INVADER ZIM Fact #5

I once blinded a kid with Fritos to escape a fight.

Hey, remember a few days ago when we were at whatsisface’s and we were talking about recurring dreams and I told you about the ones I’ve been having for maybe a month now? Yeah, well I had another one of those. Yeah, it’s getting pretty spooky how persistent they are.

Like I said, it’s not actually the same dream so much as the dream is the same, ya know?  Does that make sense?  I’m just saying that even though it’s usually in different places, and the people are different and so on, the general vibe is the same, and the course of events plays out toward the same stuff by the end, and each time I wake up with that same sense of something being wrong.  Like really wrong.

Anyhow, in this last one I was at Senor Fish?  Yep, the taco place downtown.  Right off the bat things are weird because I order an asada taco and not the chicken one I’ve been getting for months now.  I used to only get the asada but moved on because I’d been eating too many asada tacos and I figured it was time to move on, you know?  HAH!  Yeah, if anyone knows it’s gonna be YOU of all people.  Never forget, my bruthuh.

Would you like a side of NIGHTMARES???

Anyhow, that’s real life, the chicken thing, but in the dream I get asada, and the dream version of me doesn’t bat an eye or start flipping tables over like I did when I started ordering the chicken and the guys there were so used to me ordering asada that they brought me an asada one anyhow.  Nope, dream me just goes on and tells them the rest of my order (chips and salsa, a small drink), and goes to sit down where I usually do.  It’s pretty much just normal life, and aside from my order, nothing’s bizarre or dreamy, nothing’s floating around or being freaky.

You know, now that I’m telling this, going over it in my head here, I’m wondering if the dream was supposed to take place in the past, going back at least as far when I still only ordered the asada ones and a future of chicken tacos was just science fiction shit to me.  I don’t have enough to go on, yet, but it’s worth looking into.

If you remember, the last couple, like I said, were all different places and different people, sometimes I’m in the park, or a grocery store, or whatever, but what’s the same in all of these dreams is how commonplace, how perfectly normal everything is for most of the dream.  And Senor Fish is no different in terms of how normal it is, me eating my food, drinking and looking around the room watching people talking with friends and co-workers while I wonder about what it must be like to have friends and such, all that usual stuff, up until I decide I want a bigger container to put salsa in.

I get up and walk to the counter where a guy’s messing with replacing a paper roll in the register and ask if I could get one of the bigger salsa cups that they sometimes give you but don’t always for some reason.  I like the bigger ones is all.  The guy looks up from what he’s doing and just gives me this weird stare, like he’s just been asked the stupidest question of his life.

“Do you have any of those?” I asked the guy again, and his nose starts bleeding, and he just goes on giving me that weird look of his.

That’s the part of the dream that all the others have in common, or at least the start of it.  Not the taco guy, but someone like him, someone that just stops the program and gets bizarre on me for no good reason.  The bloody nose thing has popped up as well.

“I’m sorry, I can’t hear you because I’m dead.” the guy finally says.  I don’t quite know what to say, and I’m bothered by the guy’s bloody nose that the guy’s doing nothing about so it’s just dripping down his chin and punctuating on his shirt.  I tell him thanks, anything to just get away from him and sit back with my food, picking up another small-size salsa cup so I can at least have two of those to make up for not having one big one, the whole while the guy’s staring at me from the counter while I ladle in some salsa.

I’m pretty used to be around some loony people, so the guy’s behavior doesn’t stop me from enjoying my meal, and I guess that doesn’t make the guy happy so he comes out from behind the counter and stands in front of the table I’m eating at.

I can see that his legs have been crushed, his pants dirty and ripped with what appear to be tire marks on them.  I hear the bones in his legs cracking and brushing angrily against splintered bits as he shambles over.  Why this guy was even at work I couldn’t tell you, but I was sorry he was at that point.

My mouth is full of the last bite I took so when he starts up his staring routine just feet away from me at the table, it’s with some difficulty that I ask “Is everything alright, man?  You should get those legs checked.”

“There are no doctors in this wormy earth, my secret grave.” he replies, his voice weirdly choked and croaky sounding.  Now I really know the guy’s not right and I try to ignore him, looking around the room at anything but him.

“My grave.  Buried.  Understand?”

Again, this pops up in every dream, the wounded person, the busted legs and the constant talk of graves and being buried.

I tell him no, I don’t understand, I tell him sure, I understand, whatever, man.  I tell him I understand anything that’ll make him go away so I can eat in peace, but he only seems to get irritated with that.  Initially he’s all cold and eerie stares, but as it goes on he seems to lose more and more of whatever composure a thing like that might be.

“My graaave.”, he says.  “Buried? Because I’m dead.”

“Mhm.” I say, chewing.

“Does any of this look familiar to you?  My broken legs, the tire marks?”

It doesn’t so I just shake my head, hoping he’ll just fly away if I ignore him.

“I’m not a bee, you idiot.” he says, looking even worse than before, his skin slightly sagging and clothes even more rotted.”  “Listen to me, okay?  Pay attention.”, the taco guy says, so i figure the best way to get through this is to do what he says, make him happy so he’ll just go away.

“How’d you break your legs, anyhow?  That looks bad, man.  Real bad.”

“Are you serious? ”

“Yes, I’m serious.  I’m not even sure how you’re walking around on those things.  I know if my legs were in that bad a shape I’d be crawling around, dragging myself by my arms, screaming for help.”

