Growing Mold
By Paige

(Disclaimer: I don't own Invader Zim, or anything having to do with IZ. The monster is mine.)

It was the most sickening, vile, repulsive thing ever. It was shriveled and brown, and reeked the most awful smell, a smell that protruded from its revolting wrinkled body like a tail from a mouse behind.

"This is disgusting!"

Dib pulled the nasty brown mess from the front of the muddled mass of junk jutting out from under his bed. Dib wrinkled his nose in abhorrence.

"I don't see why I have to clean under my bed," he muttered to himself as he picked up the gross, malodorous brown pile and carried its bulk to the trashcan. "How old is this banana peel anyway?" He tossed the aged fruit peel into the trashcan.

He turned back to the pile below his bed, undeterred by the filthy blob he had just removed from the pile. He yanked a stack of books from the chaos.

"Hey, I didn't know I had this book," he said, looking through the heap of books. It was one of Gaz's books, one of the ones he had sworn he'd never seen before. "I think I'll just hide that one till I can sneak it... somewhere that's... not in my room." He stuffed the book into a box labeled 'Cheese', and then placed one of his books into his nearly empty bookcase.

"Grr..."

Dib stopped moving in mid-place. "Hello? Gaz? Is that you?"

Silence.

Dib shook his head. "I think the smell from that banana peel is getting to me. Now I'm hearing things." He continued to put books in the bookcase.

"Grr!"

Dib jolted around, and stared into the dark, befuddled abyss under his bed. It was his bed that had growled at him!

Dib narrowed his eyes. His bed had growled at him... or the mess under it had. He continued staring. "Hello?" he said. He inched closer to his bed, listening for more sounds from its depths. He stood staring at the heap of junk under his bed for a few minutes, just listening for sounds.

Nothing.

Dib shook his head. This was stupid. There was not a monster under his bed. There wasn't.

Dib reached into the messiness, and start to drag a pair of pants from the mound of debris.

The pants pulled back.

"What the..." Dib pulled harder on the pants. They pulled back again.

"GRRRARRRR!"

Dib let go of the pants, flabbergasted. The pants were pulled back under the bed, like somebody slurping a spaghetti noodle. Dib stared in the chaos under his bed in shock.

Dib stared. "My bed... just ate... my pants..." he said.

His bed had just eaten his pants.

His BED had just EATEN his pants!

HIS BED HAD JUST EATEN HIS PANTS!

Now, had Dib been the type of person who didn't believe in aliens and the paranormal, he probably would have freaked out because he didn't know what had just happened, and wouldn't have been able to understand it.

But Dib's calculating, paranormal-believing mind came up with the only logical conclusion...

A BED MONSTER HAD JUST EATEN HIS PANTS!

Dib ran down the stairs screaming, shouting, and shrieking, yelling, panicking, and BAM!

Dib hit a wall.

*****

"Wha..." Dib woke up, his head throbbing, pounding, and trying to explode. He shook the pain to the back of his mind, and looked around.

He was lying across the hallway in front of the stairs, his feet in front of the wall... the wall that now had a hole in the shape of his head where there hadn't previously been one.

Gaz walked into the hallway that connected the living room and kitchen to the upstairs, stepped over him, and continued on her way to the kitchen. Her eyes never once left the screen of her Game Slave.

Dib still didn't move; he was trying to stop the monster headache that he had.

His sister reentered the hallway, now playing her Game Slave with one hand, a soda in her other. She stopped by Dib.

"Move," she said. "I'm not dropping my game or my soda trying to step over you. Move now, or else."

Dib, deciding quickly that he honestly didn't want to find out what his sister meant by 'or else', stood. His head swam as Gaz walked past him, toward the living room again.

Dib climbed up the stairs as his headache dissipated. He stepped into his room, and the bed monster growled at him.

Dib glowered at the dark space where the bed monster resided. It was time to test this monster.

(AN: A cheese joke and a pants joke in one story. Neway, I don't know for sure how many stories Dib's house is, so I'm going to say two (with an attic, it's three.) If I'm wrong, oh well.)