Here you go, dears – I don't have a lot of commentary for this one. Gonna have some Gaz interaction, which is always fun. I wanted to give a shout-out THANK YOU to all my regulars – OhHowDelightfullyDreadful, watermelonwafflesBISCUITS, Sideos, Zim'sMostLoyalServant, Invader Raz, and SombodyStandingThere – for sticking with me this long. You all are an incredible bunch. Anyway, let me wipe away a few sentimental tears of joy and thankfulness, so we can go ahead and get to:
Chapter 7: The Note
Dib waited with Mrs. Finch while the ambulance came. He tried his best talk her down amidst the bustling paramedics and leering policemen, but the sight of a body bag being dragged out of her forest sent the woman into hysterics. Bitter impatience made it difficult for him to sympathize at that point - she hadn't even seen the corpse in all its eviscerated glory. Then he felt like an insensitive bastard for begrudging the mother of a missing child some sympathy.
He left the house feeling like a bad omen, leaving destruction wherever he went. Despite his sick exhaustion, Dib's pleasureless desire to move forward grated on him and he knew Gaz would not wait for long.
Dib took a booth at Bloaty's without actually being able to remember how he'd gotten there. Far from the doors, beyond the windows and with his back against the wall. The entire drive, parking the car, sitting down and ordering his soda - it had all happened in an amnesia-like daze. Maybe his brain was shutting down to protect itself. Maybe it really was amnesia.
Every squealing child and breaking cup in the restaurant launched Dib into a paroxysm of shaking and adrenaline, his omnipresent headache pounding warningly. He finally popped open his Netbook and took to playing Solitaire and gnawing on his fingernails in an ineffective attempt at calming himself down.
Only a few dazed minutes passed before he saw Gaz's purple skirt and black "BAND" tee-shirt hovering beyond the glass doors. She stomped into the restaurant, shooing sticky children out of her way and making a B-line for his corner. Gaz stopped at the end of the table and loomed predatorily over Dib's slumped form.
With one finger she prodded him pointedly on the forehead. "Look, Dib. I don't know if you're having an emotional breakdown or what the hell is going on. But if you don't get your shit together then I'm going to check you into the Crazy House or the morgue myself. I'm just starting to have a normal life and I don't want your weirdness to ruin that again." She spoke with an understated hiss of annoyance that he knew was far more dangerous than her normal, everyday insults.
There had been a time when he exhausted himself to avoid her anger - conditioned to prevent any positive punishment she could dole out - but right now her threats felt dull and distant and meaningless. A hangnail during chemotherapy. She seemed frustrated by his unresponsiveness and sighed hoarsely.
"It took me ten damn minutes to find this thing. I hope it has pretty good porn on it." Gaz deadpanned, sliding into the seat across from him and tossing the magenta disk at his head.
"It's not porn." Dib said pointlessly, cramming the CD into his drive. "It's a program for reading Irken." He booted the software, pulling the sheet of paper out of his pocket that had been clinging stickily to his thigh and trying all the while to avoid Gaz's piercing gaze.
"Irken! You made me get dressed and come all the way down here just so you could dick around with some five-year-old program! Why the hell would you need to read Irken? The only Irken on the planet-" She began, before Dib slid the crumpled mess across the table toward her.
Unfolding the paper gingerly, Gaz wrinkled her nose in disgust. "Where did you get this? It smells like it's been on a corpse."
"It was. I had to dig it out of a pile of organs with my bare hands."
Dib instantly regretted his brashness. He regretted the way that Gaz stared at him over the top of his netbook screen in a mixture of skepticism and horror. Eyebrow raised, mouth open crookedly, whiteness visible around her brown irises. He regretted dumping grotesque, out-of-context details on his sister which undoubtedly didn't make him seem any saner. And he regretted having to pluck the reeking page back out of her limp hands in order to translate the galactic cuneiform that covered it.
"You found a body during your internship?" She paused, almost curious. "...What was it like?"
"It was horrible, okay? Is that what you want me to say? That there was blood everywhere and it smelled like death and I got so upset I puked? It was screwed up, Gaz. That's what it was like." He heard much more bitterness and agitation in his voice than he'd intended.
Gaz slumped moodily against the vinyl seat, making an annoying squeak that jittered the silence that had fallen between them.
"Jeez. Sorry I asked."
The software was up and running now. With deliberate keystrokes he copied the symbols from the crusted paper into his computer and began the translation. Five minutes to completion. Gaz bit sloppily into a piece of pizza, the smell of it nearly turning his stomach and raising a tightness in his throat.
Small note: consider vegetarianism.
"Eat something." Gaz demanded. He shook his head, pain blooming around his temples. "No, I'm serious. You're acting weird and it's starting to piss me off. So either eat something or tell me what's going on."
His throat was still sore from hurling in the forest. And he'd eaten Bloaty's pizza so many times that it was second on his list of "only in a desert island" foods. Dib rubbed his eyes beneath his glasses so he wouldn't have to look at her as he spoke.
