Disclaimer: I don't own Invader Zim. But I have owned several dogs.
Chapter Three
Piggy still insisted on jumping up on both Dib as well as Gaz when they got home from school, which Gaz resented to no end. She wanted the puppy to jump up on her and her alone... as long as he didn't leave any dirty pawprints on her dress, that is. Dib wondered if Gaz would still be showing even this much interest if not for the competition he provided.
After supper, as Gaz reclined with her GameSlave on the couch in arrogant idleness, Dib did the chores that needed doing before taking Piggy for his daily walk. By now, Dib was teaching Piggy to sit down whenever they came to a Don't Walk sign; it wouldn't do for Piggy to get the habit of darting out into the road, leash or no leash!
This in turn suggested another way for Dib to spend more time with the puppy. Before going indoors again, whenever the weather permitted he would sit on the step to teach Piggy other commands, rewarding him with scraps of cookies or dog biscuits he'd picked up in the kitchen on their way out.
"Sit" was easy, even though for a long time Dib's "Good boy!" got Piggy standing up again, wagging his tail with excitement. "Shake" was pretty easy; once Dib made sure he was still holding Piggy's paw when he rewarded him, the puppy caught on so quickly that he began offering a paw to Dib any time he wanted something.
"Beg," however, wasn't working so well. When the puppy kept falling over onto his side, Dib figured he was still too young and decided to wait until later to teach this one.
"You're a good dog... AND you're smart... just like me!" Dib would praise him before going in. With each evening that passed, the warmth was ebbing earlier and earlier, and each time they called it a day, the air was colder than it had been that same time the day before. Dib wondered if the puppy would still want to go for these walks when it got really cold out and snow was everywhere.
Although Gaz's interest in Piggy had worn off enough for her to not hold him under her arm like a teddy bear all evening, it had not worn off enough to the point that she would let him walk away even in the complete absence of any attention from her. If he walked away, Dib might get something she didn't have, the puppy. Gaz couldn't stand that. Despite the initial thrill having worn off, Gaz insisted that the puppy sit beside her as she played her GameSlave, not letting him leave her side, yanking him back whenever it tried to leave for any reason.
Then, whenever her game got exciting, Piggy would instantly pick up her tense mood and would give her ear a timid lick to show his concern. This never got the reaction he wanted; she always elbowed him aside, growling, "Stop making me lose my game!"
Even when Piggy was just lying next to her, without even bothering her, Gaz occasionally shoved him away when she noticed the wooly puppy fur, which he was just beginning to shed, lying in clumps all over her dress.
By this time, Gaz was so used to assuming Piggy would just be close by that he managed to slip down from the couch without her noticing. That he was now now large enough to let himself down to the floor without making a noisy thump helped a lot.
When Gaz finished her game, she stretched and went to rub the puppy's fur before starting up a new one. Only then did she even notice that he was gone. Even though she deigned to offer him so little attention that she hadn't even noticed when he left, this infuriated her to no end.
Everybody leaves me. First, it was Mom. Then it was Dad. Even that wasn't enough. Then it was Dib... and now it's that stupid dog. Well, good riddance. He was getting to be a nuisance anyway. Forever bugging me just when my game was getting good. I fed him pizza crusts every day... but NOOOO, that wasn't enough. And I filled his water dish, right up to the brim, every single week, and this is the thanks I get for it. Fine then. Let him go off with Dib. They deserve each other. They both just take and take and take and TAKE and they never give a single thing back... !
Gaz hit the "New Game" button savagely and before long was once again pushing the buttons more and more quickly, more and more furiously as the figures on the screen flew to pieces screaming. It wasn't enough that she had to make Dib shut up when he was yapping about his bigfoots and his ghosts, his stupid this and his stupid that. Finally, for some reason Gaz could never figure out, he used to walk away and leave her. But even that wasn't enough. She thought she could at least have Piggy! So that stupid dog chose Dib over me, did he... well I don't want him either then. He was just a nuisance anyway. Good riddance.
Darkness curled up in the corners of the empty room where Gaz sat huddled on the couch, throwing herself more and more into her video game. Dib ran around all the time getting Everything! It wasn't fair.