“Don’t you remember when I did do that?  My screams, my pleading for help that late night on that lonely road?”

“What I wouldn’t do is come to work in that shape, because that’s just crazy, man, and it sure as hell isn’t sanitary.  I can tell you from experience that people don’t dig people bleeding all over their tacos.”

Here the guy does a sorta double take, like things just aren’t going his way, and he grabs a fist full of chips off my tray and throws them in my face.  It’s not like it hurt or anything, but it was shocking and some of the salt got in my eye, which did hurt a little.

“What the hell did you do that for, goddammit?” I yell, scrabbling to get the salt bits off my face.

“I shouldn’t be at work?  How about you shouldn’t NOT be in prison, huh?  I mean…is ANY of this getting through to you?  How long’s it been now…maybe five months?  Are you really that horrible?”

All of this, this general line of questioning and such, it’s all in the dreams I have, and it’s about as confounding as anything I’ve ever dreamed up, but it’s the repetition that stands out.  These shared themes.  I don’t put much faith in dream analysis and things like that, but I bet people who do would have a field day with this.  Good luck to anyone who thinks they can figure this shit out, am I right?

So the guy, just puts his face in his hands and stands that way, slowing his breathing down to something less excited.  I take that opportunity to take a few more bites, almost finishing my taco while he recovers from whatever’s bothering him so much.

When he shows his face again, he doesn’t speak, simply points out the window.

“What’re you pointing at?”, I ask him.  He doesn’t respond, just keeps pointing.

“Is something out there?”  Again no answer, but his finger wiggles slightly.

I take another bite, just looking up at the guy, wondering if he’ll ever tell me what’s up.

“LOOK OUT THE WINDOW, YOU FUCKING-“, he shrieks, cutting himself off and resuming by simply shaking his finger hard, still pointing at the window behind me.

So I do what he says, turning to look at what appears to be a lonely stretch of highway, familiar to me as highway 5 in the middle of the night.  I instantly find this view to be a bit odd as it had just been downtown moments before.  I turn back to ask how this was possible but he grabs my head and turns it manually back to the window, mumbling some really mean things about me as he does so.

I see a lone figure walking along the side of the road, and before I can wonder why anyone would be walking alone in the dark on the side of highway 5 I see a car broken down a little ways down the road.  I reach behind me to grab a chip and snack on it while watching this go down.

“Could you hand me a cup of salsa?”, I ask, keeping my head facing the window.  I hear a sigh and from my left side slides in a hand with one of my salsa cups.

“Thanks.”, I say as I see a light down the road, a car moving along the highway.  As it gets closer, the figure starts waving his hands, and I recognize those hands.  One of them, in fact, looks a lot like the one that just handed me salsa.  The car, too, looks familiar.

“Hey, I have one of those!”, I cheerfully tell the guy behind me.

“Oh, really?  You don’t say.  I didn’t know that OH WAIT, YES I DID.”, comes his response, snippier than I cared for.

The guy in the road looks grateful to see anyone else on the road, but it’s obvious the car isn’t stopping.  To be honest, it looks like it speeds up, in fact, and that’s bad news for the guy in the road who runs but runs too late to dodge the car, leaping short of its path.  The car rolls over the guy’s legs and skids to a stop moments later.

The guy, broken and screaming, pleads for help, for mercy, for a ride, for anything to stop the pain, and in response the car’s door flies open and out runs a man, a very alert looking man.  The man quickly scans the surroundings then makes a straight line for the injured.  As the broken guy cries and begs for help, the man drags him by his arms to the side of the road where he immediately starts using a discarded hubcap to start digging into the gravelly earth.

“What’s he doing?”, I ask, eating my chips.

“Well, it looks like he’s digging a hole, doesn’t it?

“But why?”

“Maybe to cover up something terrible that he did?  Something most people wouldn’t be able to live with without being consumed by guilt?”

“What’d he do??”

“Wait…did you just SEE what happened?  The guy getting hit and now the burying of the still crying body?  What…what the fuck is wrong with you man?”

As I watch, the man is indeed burying the guy who limply flails to get the dirt off of him, and doing a poor job of it as eventually he’s just a weakly shifting pile of dirt and gravel.  Eventually it is still.

“Oh!  I get it.  Sorry.  I see now.  So why’d it happen.”

“Well…did you notice all the Fritos that were in the guy’s lap when he got out of the car.  You can still see some sticking to his shirt as he RUNS AWAY FROM THE GRAVE HE JUST DUG.”

I do indeed see this, little curls of fried things dangle to the threads on the man’s shirt as he gets in his car and drives off.

“Yeah.  I do.”

“Well, I’m just taking a wild stab here, but I’d say he was eating Fritos in the car and spilled them.  While he was cleaning them up he probably wasn’t looking where he was going and then hit somebody.”

“I love Fritos.

“I know you do.”

That’s when it hits me.  Sickened…I slowly turn to face this wraith…this thing from elsewhere, a thing that has reached across natural boundaries to touch my slumbering mind.

“And you want me to hunt this man down for you?”

“Seriously. WHAT is wrong with you?”

And that’s when I woke up.  That’s around the point in all of these dreams where I wake up, just shaking my head at the opaqueness of it all.

Anyhow, I just thought you’d be into that because of what we were talking about before at whatsisface’s.

Speaking of which!

FACT:

GIR is crazy for eggs!

–ZIM FACTS.  Here’s why—