young for eternity: thanks! glad you liked it, i hope you like this chapter, too!
ending alert...Dwight goes home and feels a weird emptiness that he's never felt before. Little Dwight has never gone home with him, and Dwight's brother is home, too, watching Larry the Cable Guy's latest Comedy Central sketch.
"If you tell anyone about this," Dwight warns, making and keeping eye contact with the camera, "rest assured that I will hunt you down and jab you with my homemade bowspear. It's up on the wall in the den if you don't believe me. But I suggest you do."
He's struck with this insane amount of chronic insomnia that only lasts for that night. No matter what he does, Dwight can't sleep. It pisses him off, and apparently, his brother isn't too happy about it, either.
"He keeps flickin' the damn light on and off!" Schrute the Second rants. "It gets really annoyin' for us folks who are trying to get a good night's sleep. I think Dwight should just leave his work issues…well, at work." He stares hard at the camera. "Doesn't that make sense?"
Meanwhile, in Jim's house, a newly purchased Dwight bobblehead is adorning his and his roommate's coffee table, still bearing its lovely Boppin' Bob's price tag.
His roommate, Mark, sighs and turns down the volume on the TV, silencing Jeremy Piven's Ari on Entourage. "Jim," he begins, "I don't mean to sound so…off…but what the hell is that thing doing here?" He points at the bobblehead, then adds, "It's creepin' me out."
"'S a prank for a guy at work," Jim answers. "You just made us miss the best part, you know?"
"You've never seen this episode. How d'you know it's the best part?"
"Gut feeling."
"Sure. So, how's this prank of yours gonna work, man?"
Jim shrugs. "Don't want to give away any surprises. Maybe you'll see it on the news."
"And if I don't?"
"Then, I guess I'll tell you about it."
The next day at the office, Dwight pulls into the parking lot at promptly seven fourteen. His old red car still slightly reeks of vomit—from when he attempted to save Michael from his plight with his George Foreman grill—when the sun blares down on it for too long of a time, so he parks in the shade.
"After a few days with this smell, you learn where to park your car," Dwight tells us. "It becomes common sense, really."
Dwight jumps out of the car and enters Dunder Mifflin, the first employee in, as usual. As he walks down the dimly lit hallways, the janitor, Russ, nods casually at him.
"Russ," Dwight acknowledges. Earlier in the year, Russ had bestowed upon Dwight a key to the office, after an insane amount of pestering.
"That guy's a nut!" Russ insists. He shakes his head solemnly. "Didn't even know they could hire nuts here…"
Dwight goes into the office, flicks on the lights, and grabs the watering can he keeps hidden behind the copy machine in the corner. He quickly waters the office plants then ventures into Michael's office. He carefully begins organizing the little knick-knacks and collectibles lining Michael's desk, and after about fifteen minutes, is satisfied with his work.
There's nothing else to do for another hour and a half, so he sits down at his desk, opens his computer programs, and starts up a pretty intense game of Internet checkers with some dude from Taiwan.
"You have no business in knowing who won," Dwight tells the camera simply.
At around nine-thirty, Jim saunters into the office, tapping his palms lightly on Pam's reception desk the way she likes but would never tell him about, and he collapses into his chair.
Dwight's head swivels towards Jim from behind his computer screen. His eyes narrow, and he attempts to make conversation with his younger co-employee.
"Halpert," he starts.
Jim looks up from under his messy brown hair. "Yeah, Dwight," he says.
"I know you have my bobblehead, Halpert."
Jim rolls back in his chair a little, pretending to be shocked. He puts his hands up and glances around, feigning nervousness. "Hey, man, what're you talking about?"
"I know you have my bobblehead," Dwight repeats, trying desperately to keep his calm. "Boppin' Bob himself told me that he sold it to you for fifteen bucks."
"I don't know a Boppin' Bob," Jim confides in the audience. "The kid I talked to, his name was Isaac, so I have no idea where Dwight's coming from. Well, a slight idea, but not really. Yeah."
