Chapter 6
A Portrait of Two Lovers
I opened my eyes. A familiar feeling came back to me. That feeling you get when you wake of falling out of a dream and back into this harsh reality, with no clear memory of what life really was before... Or why I am alive.
Damn, that really sucked.
I forced myself up, and tried to focus my naked eyes to the scene before me. I was aching in places that had never ached before. I smelled blood. My own, I reasoned. How badly was I hurt? I stood up, feeling okay enough. My glasses lay broken on the floor, crushed under the tree I was perched in merely hours ago. Hours... How many? How long had I been here?
What was Zim going to do to Gaz?
I squinted my eyes at Zim's base- robotic tentacles were piecing its shattered walls back together. The roof-garage was left half-closed. Zim's Voot Runner was gone. My thumping heart felt like it was going to explode... Kind of like what happened to that lady on TV who thought Santa Claus had come back. I looked at my wrist communicator, even though I knew in the back of my mind that its circuits were scrambled from the explosion. There was no way of warning her... But what if he was already there?
Before I spent even a second of my usual pondering I was running at full speed back to my house, which was only a few blocks away. Nothing I couldn't handle, I thought, until I heard an ear-splitting "CRACK" coming from my right leg. The pain surged up into my spine and shocked me out of my sprint instantly.
I collapsed on my back screaming and burst into tears when I finally opened my eyes to see how far from my darkest dreams this injury was.
No bone had pierced flesh, leaving me only to wonder how badly broken my leg was. Grabbing the asphalt, I pulled myself up onto the curb and yanked someone's mailbox out of the ground to use as a makeshift cane. The next few minutes I spent limping home were a blur of mind-numbing physical agony and emotional confusion. I had to find her. The blood, sweat and tears pouring from me only fueled my desire.
I told myself that this wasn't about what happened at the bottom of the stairs- it was my duty as a brother that propelled me to run when I didn't even think I could anymore.
The more I limped on, the clearer it became to me what the Irken's plan was. He had been waiting... Waiting for an opening to catch Gaz alone. Alone from me, her brother, who sat by her during every lunch break of our lives... In his eyes, after all these years of being by her side, I had finally given her to him. All the fingers were pointing incriminatingly at me. Fingers I couldn't ignore.
At the sight of my familiar abode I called out her name. Leaving my cane on the lawn, I burst open the door, eyes wide open, fearing the worst, like any overly dramatic hero would.
"GAZ!!!" I sobbed with reckless abandon, clomping as fast as I could around my lonely house, trusting my balance to my aching hands.
My room. Her room. Empty. No signs of a struggle in the living room. A tinge of hope came back to me.
Luring me in didn't necessarily mean kidnapping my sister. Besides, it wasn't like she was the only person close to me... Wait... Yeah, she was. Our self-important "roommate", who buys us pizza occasionally, apparently doesn't consider our relationship to be 'close', so I don't either.
Besides, even if my sister did fit into Zim's plan, capturing her was sure to be anything but a cakewalk.
I mean, this was GAZ here. Not Princess fucking Toadstool. When Zim abducted me she broke open an "unbreakable" Irken storage tank with a tap of her foot to save my life. Nobody ever lay a finger on my sister without her approval and lived... Right?
Then I brought myself into the kitchen to look for signs of life... And maybe get a slice of Supertoast™. That's where I saw it.
A notebook on the table in the middle of the dining area. A half-finished sketch rested on the open page. I brought the sketch pad near to my face so my naked, near-sighted eyes could see what was scribbled on it.
It was the only clear thing I had seen since I'd woken up, though it felt like it was the only thing I'd seen clearly in my whole life.
A boy and a girl. I recognized the two figures immediately. Gaz and I, she with a smile on her face and I with a look of courage in mine. We were locked in a loving embrace that I could literally feel. Her arms were wrapped around me, as if she was clinging on for dear life. Beneath my lightly sketched glasses, my amber-colored eyes were intensely focused on her, telling her that I'd never leave her side, that I would be the one sure thing she could hold on to in this cruel, uncaring world. Her half- closed eyes, the same color as mine, looked serene, and her eyebrows frowned gently to push out the few tears of relief that streamed down her face. I could feel the power of the drawing, the raw, hormonal emotion that my sister poured into it. It was then, then that I knew that the girl I was going to rescue meant much more to me than a sister. I was going to dedicate whatever life I had to her happiness... To make my Gaz, my sister, my beloved, smile the way she did in that sketch.
