't know who it was; the voice was a female one that he didn't recognise, but he couldn't let them see this grisly scene, whoever they might be. He glanced around the room, wondering where he could hide the bodies. His eyes fell upon the door that led to the utility room. In it was a large chest freezer, the washing machine and the ironing board.
Dib grabbed the Professor under the arms, crying out at the damp feel of decomposition that his cold hands were met with. He dragged him out of the chair and pulled him towards the utility room, nudging the door open with his toe. He opened the chest freezer, throwing its contents onto the floor, and tried desperately to lift the body with his aching arms. I can't lift this, he thought wildly to himself, it's a dead weight, and his shrill laughter bounced off the walls, startling him. He shuddered and finally managed to pull his father into the freezer, shutting the door on his twisted face and sour stench. Not knowing where else he could put her, he simply dragged Gaz through as well, covering her face with a coat. He closed the door and ran back out into the kitchen.
Now he could hear the woman at the front door struggling with the key in the lock. Oh gods above, she was trying to come in! He ran into the lounge, but he was trapped, and she would find him... find him and his family. There was a small chuckle behind him, and Dib whirled around to see his mother, sitting on the couch. She smiled warmly at him, patting the seat next to her. He walked over obediently, sitting down, though his heart was racing.
"Dib, sweetie, you can't leave our guest out on the front porch forever," she said in her comforting, honey-and-lemon voice.
"I know, mom, I know," he said frantically. Though he had seen the house as a tidy family home before, he could now see the state all the rooms were in, the thick layer of dust on every surface. He could smell the dark deeds that had been done here, chokingly strong, in the air.
"Do you remember what project your dad was working on before he fell down the stairs?" Freda Membrane asked her son, her voice slow, deliberate and patient. When he shook his head, she elaborated. "He was working on an anaesthetic. He wanted to use all-natural components, so it could be made with nothing that was harmful to the environment. He was using venom from..."
" ...Scorpions," Dib continued, his voice dull and dead-pan, "A certain type of scorpion and the sap of a tree. And he said that in the right amount, it would knock a person out, but in the wrong amount..."
"...It could kill a person," Freda finished solemnly, "So make sure you're careful when you show it to our guest. We wouldn't want anything to accidentally leak, would we? Something that could come back to haunt you?" Dib shook his head, staring at his mother. He didn't like the look in her eyes, but he liked disobeying her even less. As he stood up to leave, she touched his hand gently.
"What, mom?" he asked, and her eyes shone brightly.
"You've got a little smudge on your face, honey," she said gently, "Better clean that off before our guest arrives."
Dib scrubbed at the blood on his face as he left the room, letting rusty flakes of the stuff fall to the floor like dandruff. He ran past the front door to the basement, ignoring Gretchen in his search for his father's project. He had seen it many times when he had come down to the labs. It was a needle that was full of a clear, potentially deadly liquid. From the notes that his father had made, if all 10ml of his serum were injected, the subject would die. The maximum you could inject without causing serious damage was 3 ml. Dib found the needle at long last, under an overturned book. He picked it up with trembling fingers, staring at the numbers on the side.
The lock of the front door clicked.
--
In Zim's base, the computer was having a hard time trying to get GIR to listen as it explained its plan to help save their unconscious master. It was still struggling to keep the protective fields up, as the Massive was hacking them at a steady rate, but it thought it might have found a way in which to keep the Massive's computer occupied long enough to recharge all the fields, if only GIR would cooperate.
"Listen, GIR," it said hurriedly, "You know about the Massive, right? How it has DNA scanners?"
GIR nodded enthusiastically, and opened his mouth to answer, but the computer cut over him.
"I need you to take this," it continued, indicating a small parcel that a robotic claw was holding, "and run as fast as you can, away from the base. The DNA scanners on the base will think that they've found Zim, and will stop hacking our fields, at least for a while. Can you do that?"
"UH-HUH!" the robot squealed, nodding violently. He grabbed the parcel, which contained the finger that the computer had severed whilst Zim was unconscious. He opened it and looked inside. "OOOOOOH! Masta's finger!"
The computer was about to reply when Zim groaned loudly. He sat up on the couch, swaying slightly, and opened his eyes after some effort. He was experiencing the odd, drained sensation that came from having your blood completely purified. There was an unexplained pain in his hand, and as he looked at it dully, he noticed the absence of his finger. His eyes widened, and he looked around the room, only to see it clutched in the hands of his robot slave. He growled.
"What is this? WHAT IS THIS?" he shouted, and GIR sprinted from the base, screaming. Zim ran after him before the computer could stop him and explain the necessity of staying inside the base. Unable to call him back, the computer concentrated on keeping the fields up. Hopefully Zim would come back after he got tired of chasing GIR, and the plan would work. Soon it found its job getting easier and easier, and eventually the fields were completely replenished.