- - - - - - -
Piggy wandered all over the house looking for Dib in each room. At least Dib acted like he was alive!
Piggy soon picked up the sound of Dib talking to himself and followed it upstairs. He found Dib crouched on the bed next to a long black thing sticking in through the window.
Piggy's ears perked up. Is there something to eat in that? he wondered.
Finally Dib looked into the small end of it, and before long was so deep in concentration that he didn't even notice Piggy jumping up on the bed next to him. Well, that was easy to fix. Piggy went up close to Dib and began to lick his ear.
Dib burst into loud giggling. "Ahhh! Piggy! Now I have to find Mars all over again." As he searched, Dib rested a hand on the puppy's neck, scratching it absently but steadily. Piggy lay still as long as he was scratching...
"Hey, I found it! Now I wonder if I can just find any of those little green men... "
Dib soon found that Piggy lay still (thereby allowing him a steadier view through the telescope) as long as he rested a hand on the puppy's back and offered an occasional scratch. Finally turning away from the telescope and looking at the dog, Dib noticed the clumps of light cream fur all over his trench coat. "So... you're a SHEEP dog!" he chuckled, rubbing off the hairs as he looked around for a brush.
- - - - - - -
Dib had just finished putting away the food items he'd picked up at the grocery store, and reached for the final few articles that belonged in the bathroom. The most surprising thing about finding Piggy already there was that the puppy had pulled the previous roll of toilet paper off the spindle and had reduced it to confetti, growling and shaking his ears as he wrestled with the offending length of paper. Noticing Dib, he looked brightly up from the tatters all around him and bounded toward the boy, wagging his tail as if thanking him for bringing yet more of these delightful toys to play with.
"NO! Bad dog... BAD dog," Dib scolded, as sternly as he could manage. Piggy stopped in his tracks, lowered himself to the floor and looked sheepishly in every direction but up into Dib's face. When the puppy's tail finally stopped wagging Dib started to clean up the scattered paper... trying as hard as he could not to burst out laughing instead at the puppy's totally innocent reaction!
Dib soon wound up his scolding. "Just don't do that any more, Piggy." Hearing the anger in his voice lessen, Piggy lifted a paw. Dib's heart melted as he reached out to gently take the paw and say, "It's okay, Piggy, it's okay. I'm not mad any more. Shake... good dog!"
By the time Dib had picked up the final shreds of paper, Piggy had found a container of foot powder and ran up and down the hall with it in his jaws, and when Dib saw the puffs of powder filling the air with every stride the puppy took, he couldn't hold it in any longer. In spite of the new mess, Dib fell to the floor paralyzed with laughter... and the puppy dropped the foot powder to lick his face, the long slippery tongue pushing straight up Dib's nose and making him laugh still harder.
- - - - - - -
Dib scratched the puppy's neck as he waited for Mysterious Mysteries to begin. The puppy tilted his head back to completely enjoy both the attention and the luxuriant scratching sensation. Gaz sat on the other end of the couch, playing one of her games.
"For years, the world has wondered, 'Are there bigfoots among us?'" said the announcer, as the words Bigfoot, Sasquatch, Yeti, and Abominable Snowman flashed by, followed by an image of misshapen footprints in the snow, to all be replaced by a large question mark fading in. "But we here at Mysterious Mysteries have always known the answer to that question. And that answer is a resounding 'Maybe.' Which is why, as always, we ask you, our viewers, to help us put an end to this question once and for all.
"Tonight... an exclusive tape of... BIGFOOT!" the announcer suddenly boomed. As Dib sprang bolt upright, Piggy jumped to his feet, looking around nervously, tensely on the alert.
"Shh," Dib said soothingly, holding the puppy to keep him from jumping around and bothering Gaz. Right when they were about to show an actual bigfoot clip was no time for the puppy to get noisy! Whenever Gaz reached the higher levels of her game Dib broke the silence at his peril, and this time both Dib and the puppy faced the same threat to keep quiet.
