Dead Screams
part thirteenZim stood before the tombstone. It looked like all the others that marked the cemetery: a tall broad stone with dark engravings that read names and dates. A bouquet of black roses lay by its side, looking only a day old, while around it withered and decaying flowers filled the air with their musk of death. Zim kneeled, placing the lone white carnation he had brought on the grass covered mound. His fingers danced across the cold stone marker, tracing the three curved letters of the name with solemn respect and longing.
"It didn't have to end like that," he muttered. Words unspoken in life seemed to flow to the dead. One never had to worry about rejection or making an ass out of oneself when the audience was dead. "We could have done something. I know you'd have agreed with me. They were bastards."
He sighed, holding his jacket closer as the wind picked up across the barren field of stone... He'd driven home, back to the first place he'd ever learned to call home, only the night before. He'd have come sooner, he assured himself, if he hadn't had to destroy the evidence against him. What was left of the dragging body was burned, the car completely incinerated with patented Irkin technology and the trail of gore wiped away in the night. Revenge was dirty business, but it didn't need to be incriminating.
"You probably would have done a better job than me," Zim commented, picking up the black roses and positioning his carnation among them, a bright spot amidst darkness. "But what matters is that it's over. The nightmare has ended."
He held his palm flat against the tombstone, a gentle smile crossing his melancholy features. "Maybe if you ask real nice, someone on the other side will let you take a crack at him. If your gods were anything like ours, they would enjoy the show."
The wound in his chest began to ache, whether from heartbreak or Nye's last attempt at fighting back against inevitability. He reached under the jacket, feeling the wetness of blood on his fingertips. He'd opened it up again. He cursed silently, a muttered sound of annoyance as he applied some pressure to it and waited for the bleeding to cease.
His eyes wondered to the next row of tombstones, having read them many times before. This was, after all, the Membrane family plot. /Beloved wife and mother. May your memory keep for eternity,/ he read. Zim had never known family. He had observed them, created a pair of useless models, and watched enough mind rotting television to know the basic roles and feelings behind one, but had never known a mother's touch, a father's pride, or a sibling’s taunt. What he knew were stories, each one a fairytale. For such pitiful creatures, humans did have one thing Irkins did not. Unconditional love. And for that Zim envied every last stinking one of them.
But, as it was prone to do, Zim's mind began to wander. From stone to stone came visions of Dib, the Dib that had been so long ago that he seemed ancient. The Dib who fought and teased, whose head was always too big for his body and mind too fixed on the paranormal to see the obvious. Zim could remember a time when Dib had told him he had once let Gir into his home, spending the day talking and watching TV. He had called it the day he had found out Zim's mission was a fraud and the alien had been banished.
Zim remembered the day as well. /It was the day I wore Gir's costume and came home knowing I loved a human./
A history of spying and unrequited emotions flew like life before a dying man, repeating themselves in an ever-changing manner through times and trials. Sadness, death, depression, healing, sadness... Zim's mind spun with the merry-go-round of thought.
/It doesn't matter any more. He knows.../ Zim closed his eyes, blocking past mistakes. /He knew I had done it and why before he left. In the end I told every secret./
With eyes growing tired and body weary, Zim placed his fingers on the tombstone once more. "I have to go now. It's time I saw him again. To put an end to it all. Just one last time." He stepped away, unable to turn his back on the stone marker, walking backwards to the gate. "I wish you had been there, Gaz. He always listened to you more than me."
The stone tablet did not answer, but Zim could pretend to hear her shouting at him to leave her alone anyway. She would have been right. It was time he left the dead where they were and addressed the living. Ridicule or none.
He headed off towards the Membranes’ home.