The Story of Dib and Zim

Poor Zim. I abuse him so.

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If you watched them casually, you would never guess that one of them was a prisoner and the other was his captor. Certainly Zim never showed any signs of subservience to Dib.

Astonishingly little of their day to day routine had changed since Zim was taken prisoner. The alien was allowed to go where he pleased, to do what he wanted, even to keep going to hi skool, which he did. He’d enrolled in the first place to learn about Earth, and he still considered that to be a worthy goal.

Meanwhile, Dib had found moving into Zim’s base to be ridiculously easy. So far, his dad hadn’t even noticed he was gone. Gaz noticed though, and made a brief stop at Zim’s house to make sure Dib was still alive.

He’d asked her, “Why are you so concerned about my welfare?”

She’d answered, “I hate that question.”

They’d never spoken about it again.

Dib had even found, to his surprise, that Irkens bred in captivity. In fact, Zim’s lack of a mission seemed to have freed his sense of lust in a way Dib would never have expected. Before, Dib was lucky if he could get close to Zim more than once a month. Now Zim actually became disgruntled if they went even a night without sex.

Most of the time, Zim seemed perfectly fine. He was still arrogant, still spastic, and still a colossal pain in Dib’s ass. If the little alien felt any agonies of defeat, he wasn’t letting them show.

Which was why it shocked Dib when Zim tried to kill himself.

Dib knew something was wrong when he couldn’t find Zim after skool. They always walked home together, immersed in the kind of conversation that made chance passersby run in fear.

Today Zim was just gone. It took Dib forever to locate him. When Dib finally found him, he was perched high on a ledge on one of the skyscrapers that loomed behind the skool district. None of the moron inhabitants of the city had even noticed he was up there.

Dib hadn’t brought a wall-climbing apparatus with him, but with the stuff in the pockets of his trench coat, he was able to improvise.

“Zim! What are you doing up here?”

Zim wrinkled his forehead in mild irritation. “Oh, it’s you. I guess I should have expected you to follow me.”

Zim didn’t sound angry. He just sat on the ledge, appearing morose. Dib crept closer. When he was just a few feet away, he lunged at the alien and grabbed him tight around the midsection, preparing himself for battle.

It never came. Zim just kind of went limp in his arms.

“What’s the matter with you?” Dib demanded.

Zim waved the question away with a dismissive hand. Dib just shook him harder. “Zim! Answer me! Tell me what you’re doing up here”

Zim looked distant and vague. “That’s the question, isn’t it? What am I going to do?”

Dib turned Zim around in his arms to look him in the eye. “What are you talking about?”

Zim closed his eyes and pressed the fingertips of both hands hard against his forehead. “There always used to be orders to follow, you know? Now there’s nothing. Tell me, human, what am I supposed to do now?”

That was the only explanation Dib was able to get out of him. Afraid to leave Zim alone, Dib called Gir to bring the Spit Runner.

It took Dib forever to finally understand it. At first he thought it was that Zim couldn’t stand having been defeated. But eventually he realized that wasn’t it at all.

Zim wasn’t unhappy because he’d been captured, he was unhappy because he’d been set free. He was like a prisoner who’d been released yet was terrified of walking out into the open sunlight.

Zim’s self-destruct button had been turned off along with all his other weapons, but there were still plenty of ways he could kill himself. There was little Dib could do about it. Except watch him closely. And hope that this would pass.