Zim was running as fast as he could, but the GIR was already out of sight. Why? What had possessed the robot to steal one of his fingers? Why had he run off with it? He continued on, down street after street, until he was completely lost. He would have to find GIR now, if he had any hopes of getting back to the base. A chill of fear passed over him as he realised that the Irken computers could see him now, and that perhaps it was a good idea to get back to the base now. He turned around, staring at the paths that were in front of him. Which way had he come?
With a yell of frustration, he ran down the left path, the opposite direction to the base, as it happened. He continued to run until he came to a river. Across that river was a bridge. He walked over to it, drawn to it as if by some unknown force, slowly and carefully. He crossed to the middle of the bridge and stared over the side, watching the powerful rush of water with a mixture of awe and instinctive fear. He didn't know how long he stood there, mesmerised by the rushing torrents, but some time had passed before he was broken from this hypnosis by a cry behind him.
--
Dib stepped over the crumpled body of the blonde woman that had bumped into him at the top of the stairs. She had screamed when she had seen him and he had stuck the needle into her arm instinctively, pressing the plunger in only up to the 3ml mark. The safe mark. He ran out of the door and slammed it on the house of horrors that had once been his home, continuing to run past startled neighbours and total strangers. The lab coat, saturated with the blood of so many innocents, flapped around his legs as he ran, and he dumped it off after a while, as though it was weighing him down with guilt and sin.
Soon he was running down the hill where the Hi-Skool was located, and he had a brief flash-back of him and Emma sneaking out of school to follow Zim, seeing the late Ms Cross driving her van and staring at him. How long ago had that been? It seemed a thousand years had passed since then, and all of the memories were sour. Suddenly he heard footsteps running behind him, and though he put
on speed, they carried on, catching up with him. Damian and Desdemona appeared on either side of him like personal trainers.
"What have you done?" Desdemona wailed, but he carried on regardless.
"You didn't kill that woman," Damian growled, "She'll wake up, she'll find out, she'll..."
"GO AWAY!!" Dib shrieked, and they vanished instantly, though their reproachful faces remained engraved in his mind.
His lungs were on fire, his chest heaving, his arms and legs aching from the strain of running when he had so little energy as it was, but he couldn't stop. Not now, when he was so close to getting away from all that had held him prisoner. He turned the corner and nearly tripped, sending his arms in flailing circles as he tried to keep his balance. He caught himself in time, but sank to the floor anyway, breathing deeply, a stitch burning his chest like a searing hot poker. He squeezed his eyes shut, counting to ten. When he opened them again, he cried out. Emma was in front of him, her freezing grey eyes staring into his.
"NO!" he cried, "Not you! Please, I need to get away, I need to..."
"You think you can get away from me?" she asked coldly, "You might have sent me away for a while, Dib, but I'll always come back somehow. The twins are me, your mother is me."
As if to prove it, she morphed into the image of his mother in front of his eyes, her face red and angry. It was an expression he had never seen on her usually soft, gentle features.
"Dib T. Membrane, I am really disappointed in you!" she screeched in a voice that was completely unlike her own, "You are going to march right back up that hill and inject the rest of that vial into that woman!"
Dib screwed his eyes shut, scrambled to his feet and ran, but Emma was still next to him, step for step, like a personal trainer coaxing him on. He carried on running until he reached a fork in the road, choosing the left path blindly. He sprinted on until he reached a roaring river, with a bridge over it. Standing in the middle of the bridge was a familiar figure.
"Zim!" Dib called out wildly, and the Irken turned to look at him, startled. There was a long silence, in which Emma began to walk towards the bridge with small steps. Dib followed her quickly. She was muttering something under her breath, some talismanic mantra, and Zim stared uneasily at Dib, who wondered how the alien could hear her too. Then he realised that he was muttering it as well, and he listened to the words that came from his lips.
"...Sleep with the fishes in your watery grave, you shall sleep with the fishes in your watery grave, you shall sleep with the..."
His eyes widened as Emma reached Zim. She grinned at him, and he started to run, watching the expression of fear slowly appear on Zim's face.
"Dib-Stink, what are you..."
"You shall sleep with the fishes in your watery..."
"NO!"
When Dib reached Zim, Emma threw her arms out and caught Zim squarely on the chest, though Dib felt the pressure under his own hands. Zim cried out and pin wheeled his arms for balance, staggering backwards as he did so. The Irken seemed to hang in the air before he fell down and crashed through the surface of the rapidly moving water. Then he disappeared from sight completely.
AN
Please review and I shall update soon.
Invader Zim is the property of Jhonen Vasquez. I own Emma, Damian and Desdemona Dribben, Freda Membrane and Sandra Ciapor.
