interdimensional investigations initiative - invasion

chapter 2 - amputation, t-minus six days

RYAN'S EYES HAD a hard time adjusting to the sight of Derek... walking down the hall towards him. Weird flashes of sensation lit up his nerves, from the smell of mint chewing gum to the feel of horsehair under his hands. When he brought it up to look at it, his entire hand seemed off somehow, like it didn't belong.

"I filled Whitney Moseby's locker with shaving cream," Derek said. His broad shoulders were slumped way down, until it looked like his hairy arms reached almost all the way down to his knees.

"Uh... what?" Ryan couldn't process for a second.

"April Fools," Derek said in a low, mopey tone. "I didn't actually do that. Jerry would kill me."

Ryan was still an entire box of pieces short of the whole puzzle. "Jerry?" It hit him all at once. Jerald Weinstein, Whitney Moseby's boyfriend. He was absolutely perfect in every way, except in the personality department. "Ohhh, right. Jerry. Guy's a jerk."

"She deserves it though."

Ryan knew why, even though Whitney Moseby had been his lab partner last year. She'd been nearly tolerable, but only because she needed him for the grade. For most other people, she was a foot fungus: impossible to get rid of, something you didn't want to even think about, but which drove you absolutely insane nonetheless.

The guy she was dating: a whole body fungus. Or a nasty case of hemorrhoids.

"Flubber," Derek mumbled. She'd called him Flubber. It was a recurring jab. At least it was better than Five Nine, which stood for 'Five feet nine inch pile of dog crap,' and worse than Seventh Dwarf, which she apparently thought was named 'Mopey' rather than Dopey.

"That's... that's..."

Wait a second. Ryan lifted his arm and discovered his right hand firmly attached to his right wrist. He stared at it for a while, and Derek went on about Whitney Moseby.

Derek included Tara Allen, Stephanie Vanderpelt, and Jessica Rollins in his sullen description of the torture he'd suffered that morning. Ryan counted himself lucky that he rode his bike each morning, and lived fairly close to the high school. Derek lived much further out, and was bussed in with Whitney and her evil henchmen. Plus, they lived close to one another, so she was always on the bus with him.

"Only a month," Derek finished up.

The whole ordeal with the interdimensional portal was already fading, with the giant octopus and the smells and sounds. It was like a terrifying dream, except Ryan could still feel the sharp bite of Derek's steel-toed boot in his ribs, and faintly the numb shock of having part of himself detached from the rest of him. Sights and sounds and smells still stuck out: a smirking Asian face, a sofa the size of a stretch limo, a weapons rack with every sort of laser weapon in every movie you'd ever seen.

This was all disappearing, even though he knew he ought to try to hold some of it down. It slipped off into the future.

"Huh?" Derek had said something spiteful, but Ryan was too busy trying to pull in pieces of the future with one hand removed. Submarine and helicopter, a cartoon from his childhood, Bright Star Goddess...

"Jerry's sixteenth birthday?" Derek asked.

The future (with its kangaroos and giant land octopus and cyber pirates) winked out.

Neither of them wanted anything good for Jerry Weinstein, but once he had his car, he'd be bringing Whitney to school and Derek would be spared the humiliation of every day of his life riding the bus to school with her.