Oh, and all of this came to me in about two seconds.
I'll never forget that drawing. None of the usual skeletons, flaming pigs or witches. Just my sister and I. And, across my arm, a violent diagonal line dragged across the page. Someone had caught her off guard and pulled her out of her chair in the middle of her masterpiece.
Zim.
I bit my lip and plodded on, unwittingly putting my weight on my bad leg, forgetting it was broken, and collapsing onto the table in mid-scream. The pain rushed back to me, along with reason. Yup. My brain started working again.
How could I stop him this time?
The voices in my head returned to tell me how this would all end. A dark cloud on the horizon as the Irken Armada made their way to Earth to turn us all into snack-manufacturing slaves or call-center workers or Vortian prison guards. Whatever was worse. Fires spreading across the city. Mexican food flying everywhere. I had seen it before through Zim's goggles, like some funky inevitable premonition... of DOOM.
Then I heard the unmistakable sound of his voice. It echoed throughout the city as if it was booming from the very foundations of the earth itself. What sounded like footsteps, rhythmic poundings, made my eyes and ears twitch. I didn't dare turn my head up to witness the horror that he was instilling upon the city now. I didn't have enough strength in me.
All hope faded from my sight. I took one last look at the heavenly sketch, trying not to get it wet or smeared with my shaking, tear-soaked hands.
Without even knowing it I called out for my mother. The mother that was never there for me. The mother I don't even remember. When I came to the harsh realization that nobody was going to cradle me in their arms, a new wave of tears overcame me. Why did all of this have to happen to me? Why, now that I finally found love after all these years, did I reject it? I wanted to wake up... Wake up and live yesterday all over again.
Hey, wait a minute... I did that before, didn't I? Travel into the past to warn myself about something... Aw, whatever. Must have been another fantasy of mine, because at that horrible moment, all I could hear was my own voice, telling myself...
Gaz was the only woman left in my life, and I couldn't save her.
Let the Irkens take the planet, I told myself, if this was to be our fate. Wherever my Gaz and I were going afterwards, we could go together as two dead souls taking comfort in one another, as opposed to two live siblings that the world would look down upon.
Yes, I mused, it would be certainly easier to die than to face what I was up against- and I don't just mean Zim. In the shadow of death I could escape from what I had become- a gargantuan-headed, impulsive, hopelessly romantic, incestuous control freak... I was a lost case and I knew it. Not even roast turkey was worth living for anymore.
I forced my aching leg up onto the table. It quelled some of the pain. Besides, it was the least I could do before the end.
After all, I expected that a day like this would come.
Eons seemed to pass within myself in that dark hour. I screamed out loud for all the regrets I tried to push back into my mind, all the times I'd suffered at the expense of others, for the sake of finding recognition, attention... perhaps love.
I felt the pain leaving my leg. I eyed the mailbox cane that I left out on the front lawn. It seemed to mock me- even if I went out there, what could I do?
Man, I sure have a problem with asking myself questions I already know the answer to, even when I'm telling a freakin' story.
My more minor wounds slowly became apparent to me. Two large gashes across my back, bruises all over my left arm, tiny glass cuts along my torso and neck and a part of my right ear torn loose. As I lost consciousness I prayed to whatever gods may be that it would all be over before I woke up.
***
My eyes opened to the same cursed kitchen. Maybe it was what heaven looked like...
Nah. Stupid Dib.
I barely remembered what was going on at first- I was losing too much blood. While wiping my face clean I noticed that the refrigerator had just stopped humming. Finally, moved by my instinctual curiosity, I glanced outside the window and into the city. Sparks were flying in the distance. Electrical poles sprouted blue lightning. Zim had attacked the power plant.
I heard a horrible ruckus from the garage. The restraining system I had put on Tak's ship had gone off-line. A familiar female voice piped up. I knew I should have pulled the plug on "upgrading" the crashed Irken cruiser a long time ago- I was downloading some new Vortian software into its mainframe.
"DIB!!! ZIM!!! Where are you?"
Yeah, this is what you get for wanting to play Solitaire on your alien ship.
The garage door burst asunder. A robotic tentacle erupted through the window I was looking out of and grabbed me around the waist. Before I knew it I was being held aloft seven feet in the air by Tak's crashed Irken ship, which had maneuvered itself over the front lawn. Her downloaded personality interface boomed out of a speaker in her cockpit.
