I linger in the doorway of alarm clock screaming,
monsters calling my name.
Let me stay,
where the wind will whisper to me.
The raindrops as they're falling
tell a story.
Dib rested against the white walls of his "room," a prison cell decorated up to look like a real child's room. A prison cell designed for those whose crimes were having minds unlike the legal mind. His legs were drawn up to his chest, he was only breathing slightly. He was waiting until five o' clock, when the amount that his father's accountant had authorized for his treatment would run out and the crazy house would again reluctantly open the cell doors to let him go. Let him go, that was, until the next time.
Why didn't he just stop talking crazy? A smile played across his lips. Because he believed. That was the only real reason. It was his belief that kept him going, and he refused to be untrue to himself. No matter how much it cost him.
The fresh scent of an incoming rain came through the bars, temporarily drawing his attention. Rain, Zim hated the rain. It burned, penetrated his skin, harmed him. The rain was the weapon of the world turned against Zim in the same way that hatred and petty mindedness were sharp daggers turned towards him. Raindrops melted into shards of glass that drew blood when they tore through his clothes and littered the ground around his feet. He could almost understand Zim's pain, were Zim not a slimy monster from outer space that belonged rightfully dead.
In my field of paper flowers,
and candy clouds of lullaby.
I lie inside myself, in my field of paper flowers and candy clouds of lullaby.
He stood up slowly when a man in a white coat arrived at the cell door. The man didn't have keys in hand like a traditional prison warden because they wanted this place to seem like a home. A demented sort of sitcom home, that was, but still a home. A home where all the minds were troubled, but one that lacked the charm of the Addams family. "Time to go," the man said, chuckling from behind fat lips. "That is, until next time."
Dib picked up his bag and looked bored. "Until next time."
I lie inside myself for hours
and watch my purple sky fly over me.
Don't say I'm out of touch
With this rampant chaos - your reality.
Passing by outside on his way to a taxi, paid for by his father's vast and empty wealth, Dib passed a student he vaguely recognized from class. It wasn't that he didn't know him- he'd recognize M anywhere. The mask that he wore, the frozen and glazed look, wasn't a look Dib had ever seen before. He looked straight over at Dib, his eyes as blank as the glass eyes of the creepy preserved pink rabbit from the science room. Honestly creeped out, Dib backed away from him. The boy's eyes didn't even seem to look at him, but at something above him. Dib wondered if he was about to get crapped on by a bird. Then, as quickly as they had arrived, the student was hustled off by two women in white coats with powerful sticks strapped to their hips.
I know well what lies beyond my sleeping refuge,
The nightmare I built my own world to escape
in my field of paper flowers
and candy clouds of lullaby.
"How tragic," he overheard one of the workers holding a lipstick stained cigarette to her yellowed teeth say, oblivious that she was talking about personal information in front of a child patient. "He was found alone in his house, underneath his basement stairs, snapping at anyone who tried to get near him."
"My, his parents called for him to be taken here, then?"
"His parents are missing. They found a bloodstain on the sheets upstairs, but no body. The cars not gone, nothing."
"Creepy," the younger smoker, her eyes thick with mascara, shuddered. She looked down at Dib. "Get going! You shouldn't be standing out here staring at us!"
Dib turned heel and headed quickly for the taxi.
Riding through the falling slushy rain home, Dib huddled down in seats that smelled vaguely of barf and ignored the driver's coughing. He wondered if the driver would have a heart attack, hit a tree, and end both their lives right there. For once, however, fate was seemingly kind and dropped him at the end of the concrete walk leading up to the only house in the area with a giant telescope parked on the lawn.
He didn't bother asking Gaz if she'd missed him, as she was relaxing on the stairs with a can of soda and her game system. The last can of soda, he discovered when he went to the kitchen. He sighed and made a mental note to send in another request for a grocery purchase order to his father's accountant. If it weren't for that man, he didn't know how he and Gaz would have survived all those years.
He sat down, then got up again. He had to go to his classmate's house. He had to search for clues. This could be some new plot of Zim's, or some other horrible supernatural monster. Gods knew it certainly sounded like it, if the gossipers were to be trusted. He also knew that the police probably still had the place taped off, or at the very least the neighbors would be paranoidly keeping watch over the "Murder House." How to get into it without being seen was a problem, but not a big one. If he could sneak into an alien base, he could sneak into a house guarded by the city's overweight and underpaid police force.
Without bothering to unpack from his latest, "vacation," Dib donned a black outfit and headed out via the drainpipe. The outside was slippery and clammy from the recent rain, but he was used to that. The rain was merely a problem because it increased the chance he'd leave footprints.
The irony of the fact that it was M who had sent him to the Crazy Home earlier that week didn't elude Dib. Now who was the one in the crazy house, and the one who wasn't likely to get out of it simply because of the mercy of a faceless accountant. Who was on the inside and who was on the outside now?
