Chapter 5
The Kitchen of Death
I rang the doorbell. The maniacal, high-pitched laughter I half- expected filled my eardrums with an unsettling feeling of... weirdness. I braced myself for the moment that dumb robot would crank open the door separating me from the enemy's fortress- a broken-off door to a men's room somewhere. That moment never came. Instead I reeled back in confusion as the house's "guardian" jumped out of the window, juggling a flaming baked potato.
The strangely cute little creature ran around madly with the potato, hollering while squeezing exorbitant amounts of Poop™ Ranch Dressing on it as if it was a normal afternoon ritual. He then proceeded to throw it into his mouth, where it disappeared into the bottomless pit that was his "stomach". Interesting. Nevertheless, I had no time to waste. The Irken would be home any minute, I reasoned, pulling the memory disk out of my pocket.
"Um... GIR..."
"Yeeeeeessss?"
The android smiled like a child in anticipation and turned to me innocently. He looked like a lost little puppy, even without his "disguise" on. Alien trickery, I would suspect, if the machine hadn't given me that look a thousand times already. He opened his huge mouth to speak again.
"Do you got any of them pickled nachos?" I raised an eyebrow. It was pure luck that I had a magic marker in my trench coat. After pointing my finger at empty space, I turned my back on GIR and scribbled the word "NACHOZ" on the memory disk.
"Here." GIR studied the memory disk, apparently not even recognizing it.
God, he was stupid.
GIR laughed. "You tryin' to fool me. This is no bag o' nachos."
Okay, maybe not THAT stupid.
"This is a chocolate ice CREAM sandwich!" GIR yelled, and swallowed the memory disk whole. After being pleased with myself I wondered if the disk would eventually end up where it was supposed to go.
After a pause GIR looked at me right in the eye again. "Okay. Me have to check on the spinach puffs now. Bye-bye!"
Satisfied, I retreated to a nearby tree overlooking Zim's house. Clichéd as sitting up in a tree was, It was the ideal spot to spy on a two- storey tall house in the middle of one of a roundabout in a dead end street. And there I waited.
The night dragged on longer than I expected it to. Usually I'd sit obsessively in front of Zim's house watching him, but today it just didn't feel right... For once, I had something else to do. And I wasn't doing it. All I was doing was pushing the problem into the background as I always did when it came to my emotions. All they ever did was slow me down.
I had an urge, an instinctual urge to call up my sister... It was just my inner loneliness talking again, looking for an easy way out of this. No. This waiting was a test... A test for my endurance. And to cut a long story short, at 1 in the morning I was relieved to have aced it. Clad in his "old beggar" disguise, the Irken strolled down the dead-end street to his house and pushed open his door.
"Hm... What's on the agenda tonight... Repair robo-parents... And maybe take a nice bath in icky earth-paste. Ah... Earth-paste." He was mumbling to himself. Again. Well, at least I wasn't alone when it came to that. I took my cold binoculars in my hand and fixed my eyes steely onto the enemy's fortress, but the Irken invader had all but disappeared from my sight.
However, I could still hear his malevolent voice. Sounds... Sounds coming from the kitchen... I pressed a button on my communicator watch, tapping into the bug I anchored underneath Zim's refrigerator the week before. He rarely discussed his plans outside of his underground base, and I was quite surprised this bug actually came in handy. The garbled mumbling quickly turned into clear dialogue.
"Many times before have I tried to eliminate that monkey, disturbing as he is. This time, GIR, we will---"
"Throw him a barbecue party? Coz I love barbecue..."
As always, a disturbing silence followed GIR's remark.
"No, GIR, there will be no barbecue parties. Instead, we are going to---"
"—but why???"
Zim gave in. "All right, all right, after we lure in and capture the worm-baby and hold open his eyelids and force him to watch on my monitor as my giant tick-car-parasite-pirate-beast wreaks havoc on the world... Then maybe you can have your barbecue party. Myself... I'll just be eating waffles."
I should have been horrified at what he said. However, all I could think of at the second was how Zim could eat waffles when his skin was burned by meat, vegetables and other earthly foods. Before it fully hit me what Zim meant by "lure in and capture the worm-baby", GIR's screaming at the top of his robotic lungs shocked me nearly out of the tree I was lounging in.
"OH, YEAAAH!!! WAAAAA!!! I FORGOT!!! MY WAFFLES! MY RADIOACTIVE WAFFLES!" I heard the android rushing to the microwave, which had been whirring and buzzing in the background ever since I turned on my communicator.
"GIR? What are you ---"
Suddenly, everything stopped. For a fleeting moment I heard high- pitched feedback noises sprouting from my communicator. Then the blinding light, followed immediately by a vacuum of air. A wall of the sheer force of the explosion propelled me out of the tree. The last thing I remember was my head hitting something before everything faded to black.