Why couldn't Gaz just play her games in her room where she wouldn't even hear the TV, Dib wondered briefly, before remembering why. Whenever he stood up to leave the living room for any reason, she would smirk and gloat as if she'd somehow "won" something or other. In Gaz's hysterically hypercompetitive view of the world, any sign of backing down immediately equalled losing.
"And as we always invite our viewers to send us proof of alie - uh, bigfoot existence, these viewers have done just that, along with a self-addressed stamped envelope."
But first an endless discussion went back and forth between a panel of paranormal experts, half of which insisted this was the real deal while the other half kept insisting it was yet another hoax. Dib could feel himself growing more and more tense, more and more excited. "Roll the tape, roll the tape!" he pleaded under his breath. Would it be yet another ambiguous shot that could be anything, like the usual shadows and lens flares that usually passed as "proof" of alien existence? He perched tensely on the very edge of the couch, his eyes locked on the TV.
By the time the tape finally played, Dib had butterflies in his stomach and Piggy was stamping his front paws up and down on the couch in an excitement that matched the boy's. Finally a grainy, shaky picture of some woods came on the screen, but no bigfoot! Just as Dib had resigned himself that it would be nothing more than a bear or some other brown and hairy creature, the bushes began to shake, and right across the entire screen, from left to right, came shuffling an unmistakably two-legged creature with long reddish brown hair! If Gaz hadn't been right alongside, hissing impatiently while her game beeped faster and faster, Dib would have shrieked. As it was every nerve in his body tingled, every hair stood on end.
Even with no idea what Dib was so excited about, Piggy's own hackles were bristling. And when he began to make threatening sounds at the TV, Gaz lost no time growling, "Shut that dog up."
"Shh, Piggy," said Dib, holding a hand over the puppy's muzzle. "It's okay."
Now that the show found itself with an actual Bigfoot tape, they played it over and over, backwards and forwards and in slow motion, with the paranormal experts heatedly debating the pros and cons back and forth, as through it all Dib carefully made sure Piggy stayed quiet. In his mingled excitement and anxiety Dib could almost believe he actually was not only on the trail of Bigfoot himself, but striving to keep up with a hunting dog as he did so!
By the time the show ended, with the experts becoming more and more divided, Dib was literally shaking. This was, beyond all doubt, the greatest, most exciting episode of Mysterious Mysteries he had ever seen!
Risking an audible sigh of relief, Dib sat back against the couch once again, looking fondly at the puppy and back at the TV as the credits began rolling over a still of Bigfoot. The reddish brown of the creature shone from the TV all over Piggy, and reflecting off the light caramel color of his coat, made the shaggy puppy look eerily like a miniature sasquatch himself.
When the Bigfoot image was finally replaced by the production company's logo, Dib turned off the TV and left Gaz to a silent living room, the puppy following him and Gaz smirking in a triumph that existed nowhere but in her own mind.
Dib went up to his room to somehow get started on something as mundane as homework. At least the puppy would keep him company as he did so.
"You know, I always watched Mysterious Mysteries alone before now. Well, Gaz was usually around, but she wasn't there to watch it. And when I tried telling her how cool it was, the nicest thing she ever said to me was, 'Shut up.' Now that I've got someone to watch it with, it's better than ever!" said Dib to the puppy. "I think I'll start calling you "Bigfoo- no. No, I think I'll call you 'Sasquatch,'" said Dib thoughtfully, scratching the puppy's head. "What do you think about that?"
The puppy looked up thoughtfully, and hearing the question in Dib's voice, sat down and offered a paw.
"Okay. We'll shake on it!"
(A/N) One of my New Year's resolutions was quitting FFN for a while. I wondered if that would finally allow some stories to build up that were worth reading. (I say this with all due respect, of course, for the authors posting high quality material on the site to begin with.) Halfway through January I posted one more fic I'd been working on lately, Registered Alien, and checked out my alerts, and that was it. Until now.
And it worked! This forum hasn't looked so good to me since I first discovered it. On the first couple of new pages I see quite a few really well-written stories... with some very original ideas... and to top it all, thejennamonster came back and Dust Traveller updated.
I'll still be around from time to time of course. You didn't think I was going to leave the situation that way, did you?