I don't own Invader Zim. Still. Characters created by Jhonen Vasquez. Still.

Chapter 8 Where am I?

Dib woke up slowly, forced to stare straight up into the many small lights in rows far above him. Their unearthly green cast was unnerving. Dib was in some kind of circular room with a sectioned wall. Realization sank in like an icicle that he was solidly pinned down, spreadeagled on an icy metal tray. What the purpose of the tray was, he did not know, but it seemed to have a rim of some kind around its edges.

Dib studied the walls, and found strange markings on the walls. At first he thought it must be merely upside down writing, but upon further studying it he found it was far more bizarre than any merely upside down alphabet. Either way, they resembled no letters he had ever seen in any language.

Suddenly, Dib noticed something looming on the wall behind his head. After careful study of the images he could see on the wall, Dib gradually came to realize that one was a sketch of an Irken with all its organs exposed, and on a sheet of paper next to it, a blank outline of a human surrounding a question mark. Something similar to a crayon had added a long slash of black resembling his own hair scythe had been added to the human's head.

Grinning wickedly, Zim came into Dib's view, and lifted what appeared to be a scalpel. Dib craned his neck to see better and then saw it wasn't a scalpel at all but some kind of instrument he couldn't even identify.

Zim lowered the instrument until it was touching Dib's skin. Dib lurched with a grunt; in the first second it felt icy, then it felt hot, and finally Dib felt blood trickling across his skin.

"DAD! DAD, HELP!" he screamed desperately, trying in vain to thrash and struggle against his bonds. His mind whirling, Dib could sense something coming up to the door of the room, a big and powerful something. "DAAAAAD!" Dib continued to scream.

In the next second Dib was looking up at the goggled face of his father, and the alien dissection room was far away. His father was rubbing the sweat from Dib's forehead, and chuckling, "Room too hot, son? I'll just open your window! That's how to lower room temperature!"

"Stay with me," Dib murmured, like a small toddler scared of the dark. He reached out to make sure his father's hand was really there, and found it to be real in a way that the fading dissection room no longer was.

Instead of reaching over to open the window, the Professor continued to stroke Dib's forehead. "Why, what is it, son?" he now asked gently.

Dib tried to describe what he had just experienced, but no adequate words came to mind. "Bad," he finally said.

"Why, I believe you had a nightmare, son," said the Professor. "Here's something we can do about that," he continued. "It has been scientifically proven that getting up and moving away from the place of sleep has been shown effective against insomnia. I hypothesize that this same method will also work against a nightmare. Let us try it."

All too willingly Dib got up and began to walk with the Professor as he led his son downstairs toward the living room; he was careful to walk on tiptoe past Gaz's bedroom door.

Once downstairs in the living room, the Professor sat on the couch and Dib immediately cuddled up to him. The Professor reached for the remote and began flicking though the channels. Finding a channel with a science fiction movie on it, the Professor set the remote down and prepared to watch. This time, however, at the first glimpse of an alien, Dib hastily grabbed the remote and began frantically pushing buttons to escape the now too unnerving sight.

"No, no aliens... not now."

To the Professor's amazement, Dib found a channel with a good safe black and white Western on it, one with no chance of aliens popping up to jolt him back to that terror-ridden scene he had escaped from.

The Professor looked down in relief at the now dozing Dib. My dear son, he thought. Finally you aren't insane any more. If you are now actually refusing to watch aliens on TV, that must mean that you are over your insanity! I must find some way to reward you.

The Professor thought and thought. This was the way he had dreamed of finding Dib acting. For once he had actually turned away from those aliens he never stopped talking about. The Professor searched his mind for how best to reward Dib. He looked up the stairs toward Gaz's room, and realized that he hadn't been home before midnight for... how long now? It was only that night that he had found and unwrapped the "World's Greatest Dad" coffee mug Dib had given him the previous Christmas. A pang tugged at his throat.

It is only when I see you acting like a baby that I realize how fast you are growing up. And you are growing up all on your own.

I have it! Every scientific paper I ever read on the subject tells me a boy needs a father. I have to find a way to be at home more...

As the cowboys galloped toward the pass to head off the rustlers, and as Dib slept peacefully, the Professor stroked his chin and thought.

The End

(A/N) Now Dib has officially received everything he asked for in "Dib's Christmas List."

It's been a while, but I'm finally back on track. Much is to come, and most if not all my stories from now on, with the exception of the Karma Circles, will be interconnected once again.