Hey Spacejerk

Doing Time

There was no song this time, only screaming. The ghost rended melodies into a distorted cacophony of vengeful shrieks as she stretched her face through layers of brain matter, gnashing her teeth and sending streaks of red across Dib's vision. Electric blue sizzled all around and cold fire blazed in his head.

He couldn't reach his vocal cords. His limbs refused to respond. The whole world shrank to the bounds of his skull, threatening implosion as a vise squeezed various corridors of his brain.

Someone raged loudly in a familiar foreign tongue.

Black.

...

Water.

Dib's tongue lay thick in his mouth and he held his jaws as far apart as he could to breathe past it—barely enough for a proper breath. His lips cracked as they parted and he groaned.

A trickle. A drop. He'd have happily licked condensation off a dirty window. It felt like someone had thoroughly sanded his trachea up to the esophagus and back down again, then encored by stitching his eyes shut and slicing through his spine just above the shoulders. Nothing in his body responded to his increasingly panicked attempts to stand. Roll over. Twitch. Anything!

A prick in his arm. Fear ebbed into exhaustion. Water would be great, but sleep was even better...

...

Everyone was always laughing and nobody believed him. Why couldn't they see what he saw? Did he just care more, or was there actually a problem with their eyes?

"Now, son, we all know there's no such things as ghosts. If you want to see something that's actuallyworth studying, look through this microscope!"

Evidence dismissed out of hand. Not a large enough sample size. Photo was blurry. Lens cap was on. Tainted samples. Obviously photoshopped. Obviously tampered with. Everybody knew that it, whatever he was chasing, didn't exist, therefore his proof was meaningless. It was only a matter of choosing which excuse to invalidate him with.

Not everyone. Not the ones he was chasing. They believed him. He was a threat to them. Someone to be taken seriously.

"My poor, insane son."

Watch out for Dib. He'll expose you and strew your guts all over an autopsy table. You'll be taken away and never seen again. Dib's dangerous. He's important.

...

Dib's eyelids fluttered open before his brain was ready to register images. Not that it mattered. By the state of the blobs and blurs around him, he could tell his glasses were missing.

A hard slab stretched flat underneath him from head to toe. Tentatively, he pushed against it and was rewarded with the upward motion of his body. The blobs tilted crazily and he sank back against the slab. In spite of the weakness, he was grateful to have some control of his body back.

Click. Hisssss.

Something entered his field of vision, bringing two crystal clear circles close to his—oh. The robotic arm retracted back into the wall and Dib reached up to touch his glasses.

He was being monitored. But where was he?

The slab attached to the wall by one of the longer edges. Two chains latched onto the two free corners and anchored back into the wall, forming a triangle at either end of the slab.

He tried rising again, taking it a couple inches at a time and pausing anytime the room started to swim. There was a cracked sink set in the near wall and across from him was a small rust-streaked toilet. Three walls were solid blocks of cement while the fourth was lined with bars, broken only by a door in the center. The door hung crooked in its frame, but its attachment was supplemented by thick, shiny chains on its right and left sides.

Dad had... jailed him?

He sat there in shock for a full thirty seconds before deciding that wasn't possible. His Dad would never put him in a run-down jail that looked to be falling apart. If he was going to commit his son, it would be to a well run institution or jail. Even his father had standards to consider. Besides, it was dead quiet all around. Did this place even house anyone else?

At that moment, a small screen floated down the corridor outside his cell. It slipped sideways between the bars and approached Dib, crackling with static. It came to a halt two feet from Dib, then displayed a message in white lettering on a blue background.

Y O U   H A V E   O N E   N E W   M E S S A G E .

Below it were two buttons, one green and one red.

A C C E P T   D E C L I N E 

Blinking, Dib pressed Accept. The screen returned to static crackling for a few seconds. Then the static vanished. Dib could hardly contain himself as Zim's scowling face filled the screen, red eyes narrow and antennae laid flat.

"Greetings, Earthstink."