I rang the doorbell. The maniacal, high-pitched laughter I half- expected filled my eardrums with an unsettling feeling of... weirdness. I braced myself for the moment that dumb robot would crank open the door separating me from the enemy's fortress- a broken-off door to a men's room somewhere. That moment never came. Instead I reeled back in confusion as the house's "guardian" jumped out of the window, juggling a flaming baked potato.
The strangely cute little creature ran around madly with the potato, hollering while squeezing exorbitant amounts of Poop™ Ranch Dressing on it as if it was a normal afternoon ritual. He then proceeded to throw it into his mouth, where it disappeared into the bottomless pit that was his "stomach". Interesting. Nevertheless, I had no time to waste. The Irken would be home any minute, I reasoned, pulling the memory disk out of my pocket.
"Um... GIR..."
"Yeeeeeessss?"
The android smiled like a child in anticipation and turned to me innocently. He looked like a lost little puppy, even without his "disguise" on. Alien trickery, I would suspect, if the machine hadn't given me that look a thousand times already. He opened his huge mouth to speak again.
"Do you got any of them pickled nachos?" I raised an eyebrow. It was pure luck that I had a magic marker in my trench coat. After pointing my finger at empty space, I turned my back on GIR and scribbled the word "NACHOZ" on the memory disk.
"Here." GIR studied the memory disk, apparently not even recognizing it.
God, he was stupid.
GIR laughed. "You tryin' to fool me. This is no bag o' nachos."
Okay, maybe not THAT stupid.
"This is a chocolate ice CREAM sandwich!" GIR yelled, and swallowed the memory disk whole. After being pleased with myself I wondered if the disk would eventually end up where it was supposed to go.
After a pause GIR looked at me right in the eye again. "Okay. Me have to check on the spinach puffs now. Bye-bye!"
Satisfied, I retreated to a nearby tree overlooking Zim's house. Clichéd as sitting up in a tree was, It was the ideal spot to spy on a two- storey tall house in the middle of one of a roundabout in a dead end street. And there I waited.
The night dragged on longer than I expected it to. Usually I'd sit obsessively in front of Zim's house watching him, but today it just didn't feel right... For once, I had something else to do. And I wasn't doing it. All I was doing was pushing the problem into the background as I always did when it came to my emotions. All they ever did was slow me down.
I had an urge, an instinctual urge to call up my sister... It was just my inner loneliness talking again, looking for an easy way out of this. No. This waiting was a test... A test for my endurance. And to cut a long story short, at 1 in the morning I was relieved to have aced it. Clad in his "old beggar" disguise, the Irken strolled down the dead-end street to his house and pushed open his door.
"Hm... What's on the agenda tonight... Repair robo-parents... And maybe take a nice bath in icky earth-paste. Ah... Earth-paste." He was mumbling to himself. Again. Well, at least I wasn't alone when it came to that. I took my cold binoculars in my hand and fixed my eyes steely onto the enemy's fortress, but the Irken invader had all but disappeared from my sight.
However, I could still hear his malevolent voice. Sounds... Sounds coming from the kitchen... I pressed a button on my communicator watch, tapping into the bug I anchored underneath Zim's refrigerator the week before. He rarely discussed his plans outside of his underground base, and I was quite surprised this bug actually came in handy. The garbled mumbling quickly turned into clear dialogue.
"Many times before have I tried to eliminate that monkey, disturbing as he is. This time, GIR, we will---"
"Throw him a barbecue party? Coz I love barbecue..."
As always, a disturbing silence followed GIR's remark.
"No, GIR, there will be no barbecue parties. Instead, we are going to---"
"—but why???"
Zim gave in. "All right, all right, after we lure in and capture the worm-baby and hold open his eyelids and force him to watch on my monitor as my giant tick-car-parasite-pirate-beast wreaks havoc on the world... Then maybe you can have your barbecue party. Myself... I'll just be eating waffles."
I should have been horrified at what he said. However, all I could think of at the second was how Zim could eat waffles when his skin was burned by meat, vegetables and other earthly foods. Before it fully hit me what Zim meant by "lure in and capture the worm-baby", GIR's screaming at the top of his robotic lungs shocked me nearly out of the tree I was lounging in.
"OH, YEAAAH!!! WAAAAA!!! I FORGOT!!! MY WAFFLES! MY RADIOACTIVE WAFFLES!" I heard the android rushing to the microwave, which had been whirring and buzzing in the background ever since I turned on my communicator.
"GIR? What are you ---"
Suddenly, everything stopped. For a fleeting moment I heard high- pitched feedback noises sprouting from my communicator. Then the blinding light, followed immediately by a vacuum of air. A wall of the sheer force of the explosion propelled me out of the tree. The last thing I remember was my head hitting something before everything faded to black.