"I don't have it, Dwight," Jim tells him.
"Pssh," Dwight pssh's. "You expect me to believe you?"
"Um, yeah."
"Let me search your desk."
Jim pauses, staring at him. "What?"
"You heard me."
"I obviously didn't. That's why I said 'What?'"
"I want to search your desk. I know that Little Dwight is in there somewhere. You could be suffocating him with your soda cans and highlighter fumes!"
Jim flashes one of his trademark Jim looks at the camera, and he hesitantly allows Dwight to enter his desk domain.
"Yeah, 'cause my desk is a haven for those pesky highlighter fumes, y'know," Jim mutters sarcastically.
"I like the smell of highlighters," Kevin informs the camera, grinning mischieviously. He pops an M&M into his mouth.
Michael enters the office just in time to see Dwight rifling through Jim's drawers and papers.
"Whoa, what's going on here, dudes?" he wants to know. Nobody answers him. Slightly hurt, he goes up to Stanley and smacks his hand on his shoulder.
"Stanley! Buddy! Any idea what's going on here?"
"No."
"Oh. Okay. Well, thanks for the help."
Hearing the sound of Michael's voice for the first time, Dwight's ears perk up like a dog's. He yanks his head out from inside Jim's desk drawer.
"Michael!" he yelps breathlessly.
"Hey hey, Dwight. What're you doing?"
"Jim stole my bobblehead and I know it's in here!" Dwight informs his boss.
Michael looks at Jim, whose eyes avert to the carpeted floor.
"Well, well, well, it looks like we've got a little thief here!" Michael says, grinning. "Jim, you've been accused! How do you plead?"
Jim looks up, his eyebrows scrunched together, a little confused. "What?"
"Guilty!" Dwight yells, pointing a condemning finger at Jim.
"Guilty it is, then!" Michael decides. With that, he runs up behind Jim and jerks his arms behind his back, grinning a tad.
This huge audible wave gasp encompasses the whole office as Michael shoves Jim forward into Dwight's former workspace, from when he was in charge of health insurance.
"Michael, what're you doing?" Jim asks, his shoes skidding on the floor in a failed attempt to stop his body moving forward.
"Jail!" Michael answers giddily. "Innocent until proven guilty, Jim!"
"…You haven't proven me guilty yet," Jim points out.
There's an awkward silence as both Michael and Jim stop moving. Finally, Michael decides that Jim's words make no sense, shoves him into Dwight's workspace, and locks the door. Pam starts toward the door, but Michael sees her out of the corner of his eye.
"Anyone who opens the door before we find this bobblehead is fired," he informs everyone cheerfully. Pam stops, and holds up a finger for Jim to see. Wait a second.
"Y'know, I don't even know," Jim tells the camera, his chin in his hands. "It's just…I don't know. Now I'm gonna have this crime on my permanent office record, and that, actually, really sucks."
"Michael, I, uh, I think you could be held legally responsible for confining Jim in…well…a random place with no reason whatsoever," Toby stammers. "If Jim wanted to, he could sue you, or the company, and I don't think Jan would be very happy with that…"
"Shaddup, Toby," Michael interrupts. He turns to the camera and chuckles a little. "Ha, can you believe this guy? I can't, I'll tell you that much."
"Do I think Jim deserved being locked in the conference room." Michael repeats the question asked to him, pondering the answer before he actually answers, which is probably the most awkward-sounding sentence you've ever heard in your life. "Yes," Michael answers, "I do. I mean, hell, if I didn't, what would Jim be doing in there? It's simple math, sir. Simple, Are You Smarter than a Fifth Grader? math. So yeah."
Jim's desk is continuing being searched by Dwight, who is getting more and more frustrated with each upturned paper or folder that doesn't bear his bobblehead hiding underneath.
