Horrible...Nightmare....Visions
Who: Dib, open
What: The round of nightmare visions continues. Dib dreams about reality.
Where: We're inside your head, yo.
When: Late Friday night
Notes: No tagging order or linear structure, since the nightmares'll keep going until Dib exhausts himself and wakes up in a panic. Multiple threads are cool if necessary, can be single or with others!
"My poor, insane son."
"Dad!" Screeched Dib, from where he was pinned to a cot in the middle of an arena, diodes and wires hooked up to his head. "Dad, listen to me! I have to get to your lab and reverse the effects before it's too late! Otherwise I'll be SUCKED. SUCKED INTO A HORRIBLE NIGHTMARE WORLD!"
The room was as strikingly terrifying to Dib as it had been the first time he'd seen it some months ago. Halloween, right? The day he'd first been sent to the Crazy House for Boys - in fact, if he squinted against the bright lights of the room, he could just make out the sign above the door. And there were the same white coats, and the same disinterested scientists claiming he was insane -
"I've got some bad news, Dib. We've decided you're insane. You'll be confined here for a period no shorter than the rest of your life."
- and his dad, sitting in the crowd of onlookers in his usual stark white lab coat and goggles, shaking his head with pronounced disappointment. The same look he always seemed to get whenever he saw his first born child.
But it was too late to reflect on just how he'd managed to get back into this predicament, repeating a script he practically knew by heart because he was being picked up, up and away from the room by two men who dwarfed Dib, his legs swinging as he dangled several feet above the floor by his arms, into an elevator...
...except Zim was there. Zim hadn't always been there, had he? He should have been at his horrible little house, boarding it up to protect himself from the Halloweenies. Except here he was without his disguise, grinning with his terrible zipper-like teeth and narrowed ruby eyes, extending an alien device at Dib's chest, even as he kicked and screamed and tried to avoid it...
And he was having trouble really shouting now, because Zim had taken his organs again: stolen them, and replaced them with a little sound-making canister so whenever he tried to shout he could only make mooing noises instead, his lungs ripped away from him. He mooed cries of hatred and rage and tried to get at the smirking green alien, but the elevator doors were already closing and he was on his way up..
Dib craned his head as he swung between the two White Coats, making pathetic little mooing noises every time he exhaled. There was a tv in the top corner of the elevator and he twisted around to look at it, cringing when he saw what was playing. It was that Mysterious Mysteries episode he'd actually managed to get on, where he'd been humiliated by both Zim and the host, and - yes, there he was, being stuck in a straitjacket, again.
But the channel was changing around, and this time he was watching stuff he knew he hadn't recorded. Gaz beating and strangling him after he'd snagged the last soda again. Classmates tackling him down and throwing him against school walls. Robotic gnomes firing lasers and delivering swift kicks and punches to the gut. And most of all, his fights with Zim. Stranded at the city cesspit for over a day because of Zim. Kidnapped and held in a glass bubble in a floating space station because of Zim. Getting hit with the world's largest water balloon, having his DNA warped enough so that dogs would try to eat him, cameras stolen, bones broken, being attacked by the alien ship he'd managed to repair, getting stranded in a cage in the North Pole, gagged, choked, abandoned, ignored, hated, hunted...it never ended.
This was your life, Dib! the screen merrily flashed for a few brief seconds before reflecting on the incident where Zim had tried to ruin his childhood by warping his past enough to nearly kill him as a six-year-old. Those rubber piggies...
Finally, the elevator stopped and Dib was carried out into a place he knew very well. He balked, struggling like mad, but the White Coats tossed him out in a straitjacket anyway, into the nightmare realm inside his head. The elevator doors slammed shut and the box disappeared back into the ground, leaving him alone in a vast, dark wasteland. Except instead of home, it looked like Nautilus, and the buildings were warped and decaying, with all sorts of horrific monstrosities shambling around.
"Where are you, BIG HEADED BOY?!" roared one from down the street. "COME HERE SO WE CAN OPEN THAT GIGANTIC HEAD OF YOURS! YOUR HEAD IS OURS!"
Scream-mooing all the way, Dib managed to pull himself up despite his arms being tied, and bolted down the road.
