A/N: Well, I don't know what I bother apologising anymore, or in fact how many of you are still patiently waiting on this story! D: I'm very sorry for keeping you waiting again, however I think this story is pretty much cursed to be slow. I've been feeling particularly shattered and wrung out lately, life's been knocking on my door with a scythe since early in the year. Nothing I'll waste your time with. Before I get into any more tactless ranting, here is Chapter 18. Thank you for reading!
Yet another daybreak in the quiet, forgotten end of town saw a very bleary human blinking awake yet again with a screaming headache and, as a more recent addition, a stale flavor in his mouth. A groan was elicited, but what came out was more of a harsh whistling noise. He ran his tongue with difficulty around his mouth. A warning flag cresting his mind, stirred up from the submerged bedrock of primal instinct. It told the boy he was, without dispute, in need of a drink.
Dib had brought only a little water with him when he'd left home; what was left in his bottle from the night before. Considering the nature of the conundrum that had awoken him that morning, it had been the only safe water he could think to take with him. However, as Dib had no familiar truck with surviving on half a litre of water for three days (he always stocked up when he went out on long expeditions), his resources had been quickly depleted. He would need to find more somewhere.
He crawled sleepily over to the gaunt extraterrestrial bug he had come to call his roommate. Said alien was sitting up and gave the impression of reading a newspaper like any spritely, early-rising middle class stereotypical father - except that closer inspection would have shown that the newspaper was in fact a thick, leatherbound fiction tome, and Zim was not a morning person. In fact, he looked like he'd escaped from a sleep-deprivation experiment and then caught the flu. He sniffled as Dib approached, turning the pages in a kind of mechanical trance. He looked perfectly as though he'd been up all night trying to read.
"Sleep well?" Dib rasped, feeling a little irony was in order.
The disheveled Irken lifted his head in such a manner that Dib could discern every individual creak of his locked muscles, and gave the boy a long, incredulous stare. "No." He replied, returning to the book and scrunching up his eyes.
Dib followed his line of sight. "You know, most people read to relax." He joked lightly, wincing at the dryness of his throat.
Zim countered by thrusting his head into the book and sending the lovingly compiled story he was reading a muffled snarl.
"You should be careful, though," Dib continued, his brow scrunched, "reading that book might give you a headache." No response. "But seriously, have you found any clues in—"
A thunderous slam of the book and Dib was eye to eye with the alien, his head and ears ringing and sight full of red.
"What is it you WANT, Dib-thing?"
Dib recovered himself nicely once he'd realised the book had been slammed shut, and not on top of his head.
He creaked to his feet stiffly, shrugging Zim's irritation off. After all, he'd copped far worse from his little sister. "I need to go home."
Even without a verbal cue, Dib could see the 'whatever for?' spelt out in Zim's face.
"I need to get water. Perhaps a few other things. Besides…" The human deflated, a wisp of last night's sorrow worming its way back. Broken or not as it was, he would like to know what had become of his home.
Rather than protest, Zim elected to stand up as well, the action as strained as Dib's had been. "I suppose you'd better go fill your yearning lust for human comforts." He muttered, ricocheting unwittingly off the taller creature's little reflection. As an afterthought, "I should also like to inves- er… check out, things."
The cagey answer was volleyed back in his face with scathing askance. "Investigate what, Zim?"
"T-The weather of course…"
That sounded fair enough to satisfy.
Slowing to a crawl as he reached the pathway leading up to the Membrane household, Dib found the silence even more unnerving than it had been out in the street. The dawn sky was its usual sickly yellow-brown, highlighted by just the faintest tinge of radioactive green. That hadn't been a surprise. What was strange was the significant lack of people bustling about, the deadening of the usually slug-like flow of traffic through the middling sanctum of the city. Quiet hung in the air like a thick blanket of salt, refusing to settle on the marred surface of the earth into which it had driven the hordes of terrified mollusk. Dead like death, but for the high ringing that permeated Dib's skull. Indeed, he himself felt like the life had been siphoned out of him.
Pushing open the unlocked door with hooded alien in tow, Dib was met with further silence but for the tiny, collective sizzle of his nose hairs frying from the smell they were met with. They both drew back from the doorway, Zim's face contorted in the most bizarre way one could imagine, and himself struggling for breath, having to lean on the outer wall, as he forced some less hostile air back into his lungs.
