Warning: This chapter contains a description of animal abuse. Just like countless other fics posted here contain descriptions of child abuse.
Disclaimer: I don't own Invader Zim. But I have owned several dogs.
Chapter Four
Through the woods, the trees grew more and more naked every day as the leaves continued to fall, building in ever growing piles on the ground.
Dib took the puppy along on all his Sasquatch hunts. They slipped behind bushes, peering out carefully for any sign of anything furry moving. Well, anything big and furry, anything that even slightly resembled the creature they had seen that memorable night on "Mysterious Mysteries." Dib never saw what he was looking for, but with company, it was at least lots more fun.
The hunt concluded for that day, Dib pulled a ball out of his pocket. He held it high until he had Sas's attention, then threw it and watched in delight as Sas dashed off after it, the hind legs pushing out behind him at every step, all four legs a blur of motion as he clattered heedlessly through the fallen leaves. Sas ran so fast that he shot right past the ball. Turning his head, mouth open to catch the ball, he fell down in a flurry of scattering leaves and rolled over, but never once did his eyes leave the ball. He located the ball before the leaves settled to hide it from view, then trotted back to Dib carrying the ball in his mouth, head high and tail wagging. Dib took the ball and threw it again and once more watched in delight as Sas ran after it as madly as ever.
Knowing Gaz's love of games, Dib had at one point asked if she wanted to play ball with him. Needless to say, he soon stopped asking. He now found in the puppy a much more willing playmate. Even now, when Dib had tried to show Gaz all the tricks the puppy had learned, she stirred herself only long enough to growl, "Shut up so I can finish my game or I'll make you both sorry."
- - - - - - -
When it finally got so cold that even playing fetch wasn't enough to keep them warm, Dib and Sas went back inside. Dib gave Sas a dog biscuit and watched him enjoy it while water boiled for the hot chocolate.
As Dib went back upstairs to his room, Sas followed at his heels. Dib sat down on the bed and got comfortable. Sas stood up to join him and Dib put a hand on his back, offering enough leverage to help Sas to pull himself up. Dib placed his hot chocolate on the window sill to prevent Sas from spilling it, but Sas sat down and looked up at Dib as if to say, "Well, what are we doing for fun now?"
Dib suddenly looked up from the Ghost Hunters magazine he was reading. "Hey! Wanna hear what I think, Sas?"
Hearing Dib say his name, Sas looked up, ears perked. This was enough of an audience for Dib to begin listing all his reasons for believing in ghosts.
Dib stretched out on his stomach and got comfortable, then began to outline/read out all the proofs he'd heard or collected for the existence of ghosts.
Dib went on and on, listing one case history after another, not leaving out a single scrap of evidence. Sas lay down, got comfortable and gazed up into Dib's face as the boy talked on and on. Nobody else had ever done that for Dib since his mother had died. Certainly Gaz had never listened to him this closely!
Finally, carried away by his own eloquence, Dib asked, "Well, am I right?'
Sas's ear twitched; he sat up quickly and scratched his head. "Oh come on!" Dib protested. "What is there to think about? I know it's a lot, but the more that's been found, the more it means some of it has to be true!"
Sas looked back up into Dib's eyes and sighed.
"I knew you'd see it my way!" Dib grabbed Sas and hugged him, letting the puppy go when he began to squirm.
- - - - - - -
One morning when the puppy was about four months old, Gaz found him with one of her shoes chewed to shreds between his paws. Restless the night before, the puppy had gone in search of something that would ease the itching in his jaws. He had on occasion chewed up an old shoe without any consequences, and because dogs do not wear shoes, to a dog a shoe is a shoe.
Gaz liked things to remain the same, and when she was displeased in any way, she reacted with swift and excessive retaliation. She now clenched first her jaws, then her entire face. This must not be allowed to go unpunished.
First this stupid dog runs off to be with Dib... and as if that wasn't enough, he comes back just long enough to destroy something of hers! What if he had found not her shoe, but her GameSlave... !
Gaz glowered down at the puppy, as blinded by rage at this mere thought as if a beam of unnatural light was enclosing her. Allowing her own fury to swallow her up, Gaz could literally feel herself hovering in midair. This had to be punished. This must not be allowed to happen again.
As Gaz began snarling the most obscene threats she could think of, the puppy cringed miserably, trembling and turning his head from side to side as if surrounded by a ring of fire. As Gaz began to literally see red, the puppy finally whirled and fled in panic. He clearly remembered now what happened when Dib caught him chewing up something he wasn't supposed to; he was going to get a scolding.