"Zim's out there, somewhere. No, I don't know how. I can't explain it." He said, when he heard Gaz inhale sharply to argue with him. "But he's terrorizing people. Kids are going missing. People are getting killed. It's getting worse, Gaz. A lot worse than it ever was before."
She tilted her head, purple strands cascading into her face. It was her famous "attempting to give a shit" expression that Dib saw every time he brought up this sort of theory. The only thing missing from Gaz's moody-teenager act was a copy of "Catcher in the Rye" stuck under her arm.
"So what are you going to do about it?" she asked. "You're gonna save the world again? I would've thought that whole stoic, lonely-hero savoir complex bullshit got tiring the first time around."
Dib stared across the table at his sister, who stared just as evenly back at him.
She should go into the military, with sniping skills like that.
"...it did." He finally worked out. "I'm not going to pretend like I didn't go a little crazy back when I was hunting Zim in middle school. But I don't care about saving the world. Not right now."
"Never thought I'd hear you say that," she said pointedly, taking a sip of soda. Dib narrowed his eyes and continued.
"If Zim's come back, and he's going on some rampage, then I'm the only one who can stop him."
"That still sounds like a savior complex to me. Denial always was your strong suit, Dibshit." Gaz muttered from around another piece of pizza.
"I don't know why I bother talking to you at all."
"Neither do I."
Silence hung thick in the booth, dense as the ocean's abyssal plain. Someone had smeared spackle across the chink in the wall between them - a hole where light had shown a moment before.
"Bleep-bloop! Files are done translating!" the computer interrupted his thoughts cheerfully. Grabbing hold of the laptop, he leaned forward as the note's English meaning appeared in bold font across his screen:
Go ahead and run, earth filth. That's all you can do. Enjoy this warning, for your death will go much worse. Perhaps then you will find some sanity.
Dib stared unblinkingly at the message for a second or two, trying to make sense of it. He felt a creeping chilly mass writhing in his stomach as he skimmed his mind over the past few days of chases and confusions.
Any doubts or hesitations that had nagged at his paranoid mind vaporized in an instant. There was no more clinging to rationalizations. The alien was skittering around the world on his spindly Pak-legs and hunting Dib like a stupid, big-headed fly. Calling him crazy, no less. Dib felt fear start to wrap itself around him like an old friend, but some part of him pushed it away. Some part that was suddenly angry.
"He's screwing with me. Trying to freak me out. This is all just some sick game to him" Dib growled, eyes focused somewhere beyond Gaz but really within his own mind.
"Who is?" Gaz asked, but he ignored her.
"Well you know what, Zim? You won't get away with this! I'm done being scared. I'm done running away!" His tone was getting louder, harder, cracking insanely at consonants. Parents glanced nervously toward the back corner and held their children closer.
"Dib, people are staring. Be quiet." She spoke low and dangerous, like the warning hiss of a panther.
"Do I look like I give a shit if people are staring? Have I ever, Gaz?" He snarled in a voice that was not his own.
The thing that had stirred in the forest was kicking awake within him. It was focused and vengeful - it wanted none of the wizened, strategic hunting of men. There was a wordless, instinctive animalness to it that thrashed about like had been starved. It screamed for blood, made his fingernails dig into his scabbed palms, ground his teeth.
With a careless violence that would have horrified him at any other moment Dib slammed his laptop shut and crammed it into his messenger bag. Perhaps the casing cracked, he wasn't sure. He threw himself bodily out of the booth, tossing a handful of bills onto the table and storming out of the restaurant. Only the most unconscious part of his mind saw Gaz following.
The weather outside Bloaty's was still chilled, still clouded, but the city's buildings at least blocked the wind. Above him the sky screamed whiteness that glared off of every window, making the severity of his headache spike like the readout from a heart monitor attached to an epileptic. Gaz's footsteps thumped behind as she ran to stop him on the way to the parking lot.
"Wait up, you idiot! Whatever you're getting ready to do is probably really stupid so you better calm the hell down and -"
She grabbed his shoulder. His skull imploded in on itself and then expanded a thousand times, supernova-style.
When he turned around his sister was gone. In her place was a creature with no lower jaw that salivated at him with a wobbly shake of its head. Jagged teeth hung down from a gaping, sucking mouth as the thing stepped toward him. It reached out with fingers like nails, and Dib knew somehow that if it touched him the pain would make him go mad.
He stumbled backward, feet tripping on the black and rocky ground. His stomach dropped as he nearly lost his balance, unable to watch himself as he locked his eyes on the drooling monster. Desperate for a weapon, he groped in the soil for a rock, a pipe, anything - and felt the earth burn his hand. It was beyond the heat of a hot summer day. His palm stung as if it had been dipped in acid. Dib rubbed his hand on his jeans, still backing away from the approaching thing so desperate to grab him.
It lurched hungrily, with no movement an organic creature could imitate.
"Get the fuck away from me!" he yelled hoarsely, grabbing a handful of the poisoned dirt and heaving it at the thing's face. For an instant the Hunter howled in ecstasy within him, rejoicing at the strike. And then he watched in horrified fascination as sores began to open on the monster's skin. Small at first, then radiating angrily outward - necrosis in high-speed - until the creature's skin melted off like candle wax. The still-dripping skull beneath continued to leer at him as it breathed loudly.
