I'm starting to feel sorry for Zim. Everybody ignores him. He's starting to feel a bit sad, I think, without me around. I don't know where he thinks I went. Nobody else seems to notice either of us.
But it wasn't until it was Friday, a full week after he had died, that I decided he had to know about what happened. It wasn't normal, it wasn't natural, hell, it wasn't humane to let him just wander around like this.
Friday night, I found him up late, I don't think he slept even when he was alive. He was in his base, working on some chip or another.
I came up to the front of the table, he didn't notice me."
"Zim. Look at me. Can you see me?"
Zim looked up, like he thought he heard something but wasn't sure. I guessed he couldn't hear me well either. I'll have to look into the dead's perception of the living when this is over.
"Zim. Listen hard. It's me, Dib. I'm right in front of you. Can you see me?"
Zim looked up again, squinting at about where my stomach was. His eyes traveled upward.
"Dib?"
"Yeah. Can you see me?"
"I can see. How did you get"
"That's not important. I have to show you something."
I knew if Zim couldn't convince himself he was dead, nothing I could say would convince him. He had to see for himself.
"Show me what? I can't go out, it's raining."
It won't matter, he's a ghost.
"Take an umbrella or something. This is really important."
Zim regarded me with something like fear. He was thinking, I could tell, about possible holes in the defenses. After a second he walked to the elevators. I went in after him, and a second later, we were both in the house. Zim grabbed an umbrella from where there were about a million of them, spreading the giant thing over his head. I stood under it too, there was enough room to cover a small pool.

Slowly, we made our way to the clearing, or the barrens, as I like to call it. This was where he had died. That should make it all come back. As we got closer, he looked like he was getting nervous. He kept glancing at me. Maybe he was getting a bad vibe off the place. I don't know. I was getting pretty freaked out myself. I didn't like the place, never had, particularly not in the rain at night.
"Do you remember anything about this place?"
Zim looked around.
"This is where…" he looked at me, a look a fear in his eyes, although he tried to hide it."No. I don't remember."
He wasn't fading. That meant that he remembered some, but he wasn't convinced yet. There had to be some other… Yes. The cemetery. There was nothing to convince you that you were dead like your name on a gravestone.
"There's somewhere else we can go. Come on, it's raining harder."

It was only a few blocks to the cemetery, the only one in our town. In the back, there was a new stone, made of granite. It was almost too dark to read what was written on it.
As we approached, lightning split the sky. I was amazed at how much our setting resembled that of pretty much every horror story I had read.
"Look at that headstone." Zim peered at it. Then he turned back to me.
"Yes? And? I have been here quite often, Dib-monkey."
What? This wasn't right…
"So have you. Don't you remember?" What was he talking about?
I looked at the tombstone, thinking maybe we were at the wrong place.
The lightning flashed, illuminating the name on the headstone.
I backed away. Zim stared at me.
"Don't you remember?"
I stared at my hands. They started to fade.
I am dead.
And no one noticed but Zim.