"It's not in my desk," Jim tells the camera, shrugging. "What?" He pauses. "No, it's not in my bag, either. It's not that bad in here; there's food left over from Oscar's welcome-back Mexico-ish party." He reaches down and pulls up a bottle of lemoñade into the camera's pan. "Not even opened," he marvels. "Can you believe it?"
"It's either let Jim stay locked in there or lose my job," Pam explains. "If I lose my job, then I won't be able to bail Jim out of anymore situations, and I'm sure he wouldn't want that."
"Beesley thinks I need her to save me?" Jim scoffs sarcastically. "Pssh. Don't flatter yourself," he adds as a message directly to Pam.
Pam smiles and averts her eyes to the carpet.
Because everyone is standing around Jim's desk, and Dwight is having random convulsive spazzes, everyone misses a brief message left by Darryl on the reception answering machine:
Hey guys, or Mike, or whoever is supposed to be here. Um, yeah, uh, just wanted to let you know that we've got this weird-lookin' bobblehead hangin' out down here, and he kinda looks like that dude with the glasses who works up there. What's his name…Dwayne? Hell, I dunno. But if you guys want it, you've got five minutes before it goes out with our next shipment. It was in a box, so we dunno, it might have to get shipped out. So, let us know. Right, see ya. Bye.
The camera pans toward Jim again, who notices, waves, then focuses his attention back on the escapades taking over his desk.
A few minutes later, Pam notices the blinking red light going off on her phone that means a message is waiting for you, you lucky duck.
"I mean, there was this whole scene going on!" Pam insists, as to why she didn't go check out the message. "I couldn't just go and answer it! I might've missed something."
"Did I tell Pam to ignore any messages from Darryl," Jim muses. He glances up at the camera and grins a little. "I don't have to tell you, do I?"
After a few more minutes, the little red light starts to blink again:
Okay, so apparently this thing wasn't anybody's up there. Don't say we didn't warn ya, Mike. Well, see you guys at our next basketball game…thing.
((one week later))
"Dwight! Why is this phone bill up so much from last month?" Schrute the Second asks.
"It was $0.00 last month," Dwight mutters. "It was bound to go up sometime."
Sensing that his brother was acting, well, rather psychotic, Schrute the Second left to attend those beet fields that the family is so famous for once again.
"I had to call some paper company in Australia," Dwight informs us. "Some joint Dunder Mifflin company. No matter how much I said it was an emergency, they still charged me massive amounts of money for a very long-distance call."
"I didn't see your prank on the news," Mark tells Jim bluntly.
"You didn't? 'Cause I swear I saw Fox and ABC there, at least. I might've caught a glimpse of Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, but I can't be too sure," Jim answers.
"You gonna tell me what happened?"
"Later. Wait until all the press goes down."
"There's no press, Jim!"
"Oh, trust me, there will be. It was just so shocking that they need to figure out how to edit it down enough for national television broadcasting," Jim explains simply.
"No, I don't think Mark's ever gonna know what happened," Jim tells us, smirking a little.
"I get Little Dwight back in approximately ten to twelve business days," Dwight says, reading off of a piece of paper. "But don't be surprised if I don't see it for two weeks." His eyes scan the words again. "Two weeks?" he yelps.
"Two weeks," Jim repeats, grinning. He pauses. "No, I didn't tell them to hold it for two weeks," he scoffs, rolling his eyes. "They definitely decided to do that on their own. They're a busy company, y'know."
Dwight stares at the camera dead-on and points his finger threateningly. "I can have you arrested, Halpert! Arrested for kidnapping! I've got connections, Halpert, so you better watch out."
"I have to watch out?" Jim asks. "Well, then. I guess I will. If Dwight comes, I'll just fend him off with my massive undergroud supply of soda cans and highlighters. Works like a charm."
"Damn you, Halpert."
so yeah, that concludes the festivities. i hope you guys liked it, and i'm sorry again for the extreme lack of updates!