What: The round of nightmare visions continues. Dib dreams about reality.
Where: We're inside your head, yo.
When: Late Friday night
Notes: No tagging order or linear structure, since the nightmares'll keep going until Dib exhausts himself and wakes up in a panic. Multiple threads are cool if necessary, can be single or with others!
"My poor, insane son."
"Dad!" Screeched Dib, from where he was pinned to a cot in the middle of an arena, diodes and wires hooked up to his head. "Dad, listen to me! I have to get to your lab and reverse the effects before it's too late! Otherwise I'll be SUCKED. SUCKED INTO A HORRIBLE NIGHTMARE WORLD!"
The room was as strikingly terrifying to Dib as it had been the first time he'd seen it some months ago. Halloween, right? The day he'd first been sent to the Crazy House for Boys - in fact, if he squinted against the bright lights of the room, he could just make out the sign above the door. And there were the same white coats, and the same disinterested scientists claiming he was insane -
"I've got some bad news, Dib. We've decided you're insane. You'll be confined here for a period no shorter than the rest of your life."
- and his dad, sitting in the crowd of onlookers in his usual stark white lab coat and goggles, shaking his head with pronounced disappointment. The same look he always seemed to get whenever he saw his first born child.
But it was too late to reflect on just how he'd managed to get back into this predicament, repeating a script he practically knew by heart because he was being picked up, up and away from the room by two men who dwarfed Dib, his legs swinging as he dangled several feet above the floor by his arms, into an elevator...
...except Zim was there. Zim hadn't always been there, had he? He should have been at his horrible little house, boarding it up to protect himself from the Halloweenies. Except here he was without his disguise, grinning with his terrible zipper-like teeth and narrowed ruby eyes, extending an alien device at Dib's chest, even as he kicked and screamed and tried to avoid it...
And he was having trouble really shouting now, because Zim had taken his organs again: stolen them, and replaced them with a little sound-making canister so whenever he tried to shout he could only make mooing noises instead, his lungs ripped away from him. He mooed cries of hatred and rage and tried to get at the smirking green alien, but the elevator doors were already closing and he was on his way up..
Dib craned his head as he swung between the two White Coats, making pathetic little mooing noises every time he exhaled. There was a tv in the top corner of the elevator and he twisted around to look at it, cringing when he saw what was playing. It was that Mysterious Mysteries episode he'd actually managed to get on, where he'd been humiliated by both Zim and the host, and - yes, there he was, being stuck in a straitjacket, again.
But the channel was changing around, and this time he was watching stuff he knew he hadn't recorded. Gaz beating and strangling him after he'd snagged the last soda again. Classmates tackling him down and throwing him against school walls. Robotic gnomes firing lasers and delivering swift kicks and punches to the gut. And most of all, his fights with Zim. Stranded at the city cesspit for over a day because of Zim. Kidnapped and held in a glass bubble in a floating space station because of Zim. Getting hit with the world's largest water balloon, having his DNA warped enough so that dogs would try to eat him, cameras stolen, bones broken, being attacked by the alien ship he'd managed to repair, getting stranded in a cage in the North Pole, gagged, choked, abandoned, ignored, hated, hunted...it never ended.
This was your life, Dib! the screen merrily flashed for a few brief seconds before reflecting on the incident where Zim had tried to ruin his childhood by warping his past enough to nearly kill him as a six-year-old. Those rubber piggies...
Finally, the elevator stopped and Dib was carried out into a place he knew very well. He balked, struggling like mad, but the White Coats tossed him out in a straitjacket anyway, into the nightmare realm inside his head. The elevator doors slammed shut and the box disappeared back into the ground, leaving him alone in a vast, dark wasteland. Except instead of home, it looked like Nautilus, and the buildings were warped and decaying, with all sorts of horrific monstrosities shambling around.
"Where are you, BIG HEADED BOY?!" roared one from down the street. "COME HERE SO WE CAN OPEN THAT GIGANTIC HEAD OF YOURS! YOUR HEAD IS OURS!"
Scream-mooing all the way, Dib managed to pull himself up despite his arms being tied, and bolted down the road.