He was all too familiar with the smell of poorly dried clothes, but Jesus Christ. A whole house reeking of dampness wasn't something to sniff at.
Literally.
Zim retched and stumbled back further from the entrance, falling on his rear on the cold grass, the hood drawn protectively over his antennae slipping almost to half-mast. "Great screaming sewer ferrets of planet Dirt!" He looked accusatorily up at the human, memories of a certain nightmarish Halloween incident awakened by the dreadful stench. "How many smells can your giant zombie-filled head create?"
Dib completely ignored that misdemeanor against common logic in favour of drawing his coat collar up to shield his nose. With a muffled "Coming?" escaping the confines of the jacket, he disappeared with tentative footsteps into the dark, rank-smelling building. Zim waited a full five seconds to stare with fierce interest at a patch of bitumen behind him before hurrying into the house behind the human.
As the duo haphazardly picked their way through the labyrinthine mess of once-recognisable debris that had taken up residence on the living room floor, Dib could feel the alien twitching restlessly at his side. Two bulges under his hood would rise and fall at regular intervals, and Dib had to struggle to keep his teenage brain from straying to some rather unacceptable trains of thought. He chalked Zim's unease up to the still-healing burns hidden under a fresh set of bandages – the room was dark, reeked of moisture and that was the very thing Zim had the right to fear. He was surprised Zim had actually had the nerve to follow him into the house. Unconsciously, his hand wandered around for the Irken's own, feeling a squeeze might calm the Irken's fidgeting. Or else get his hand bitten off, considering Zim's recent temperament.
When Dib reached the foot of the staircase, Zim stood perfectly frozen, excused himself with a garbled burst of speech and ran for the door. The human stared after him, shrugged and began climbing. He was still at a loss to explain any of Zim's erratic, cagey behaviour, so there was no prompt to intervene. Dib just hoped there were no neighbours peering out of chinks in their curtains this morning.
Money and a note had been stuck to his door, by one of Membrane's servicebots judging from the precisely calculated placement of the tape. His dad probably hadn't come home since the house flooded. Dib read over the note quickly.
There is an unknown interference with all our transmission interfaces, so I have been unable to reach you. Your sister has relocated to the motel attached to Membrane Enterprises. Take the money and check yourself into a room. A plumber will be contacted once we can find a way around the interference.
Dib pocketed the money and continued his rounds of the house.
He finished up fairly quickly, not liking the spooky demeanour of the house. Dib was all for spooky, just not so much when it was related to recently transpiring events. This didn't feel like home. In this state, it felt like less of a home than it ever had. It was the residence of silence and mould now.
Despite his earlier homesickness, he couldn't really feel much sentiment now that he was here. It was part of the human condition to take things for granted, a nuisance though it was. His curiosity had been satisfied. He'd seen what awaited him at home. Even so, childish instinct told him it would all be back to normal one day. It wasn't a strange kind of feeling. In all honesty, Dib didn't truly believe that it wouldn't. It had been the same for too long; this was simply an adventure for it. For him, too.
Dib had told himself not long ago that he wanted out of here. It was a shame about the whole school certificate thing, but he was pretty much occupied full time trying to keep Zim from tearing himself to bits in his sleep. That was quite an adventure. Not the kind of adventure he'd wanted, but something, at least. Weird. It gave him a lot to think about that wasn't mundane; the bizarre and mysterious had been returned to his everyday routine. It was something of a respite after three years, and for that privilege, Dib felt prepared to take down his coat off the hook.
If only he could get the damned alien to talk to him.
"Diiiib! Dib-thing!" Abandoning the last of the water bottles he had been hauling up from the shelter under the house (gas or radiation-proof shelters were a necessity in a world dominated by the manufactory and science industries, especially so when one was living with an avid lover of energy and chemical substances) and slamming down the rest of what he was drinking, Dib bolted outside to where an apparently very enthused alien was in need of his attention.
A/N: Well, there you have it for another little filler. I'm a little concerned about how I pulled off Dib's inner monologue, but ah well. Can't win 'em all. Next two chapters are currently under construction, so... I honestly don't know what that means. D: Will do my best to power through them, but no telling.
Until then, thank you for reading! :D
Any reviews, as always, are much appreciated. 3