"I see you've been able to repair my rear thrusters. Now, to avenge my mistress' defeat, I shall..."
At this point I lost concentration. I had almost forgotten that she had a slightly British accent. It was unnervingly cute, but I kind of regret not keeping my own personality downloaded into the ship, confused and insecure as it was. Still, I couldn't bring myself to care. At the moment I half-hoped that the ship would snap my frail body in half.
I remember that Gaz alone knew how to make it function without Tak's personality, from the time years ago when she saved me from being stranded on an ice floe... If only she were here, I thought. My thoughts always came back to her.
Yet still, all I could say was,
"T-Tak's ship!"
I blurted it out predictably, almost to myself. The ship gave a little electronic groan of irritation.
"As I was saying..." she continued, exasperated. "I shall extract Zim's coordinates from your unusually large head, and take him to the Control Brain for his horrible judgment... Then my mistress will return..."
I stopped listening at the mention of Zim's name, raised an eyebrow and pointed at the besieged metropolis. "Oh, Zim... He's over there, wreaking uncontrollable havoc on the city."
The voice whined as the tentacles tightened their grip. "Don't tell me you've forgotten what you and that... that horrible Irken did to me! My mistress is coming back for this planet, I swear to you! The Tallest shall have their snack tribute! TELL ME WHERE HE IS!!!"
"But... I just did." Damn, Irkens sure have hearing problems. Maybe that's owing to the fact that they have no ears.
"Oh... Right..." The ship turned its cockpit towards the currently-in-the-state- of-being-ravaged city. It lowered its binding tentacle to place me on the ground.
"Wait! I'm going with you. He's got my sister." I said boldly, hoping that since I was nothing more than a worm in the mud to Tak before she left, her ship would let me tag along for the ride.
Tak's ship didn't say anything, but I felt the pain around my waist loosen as more blood rushed back into my broken leg. The tentacle dropped me abruptly into the cockpit. I ignored the pain- the fire was burning in my eyes now. Zim was going down. Hope was rekindled. I took one last look at the sketch pad, which still lay perfectly intact under the shattered glass on top of the table.
I was coming for her.
I opened my eyes. A familiar feeling came back to me. That feeling you get when you wake of falling out of a dream and back into this harsh reality, with no clear memory of what life really was before... Or why I am alive.
Damn, that really sucked.
I forced myself up, and tried to focus my naked eyes to the scene before me. I was aching in places that had never ached before. I smelled blood. My own, I reasoned. How badly was I hurt? I stood up, feeling okay enough. My glasses lay broken on the floor, crushed under the tree I was perched in merely hours ago. Hours... How many? How long had I been here?
What was Zim going to do to Gaz?
I squinted my eyes at Zim's base- robotic tentacles were piecing its shattered walls back together. The roof-garage was left half-closed. Zim's Voot Runner was gone. My thumping heart felt like it was going to explode... Kind of like what happened to that lady on TV who thought Santa Claus had come back. I looked at my wrist communicator, even though I knew in the back of my mind that its circuits were scrambled from the explosion. There was no way of warning her... But what if he was already there?
Before I spent even a second of my usual pondering I was running at full speed back to my house, which was only a few blocks away. Nothing I couldn't handle, I thought, until I heard an ear-splitting "CRACK" coming from my right leg. The pain surged up into my spine and shocked me out of my sprint instantly.
I collapsed on my back screaming and burst into tears when I finally opened my eyes to see how far from my darkest dreams this injury was.
No bone had pierced flesh, leaving me only to wonder how badly broken my leg was. Grabbing the asphalt, I pulled myself up onto the curb and yanked someone's mailbox out of the ground to use as a makeshift cane. The next few minutes I spent limping home were a blur of mind-numbing physical agony and emotional confusion. I had to find her. The blood, sweat and tears pouring from me only fueled my desire.
I told myself that this wasn't about what happened at the bottom of the stairs- it was my duty as a brother that propelled me to run when I didn't even think I could anymore.
The more I limped on, the clearer it became to me what the Irken's plan was. He had been waiting... Waiting for an opening to catch Gaz alone. Alone from me, her brother, who sat by her during every lunch break of our lives... In his eyes, after all these years of being by her side, I had finally given her to him. All the fingers were pointing incriminatingly at me. Fingers I couldn't ignore.