The puppy whirled and bolted down the stairs into the lab, hastily finding a cranny into which Gaz couldn't reach. "I'll doom you!" she howled, in hot pursuit of the terrified animal.
Gaz quickly found him. Gritting her teeth, she ordered the puppy to get out before she...
Slowly, the puppy crawled out of its hiding place, shivering and holding out a paw in a feeble plea for mercy.
Gaz stalked right up to the puppy, and without another word proceeded to beat him up. Repeatedly and unmercifully, she choked the puppy... and she punched the puppy... and she swung the puppy through the air... and she stomped on the puppy.
Suddenly Gaz stopped... for a second Sas thought it was finally over... before Gaz decided she was still mad and stomped on the puppy once more.
By the time Gaz stalked in triumph from the room, Sasquatch looked severely beaten.
Dib knew something was strange as soon as the puppy didn't come running to greet him the moment he opened his bedroom door. Dib went straight to the dog's bed, wondering if he was sick, and there found the puppy cringing and trembling.
"What happened, Sas? What is it, boy?"
The puppy had obviously been smacked around, but wasn't bleeding, and he could lift his paw as if to beg for help; Dib fought down the lump in his throat as he made sure all of the puppy's legs were still working while the little tail tapped feebly. No bones seemed to be broken, but the puppy was clearly terrified.
Dib looked into the kitchen, at the only possible source of Sas's injuries, and saw Gaz steadily munching down some cereal. Her face, stonier than ever, did not exactly invite any questions... not even something as neutral as "How are you today?"
His father had already left, in fact he was home less and less often these days, and whenever Dib did request advice on how to deal with Gaz's brutality, the Professor merely repeated that she was some sort of "little sister" and that he was supposed to laugh off the injuries and "protect" her. From what, or better yet, why, Dib couldn't imagine.
Dib now stepped back and called Sas to see how he was walking. While the puppy limped a bit, he was still using all four legs. Dib decided that a trip to the vet was in order, but he would have to go to skool first, and hurry home that afternoon if he was to make it to the vet's office before it closed.
But Dib figured he'd better look something up first. Before long he was sitting at his desk, the breakfast he'd prepared waiting beside his keyboard, and cradling Sasquatch safely between his feet.
Dib booted up his computer for a quick search on the phrase "animal abuse." What he found disturbed him greatly, and it wasn't only the things that had been done to the animals, horrible though those were. The first page described a dog that had had something done to it which, thank goodness, Gaz hadn't ever done to Sasquatch. She certainly HAD done to Dib himself though, and more than once at that.
The difference was that whoever had done it to the dog had ended up in prison.
"Out of the question, no matter how you look at it," Dib muttered. Children, impulsive, cruel and self-centred though they could be, didn't go to prison; it was the duty of their parents to discipline them. But with their mother dead and their father absent, who could possibly discipline Gaz? Dib? Yeah, right. She lashed out at him like any psychopath if he even talked too much for her liking.
And no matter how many times he tried telling a neighbor, a relative, somebody! what Gaz had just done to him, nobody ever believed him. Gaz just sat there playing video games as if butter wouldn't melt in her mouth. While doing so might make her look innocent enough, this actually showed her total lack of concern for the pain and terror she had caused. The most that ever happened was Dib got reproached for trying to get his "poor little baby sister" in trouble... a so-called "poor little baby sister" that would viciously assault him the moment they were alone again for daring to try to protect himself.
What happened to the dog in that story on the website? Dib now wondered. Reading on a little further, he learned that it had been placed in a new home. Frantically Dib told himself there had to be another solution; Sasquatch was his only friend!
All that day this thought was never far from his mind, and when he came home from skool, he watched carefully. This time Sas cringed and waited until Gaz was no longer standing next to Dib in the doorway before he ran, a little less quickly than he used to, up to Dib, still watching Gaz warily.
For Dib, Sas's nervousness settled the matter. It wasn't fair to ask Sasquatch to live that way. He looped the leash around Sas's neck and took the puppy to the vet as he had decided to do. At the vet's office he found himself getting frowned at as much as if he had come right out and said he had deliberately injured the puppy.
That evening, with the puppy nestled safely under his desk, Dib searched and searched on his computer far into the night for a different outcome for animal abuse situations. But web page after web page, case after case, the solution was always the same. Find the animal a new home...find the animal a new home...
Find the animal a new home.
(A/N) If Gaz's reaction when she saw the chewed shoe looks familiar, it should. It's the same oh so adooorably cuuute and daaarling (retch and puke) thing she did in the second half of Taster of Pork... canon.