All Dib could do was scream. Disgust and fear and emotions without names scraped themselves together in his stomach and erupted out of his mouth in an agonized wail. He fell to the ground, head pulled between his knees. The entirety of the world crushed in around him and forced all his being into a tiny pinprick that somehow still felt pain.
He inhaled as deeply as he could. With a small pop that sounded from within his ear rather than outside of it, the sidewalk outside of Bloaty's snapped back into reality. Gaz was leaning over him, one hand reared back.
"Wait! Gaz! I'm back, it's okay!"
She made no sign that she'd heard him. Instead her open palm crashed against his cheek, rattling his glasses against the ground as his head twisted sideways. The crisp pain lurched his mind back to the gritty pavement, the smell of oil in the air, Gaz's form glaring down at him. Dib wondered for an instant or two why on earth he'd said "it's okay" because nothing could have been more senseless.
"What the shit was that about?" she asked, in a mix of rasping anger and shock.
"It was just...I just-"
"You had a damned fit. It was like a seizure on Anomaly ER. Too bad you didn't bite your tongue off." Gaz grabbed the front of his jacket and heaved him up with surprising strength.
He found his legs somewhere beneath him and stood shakily, avoiding Gaz's eyes. The melted monster still hovered threateningly in his mind and he was afraid that the slightest provocation would bring it back.
She shook her head exasperatedly at him, arms crossed across her chest.
"You don't have to go to the hospital, do you?"
"No. I don't think so. I think I just felt a little weak from the pizza smell," he lied unconvincingly.
In the moment of awkward silence, with Gaz's amber eyes resting on him fixatedly, Dib considered telling her everything. He considered admitting his visions, his skull-splitting migraines, the general feeling of slippage. Certainly he couldn't hope to hide it forever; Gaz was too smart for that. He was beginning to feel isolated and dangerous, walking around with the knowledge that he could black out at any moment. But some fear held him back - a fear of padded rooms and sleeping pills - and kept him silent. He'd tell her if things inside his head got worse, he promised himself.
There were more important things at stake right now, anyway. Things that hailed from planet Irk and had picked up a new hobby fileting Swollen Eyeball agents.
"I have to go to the labs" he said suddenly. The declaration surprised him nearly as much as it seemed to surprise Gaz. "I have to find Zim's tank and see if he's still there. This has all gone way too far. It's the only way I'll know for sure."
Know. There's that word again. What makes you think you know anything, Dibshit?
Dib shook his head, shaking the taunting words from his mind before they convinced him otherwise. This was no time to lose focus. He couldn't let his thoughts wander. The risk of dredging up the feelings of darker days and becoming lost in his own wallowing angst was too great. Action first. Brooding later.
He stomped over to the parking lot and started the car with such a single-minded concentration that Gaz's knocking on the window nearly sent him into spasms. Grimacing moodily as he struck the car horn by accident, she buckled herself in beside him.
"You said you were going to drop me off at home, remember?" she said, with over-emphasized patience.
"Right. Sorry. I have to head right back out again, though." Dib said aimlessly, as he kicked the car into reverse.
The drive back to the house was nearly silent. Gaz turned herself sideways and looked out the window, while Dib spent the entire trip trying to find a radio station that wasn't playing commercials. It wasn't until he'd parked on the road outside of their house and Gaz was halfway to the front door that he thought to call her back to the car's open window.
"Hey, Gaz?" he said, leaning out over the sill and resting his arm on the sun-warmed metal of the car door.
"Yeah?"
"I...I just think you should know - um -" he stammered stupidly and softly cursed his family's emotionally stunted regard for affection. Sure, he could talk for hours about the kind of algae that the Loch Ness Monster prefers, but telling his sister that he loved her as a psychotic alien ran amok was proving too difficult.
As usual, Gaz was one step ahead of him.
"I know. Me too. I guess." She said, as if tired of his stuttering.
"And can you do me a favor and keep a weapon with you? How about that bat you used to carry around?"
She crossed her arms over her chest. "The bat broke. I have a crowbar now."
"Sounds good. Better, actually. I'll try and be home…soon. I hope. Lock the doors."
"You want to remind me to brush my teeth, too? I got it, Dib. I'll see you later."
Gaz turned away from him, and walked back into the house. For probably longer than he needed to Dib watched the door, waiting for the click of the lock and the blinking of the T.V. through the window.
He finally shifted gears, backed up into the road, and set his destination firmly in his head: the Membrane Incorporated Research Center, Storage Basement C.
I liked this chapter. Dunno why, really. The content of Zim's note is a reference to one of the (IMO) better Slenderman blogs, called "Just Another Fool." You can tell that the blogger is really starting to lose it when they post cryptic stuff.
On another note, you all might have to expect weekly-ish updates from now on. The end of the semester is fast approaching, and the chapters are getting longer and more complicated as we go, so they'll need a little more revising and I'll have a little less time to do it in. Don't worry, though – this stuff is my break from the unmagnificent lives of adults, so I'll keep at it if you will. Be sure to leave a review, if the mood strikes.