At the sight of my familiar abode I called out her name. Leaving my cane on the lawn, I burst open the door, eyes wide open, fearing the worst, like any overly dramatic hero would.
"GAZ!!!" I sobbed with reckless abandon, clomping as fast as I could around my lonely house, trusting my balance to my aching hands.
My room. Her room. Empty. No signs of a struggle in the living room. A tinge of hope came back to me.
Luring me in didn't necessarily mean kidnapping my sister. Besides, it wasn't like she was the only person close to me... Wait... Yeah, she was. Our self-important "roommate", who buys us pizza occasionally, apparently doesn't consider our relationship to be 'close', so I don't either.
Besides, even if my sister did fit into Zim's plan, capturing her was sure to be anything but a cakewalk.
I mean, this was GAZ here. Not Princess fucking Toadstool. When Zim abducted me she broke open an "unbreakable" Irken storage tank with a tap of her foot to save my life. Nobody ever lay a finger on my sister without her approval and lived... Right?
Then I brought myself into the kitchen to look for signs of life... And maybe get a slice of Supertoast™. That's where I saw it.
A notebook on the table in the middle of the dining area. A half-finished sketch rested on the open page. I brought the sketch pad near to my face so my naked, near-sighted eyes could see what was scribbled on it.
It was the only clear thing I had seen since I'd woken up, though it felt like it was the only thing I'd seen clearly in my whole life.
A boy and a girl. I recognized the two figures immediately. Gaz and I, she with a smile on her face and I with a look of courage in mine. We were locked in a loving embrace that I could literally feel. Her arms were wrapped around me, as if she was clinging on for dear life. Beneath my lightly sketched glasses, my amber-colored eyes were intensely focused on her, telling her that I'd never leave her side, that I would be the one sure thing she could hold on to in this cruel, uncaring world. Her half- closed eyes, the same color as mine, looked serene, and her eyebrows frowned gently to push out the few tears of relief that streamed down her face. I could feel the power of the drawing, the raw, hormonal emotion that my sister poured into it. It was then, then that I knew that the girl I was going to rescue meant much more to me than a sister. I was going to dedicate whatever life I had to her happiness... To make my Gaz, my sister, my beloved, smile the way she did in that sketch.
Oh, and all of this came to me in about two seconds.
I'll never forget that drawing. None of the usual skeletons, flaming pigs or witches. Just my sister and I. And, across my arm, a violent diagonal line dragged across the page. Someone had caught her off guard and pulled her out of her chair in the middle of her masterpiece.
Zim.
I bit my lip and plodded on, unwittingly putting my weight on my bad leg, forgetting it was broken, and collapsing onto the table in mid-scream. The pain rushed back to me, along with reason. Yup. My brain started working again.
How could I stop him this time?
The voices in my head returned to tell me how this would all end. A dark cloud on the horizon as the Irken Armada made their way to Earth to turn us all into snack-manufacturing slaves or call-center workers or Vortian prison guards. Whatever was worse. Fires spreading across the city. Mexican food flying everywhere. I had seen it before through Zim's goggles, like some funky inevitable premonition... of DOOM.
Then I heard the unmistakable sound of his voice. It echoed throughout the city as if it was booming from the very foundations of the earth itself. What sounded like footsteps, rhythmic poundings, made my eyes and ears twitch. I didn't dare turn my head up to witness the horror that he was instilling upon the city now. I didn't have enough strength in me.
All hope faded from my sight. I took one last look at the heavenly sketch, trying not to get it wet or smeared with my shaking, tear-soaked hands.
Without even knowing it I called out for my mother. The mother that was never there for me. The mother I don't even remember. When I came to the harsh realization that nobody was going to cradle me in their arms, a new wave of tears overcame me. Why did all of this have to happen to me? Why, now that I finally found love after all these years, did I reject it? I wanted to wake up... Wake up and live yesterday all over again.
Hey, wait a minute... I did that before, didn't I? Travel into the past to warn myself about something... Aw, whatever. Must have been another fantasy of mine, because at that horrible moment, all I could hear was my own voice, telling myself...
Gaz was the only woman left in my life, and I couldn't save her.
Let the Irkens take the planet, I told myself, if this was to be our fate. Wherever my Gaz and I were going afterwards, we could go together as two dead souls taking comfort in one another, as opposed to two live siblings that the world would look down upon.
