VI: Conspiracy

Crawling into the closet to drag out a cardboard box revealed dust, a marble, and a tiny plastic building block, which Zim found with his knee. Digging through said box yielded more marbles and plastic building blocks, a posable toy robot emblazoned with a ridiculous flame design, a plastic horse, a handful of broken colored pencils and crayons, a broken airplane, and a.... thing. Finding nothing of use, save for the knowledge that Dib had weird-ass taste in toys, he hauled out the remaining boxes. They contained much of the same, and also a lot of old skool-work, most of it covered with chipped macaroni and ugly buttons, or bedazzled with glitter. Or both. 

The boxes on the shelf above him had only shoes, old board games, and a fossilized cockroach.

Zim clambered off the chair with an irritated huff and dropped his light into the pile of jeans. This was so much bullshit. Where had Dib put all his stuff? There was a time when every inch off this room was covered in... paranormal whatevers. He thunked down in the chair, swiveling it with one foot as it sank closer to the floor. The walls would have been papered. Part of the ceiling too. The dresser and desk would have no room to spare and the closet would be full to bursting. Now though.... Zim spared the closet another glance, slouching to rest his head in his hands. Now he could see the flattened imprints in the carpet where all of that used to be. Surely he hadn't just thrown it all away. Some small part of him sadly hoped he'd meant more to the Dib-stink than that. He'd already been thrown away once.

Maybe he was being stupid. Because really, 

"What am I doing here?" He whispered, kicking at a stray fuzzy thing on the carpet.

What did he care what happened to the Dib? He started twirling again, with the other foot this time, even though it felt awkward, stretching his arms above his head and behind the back of the chair with a sigh. Clearly Dib didn't care what happened to Zim. Otherwise... no.  Zim  shook his head, rustling his wig. He refused to go down that road of thought. So what if the Dib-stink was gone? Kudos to him and good-fucking-riddance!! Leaving town without so much as a scathing insult or witty... witicism. He scoffed, suddenly irritated. Zim could see it now. The stupid dirt-monkey, gleefully flinging his possessions into bags (he certainly would) not a care into he world or a backwards glance, zooming off into the horrible sunset in Tak's old Voot Cruiser.

Zim froze, contacted eyes widening ridiculously. Of course! Why hadn't he thought of that sooner?! Tak's Voot Cruiser! Had the Dib-thing really managed to get it working? It was the biggest long shot in ever because the human's understanding of Irken technology was pathetically laughable. Where had the Dib kept that thing? Zim leapt from the chair, flinching when it skreeked in the silence of the darkened room, the thunder long since faded from booms and crashes to distant, deep-bassed rumbles, the rain a gentle, steady pattering. He listened hard, stiff with the fear of sudden discovery.

Nothing.

Zim let out a whoosh of air and splayed his hands against his chest, trying to willingly calm his overreactive circulatory system. Wow he really needed to calm down. Being swift to react to potential danger was one thing and panicking like a novice was another. One could save your skin and the other often led to a gruesome, pathetic death.

Okay. The Voot Cruiser. Where had Dib kept that thing? It was too big to fit in the tool shed and there was no way to get it inside the house. Zim frowned. He certainly hoped that the boy hadn't been foolish enough to just leave it out in the yard given this planet's propensity for ridiculous, unpredictable weather phenomenon. And there wouldn't be much chance of finding clues in the grass. The garage however. There was plenty of opportunity for fuel residue, stray hardware, and radioactive ion clouds in there. Lots of hard, non-porous surfaces for things to stick to and shelves for runaway screws to roll under.

The garage. Was downstairs. Zim was not. The notion of having to get past Gaz undetected was daunting and made his organs squirm, but there was no way he was climbing back out the window to squelch through the cold and the wet and the mud. He was fairly sure that the entrance to the garage was somewhere off the kitchen, so once he was finished there he could just leave via the kitchen door. Never mind that he could have come in through said door to begin with.

Sparing a window a quick glance, he saw only the flailing of tree branches frantic to keep what few leaves they had left out of the clutches of the beating wind. Nope. Definitely not going out there.

Zim turned to Dib's incredibly boring bedroom door. There was a sad little slide lock a ways above the knob, but no deadbolts or other nonsense. He reached out and turned the knob in slow, tiny increments, determined to not startle himself anymore with stupid little noises. Honestly. The knob reached the end of its turn radius and Zim pulled on it gently, prepared to defend himself against the human female that was surely waiting for him in the hallway.

It didn't move.

Confused, he pulled again, a little harder this time. The door budged the smallest amount.

He stared at the little slide lock above him as he pulled once more, his eyes convincing his magnificent brain that, yes, it was disengaged. So why wasn't it opening? His antennae, curled up into his new wig, picked up a faint clink from the other side. Of course.