Dib shook his head. No, such petty thoughts were below him. Even if they didn't care, he was a savior of the human race. Saviors didn't have time for selfish thoughts or petty anger at the way they were treated by the rest of the race. Why? Because in the end, it was the saviors who got the last laugh, no matter how many laughs in their face they'd had to endure on the way.
The dark brown house loomed suddenly out of the ground as he reached the top of the hill, grateful for the cover of darkness. The house was the only one on the block with no light coming from inside, where utter silence reigned. Dib found one of the windows to be surprisingly unlocked, and took that as an invitation to let himself inside.
The house didn't look like a place where three people had gone suddenly missing and one had gone hopelessly insane. It looked like the family was merely away at work, not like they'd even gone away for a vacation. Of course, there was a police grid on the floor and other evidence of the search for answers, but beyond that…
The house settled, making it sound like someone had stepped on a loose board overhead. Dib raised his head quickly and then ducked behind a recliner. It had seemed too easy… there had to be a cop in the house watching over it. Or was that just settling? It hasn't exactly sounded like a footstep…
Dib finally crept out when he heard no more sounds. If it were something in the house, whatever it was, was upstairs. Clutching a flashlight, but not daring to turn it on yet, Dib rounded the oak banister and crawled up the carpeted stairs, his ears and nose on constant alert. Whatever it was, if it were anything, would have to be damn tricky to sneak up on him.
The upstairs was more disturbed, police tape lying about. A dry wind blew through, crossing his face. There had to be another window open somewhere, beside the window he'd opened. That didn't make any sense. It was raining, and this house was full of potential evidence.
He moved towards the direction of the wind, as if drawn by it. Yes, if whatever had done this had returned, it had opened the window. It had made the creaking sound. It would be there, waiting to be discovered, just as soon as he opened the door.
His fingers reached out, he gently pushed forward, and walked into the room.
I lie inside myself for hours
and watch my purple sky fly over me.
Swallowed up in the sound of my screaming,
cannot cease for the fear of silent nights.
Oh how Ii long for the deep sleep dreaming,
the goddess of imaginary light.
Dib blinked back surprise. He was in his own bedroom, the window that he'd left open when he'd left to go investigate the murderer house giving off the air that he'd felt. No, wait. He was in the same outfit he'd worn home from the Crazy Home, not his spying gear. His bag lay at the foot of the stairs, unopened, not strewn out so he could get to his supplies like he'd left it. He ran down the stairs to find his sister sitting in the kitchen, the toaster smoking.
"Gaz? Did I… go to my room? Have I been… home this whole time?"
"You came home and passed out on the couch. Now leave me alone, I've only got fifteen levels left to go before I beat this game."
Dib frowned and wandered back up the stairs, hands in his pockets. That dream had seemed so real… but he'd never even been to the letter M's house. Of course, he hadn't been there. His dream must have been based on some twisted reimagining of his own house, not the real house. He hadn't gone out to investigate at all.
He didn't feel like going out investigating, for once in his life. Yes, it even came as a shock to him as he slipped out of his antiseptic scented clothes and into his pajamas. Shutting his window, he did something he usually didn't even think about doing in the back of his head… he locked the window.
Tomorrow, he'd try to find a floor plan of house, since entering it in broad daylight was plausible. He'd find out exactly how wrong what he saw in his dream was.
A newspaper diagram confirmed what he didn't want to know. He had correctly dreamed out the house. From the detail of the wooden banister to the exact way the purple reclining chair had been left, he had dreamed himself inside M's house. Every detail was perfect. He had really been there… but then again, he hadn't. For an eight pack of batteries Gaz had sworn on her Game Slave II that he'd simply gotten out of the taxi, come inside, and conked out on the couch until he'd sleepwalked himself up to his room, and then apparently awakened. It didn't make sense.
"Maybe Zim is using some kind of dream controlling device to make me think I'm insane. Yeah, that could be it… but that doesn't explain why M wasn't in class today." Dib sipped on his juice nervously.
A ball hit him in the back of his head, splattering juice and his glasses all over the ground. He quickly recovered them, knowing exactly what kind of prank glasses in the mud were prone too, and looked up to see a smug-faced blonde girl looking down at him. He didn't know her, she was in one of the higher classes.
"Sorry I didn't see you sitting there. If I had, I would have aimed better," she snorted, garnering laughter from her friends before she trotted off.
As Dib watched her leave, ball tucked under her arm and her blonde hair flowing out behind her via eighty dollar styling gel perfection, he felt a bit odd. Not just odd, but like cold fingers were wrapping themselves around his sternum. It was only in that moment that he stood up and watched after her.
Words formed unbidden in his mouth as he watched her go. "Did you ever think as a hearse goes by, that you might be the next to die?"