Yes, I mused, it would be certainly easier to die than to face what I was up against- and I don't just mean Zim. In the shadow of death I could escape from what I had become- a gargantuan-headed, impulsive, hopelessly romantic, incestuous control freak... I was a lost case and I knew it. Not even roast turkey was worth living for anymore.
I forced my aching leg up onto the table. It quelled some of the pain. Besides, it was the least I could do before the end.
After all, I expected that a day like this would come.
Eons seemed to pass within myself in that dark hour. I screamed out loud for all the regrets I tried to push back into my mind, all the times I'd suffered at the expense of others, for the sake of finding recognition, attention... perhaps love.
I felt the pain leaving my leg. I eyed the mailbox cane that I left out on the front lawn. It seemed to mock me- even if I went out there, what could I do?
Man, I sure have a problem with asking myself questions I already know the answer to, even when I'm telling a freakin' story.
My more minor wounds slowly became apparent to me. Two large gashes across my back, bruises all over my left arm, tiny glass cuts along my torso and neck and a part of my right ear torn loose. As I lost consciousness I prayed to whatever gods may be that it would all be over before I woke up.
***
My eyes opened to the same cursed kitchen. Maybe it was what heaven looked like...
Nah. Stupid Dib.
I barely remembered what was going on at first- I was losing too much blood. While wiping my face clean I noticed that the refrigerator had just stopped humming. Finally, moved by my instinctual curiosity, I glanced outside the window and into the city. Sparks were flying in the distance. Electrical poles sprouted blue lightning. Zim had attacked the power plant.
I heard a horrible ruckus from the garage. The restraining system I had put on Tak's ship had gone off-line. A familiar female voice piped up. I knew I should have pulled the plug on "upgrading" the crashed Irken cruiser a long time ago- I was downloading some new Vortian software into its mainframe.
"DIB!!! ZIM!!! Where are you?"
Yeah, this is what you get for wanting to play Solitaire on your alien ship.
The garage door burst asunder. A robotic tentacle erupted through the window I was looking out of and grabbed me around the waist. Before I knew it I was being held aloft seven feet in the air by Tak's crashed Irken ship, which had maneuvered itself over the front lawn. Her downloaded personality interface boomed out of a speaker in her cockpit.
"I see you've been able to repair my rear thrusters. Now, to avenge my mistress' defeat, I shall..."
At this point I lost concentration. I had almost forgotten that she had a slightly British accent. It was unnervingly cute, but I kind of regret not keeping my own personality downloaded into the ship, confused and insecure as it was. Still, I couldn't bring myself to care. At the moment I half-hoped that the ship would snap my frail body in half.
I remember that Gaz alone knew how to make it function without Tak's personality, from the time years ago when she saved me from being stranded on an ice floe... If only she were here, I thought. My thoughts always came back to her.
Yet still, all I could say was,
"T-Tak's ship!"
I blurted it out predictably, almost to myself. The ship gave a little electronic groan of irritation.
"As I was saying..." she continued, exasperated. "I shall extract Zim's coordinates from your unusually large head, and take him to the Control Brain for his horrible judgment... Then my mistress will return..."
I stopped listening at the mention of Zim's name, raised an eyebrow and pointed at the besieged metropolis. "Oh, Zim... He's over there, wreaking uncontrollable havoc on the city."
The voice whined as the tentacles tightened their grip. "Don't tell me you've forgotten what you and that... that horrible Irken did to me! My mistress is coming back for this planet, I swear to you! The Tallest shall have their snack tribute! TELL ME WHERE HE IS!!!"
"But... I just did." Damn, Irkens sure have hearing problems. Maybe that's owing to the fact that they have no ears.
"Oh... Right..." The ship turned its cockpit towards the currently-in-the-state- of-being-ravaged city. It lowered its binding tentacle to place me on the ground.
"Wait! I'm going with you. He's got my sister." I said boldly, hoping that since I was nothing more than a worm in the mud to Tak before she left, her ship would let me tag along for the ride.
Tak's ship didn't say anything, but I felt the pain around my waist loosen as more blood rushed back into my broken leg. The tentacle dropped me abruptly into the cockpit. I ignored the pain- the fire was burning in my eyes now. Zim was going down. Hope was rekindled. I took one last look at the sketch pad, which still lay perfectly intact under the shattered glass on top of the table.
I was coming for her.