It was the only logical conclusion. There was no mechanism on the knob and the door opened toward him. It's not like there was anything in the way. Zim rolled his eyes, an unfortunate habit he'd picked up from the natives, which nonetheless conveyed his outstanding irritation. Well this at least was an obstacle he could overcome with little to no fuss. It was something he had encountered before and the solution was both glaringly obvious and very simple. See, hinges on Irken products were designed to be closed at both ends. A matter of both durability and security. The hinges on this door however. Zim tried to quash his irrational rage at yet another example of Earth 'security'. He just didn't get it. Did these people want their house broken into?! Did they want to be taken over?? Nevermind that he had been here for years and hadn't managed to take over more than an empty lot. Or that he could barely get through a door. 

Now had this been any other day he would have just torn through it like it was wet construction paper. The only reason he was bothering with stealth was because he couldn't afford to be injured. The supplies he had at his base were substantial, but not infinite, and until he managed to contact a few old acquaintances he would have to make do with what he could find on Earth. Anything beyond breaking a minor bone would put him in a dire situation.

The hinges on pathetic Earth technology were only closed on one end. Like the ones in front of him. This was a problem because anyone could just waltz right up, assuming they were on the right side, and just slide the pins out. That wouldn't work in this particular situation, but he was still getting through. He retrieved his flashlight and bag from the floor behind him and set to work. The press of a few more buttons and another twist and a half produced a cross-head screwdriver and a spray nozzle from the device.

The hinges received a thorough drenching from the industrial grade lubricant in the teeny reservoir and Zim  got to work removing the screws attaching the hardware to the rest of the house. Normally these plates of metal were installed on the inside edges of the door and the jamb, where you couldn't see them, and so you couldn't just take them off like he was doing. Instead, whoever had put them in had screwed them right onto the frame, the idiot. In less than a minute, Zim  had removed the screws from the middle and bottom hinges. The top one took longer because he had to stand on the chair again and it's hard to do anything while standing on an office chair. Hopefully this would be the last obstacle of the evening.

Now all he had to do was push the door out into the hallway and hope the supposed lock on the other side didn't rattle. Ready to get this whole mess over with, he slung his bag up from the floor, rolled the chair out of the way, and carefully moved the door past its frame, supporting the underside with the toe of one boot to keep it from swinging wildly.

Pausing to turn his light off, he was soon halfway in the hall, peering around cautiously for signs of life, most notably Gaz. Still nothing. His previous observation about the lights was proving truer. The hall was very, very dark; no light coming from beneath doors or up the stairwell. It was quiet too. No radio or TV noises, or the blip-bloop of a video game. Just the storm. It was kind of unnerving. He began wedging the door back into its frame and another soft clink reminded him of the obstruction that had caused him so much unnecessary irritation. A thick, heavy padlock hung from the doorframe. It made no sense. How was the Dib supposed to get inside if/when he came back? It was unlikely he put it there himself.

He shrugged off his growing sense of disconcertment and began creeping down the hallway, screwdriver clutched tightly in his fist. The bathroom was passed with no fanfare but Zim startled badly when he discovered Gaz's room wide open but dark, the only illumination coming from the eyes of an exceedingly creepy stuffed bear above the empty bead. So, either she wasn't home or she was lurking somewhere, waiting to leap from the shadows and devour his organs. Maybe. Zim thought there was a high probability. He proceeded down the stairs with a bit more caution and apprehension, taking time to peek through the railings to make sure she wasn't hiding in the living room. Or hanging from the ceiling.

The stairs spat him out in a corner of the living room next to a hallway just as dark and creepily silent as the one upstairs. Another visual sweep of the room showed nothing more than shadowed, lumpy furniture and weird lamps and Zim moved warily into the hallway in front of him. Some ways off to the right was the kitchen and the door in front of him, slightly ajar, hid mounds of clothing and the next inaudible hum of a deep freeze. On the left lay a few more doors, the last of which he knew led to the garage. If the rest of the house had been dark, this part was like an abyss. Inky black shadows seemed to swirl through the space and he swore it got darker the harder he looked. 

He couldn't even see the battered garage door and only knew it was there from experience. But that and twenty feet of blackness was all that stood between him and the Cruiser, assuming it was there, and maybe, just maybe, finding the Dib. Zim was going to hit him so hard when he found him. Okay. He could do this. It was just a hallway. It was dark and empty and no one was going to jump out and stab him. He gripped the screwdriver tighter and ooched slowly slowly across the carpet, passing a door on the left, one on the right, and another on the left, one right after the other.

He was so close. So close. Looking back he supposed he should have seen it coming. Something always went wrong.