Sublime Awakenings
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Category:
Comics › Squee!
Rating:
Adult +
Chapters:
57
Views:
2,198
Reviews:
1
Recommended:
0
Currently Reading:
0
Disclaimer:
I do not own Squee!, JTHM, or Invader Zim, nor any of the characters from these works. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.
Sublime Awakenings: Chapter 48
Sublime Awakenings: Chapter 48
Todd took a deep breath, looking down at the floor to allow himself a small break from his new surroundings, though it did nothing to stop the hideous mix of clashing songs that barreled from different stores to strike his ears all at once. It was only late September, and already there were Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas decorations and musics everywhere in the Mall! Many stores had all of the colors for the “upcoming” holidays out at once, resulting in an unbecoming assault to his eyes. He had read once that the holiday season, otherwise known as the shopping season, had been starting earlier and earlier ever since it had been commercialized.
“So, Zim, where are we getting you clothes from?” Letta dug around in her purse to find her dad's credit card.
“Ehh...somewhere with lots of reds and blacks. And boots. And rubber. Lots and lots of rubber. Rubber in the form of PANTS!” Even after he had started wearing more Earth-based designs, they had still been supplied by his computer. He knew that he would find nothing as suitable as Irken manufactured fabrics on this pitiful planet, but there had to be something better than the ratty, moth-eaten scraps that he had collected from the Sqeaky-child's mother's closet.
Dib rolled his eyes at the same old choice in uniform as well as the insane comment at the end that reminded him of a mooching demon he had been had by years before. “Trendy Subject, then?”
“No, not the Trendy Subject,” Squee sulked.
“We don't have to get it all from one place.” The blond shook her head, then smirked. “Besides, you just don't wanna go there cause you don't wanna see your boss next door.”
“So? What's wrong with that? And it's more that I don't want Rob to see me. He'll tell me to start coming back to work.”
Letta laughed before mocking his tone with the same question. “What's wrong with that? You do work there.”
“Yeah, but...I just don't want to yet.” Technically, with the money he would be getting soon, he could probably quit, but he wasn't sure yet. Part of the reason he had taken the job was because Brian had said it would help him with social interaction and self-assertion, things that he generally disliked and tended to avoid, but admittedly probably needed.
“Todd, you need to just suck it up already. You're going to have to rejoin the world again eventually.”
“I know...I'd just...rather not rush it. I'm already going back to skool, and it's really weird. People won't leave me alone.”
“Well don't wait too long or you might end up like my boss's friend. She dated some wacky freak that tried to kill her, and after that she locked herself up in her apartment for months. Then she really went off the deep end, too much time alone, she started imaging things...insane things.”
Dib rolled his eyes at the all-too-familiar phrase. “How do you know she was imagining them?”
“Uh, because they were insane? Her paintings started coming to life and crawling off the canvas. Even you can't twist that into some kind of sense.”
“I disagree.” He smirked. “In fact, I can already think of several possible- ”
“Stop!” Letta threw up her hands as if she could literally toss away the topic. “I don't want to hear it, Dib, and Todd doesn't need to hear it...and you don't even need to be thinking it...whatever it is.”
“Fine then! Go ahead and just pretend that the Earth is flat and unchanging. One day you'll see.” One day they would all see! And then they'd be sorry!
“So what happened to her?” Todd asked.
“My boss's friend? Oh, she got over it eventually. Tenna says she gets out a lot more now. She doesn't date much, but who could blame her? She still goes to therapy at times, and just recently she started running one of the group sessions at the D.H.M.I. If you hadn't been in the children's ward, you probably would have met her.”
“Oh. Well, that's not so bad.”
“Not now it isn't, but the important part is that she went through hell to get to where she is now. It started with a traumatic event, but spiraled out of control because she let the fear take over her life.”
“No, I get that. But I'm not afraid anymore. I just don't like all the attention because of what happened at the skool.”
When they finally made it to the Trendy Subject, Todd was pleased that Rob wasn't over visiting the manager, Anne Gwish, as he occasionally did in hopes of getting a date. What he usually ended up with instead was a job babysitting Anne's nieces, Hoara and Terra Bull, which he would, of course, carelessly thrust upon his own workers in addition to their paid duties. He shuddered at the thought of the high-stung twin girls and their relentless need to watch My Tiny Horses on all of the display TVs in the store.
Luckily, they didn't seem to be accompanying their aunt, whom he could make out through a window in the back room smoking, against mall regulations, and talking inanely on the company phone, today. Marvin, dark-skinned teenage boy with a closely cropped mohawk and a face full of piercings, restocked merchandise while a girl whose name tag read “Thelema” looked up at them to pop a bubble with her chewing gum from where she leaned against one of the four display cases that surrounded the checkout counter that she was obviously in charge of.
The bored expression melted from Thelema's face like a cheep wax mask when her eyes landed on Zim and his ridiculous getup, and Todd hoped that would be enough to distract her from recognizing him despite his sunglasses and new hair cut.
“Hey, Dib! Dib, come here!” Thelema reversed her position, leaning forward instead of backward against the display case closest the group of new customers.
Groaning, Dib jerked himself away from Zim, taking as much pleasure as he could in the way that the ex-invader stumbled in the high heels when his support was removed to make up for the fact that he was going to have to talk to the annoying pseudo goth before him. She was the type of person that Gaz would refer to as a 'lame ass poser'. “Yeah?”
“Who's that...that person there?” She pointed a wiggling finger with an inverted pentagram in white out on top of a black painted nail at Zim.
Dib took a deep breath, not sure if he wanted to waste the time it would take to impart the entirety of the answer to someone whom he was already sure wouldn't believe it. Over the years that kind of thing had become tiresome, especially when said person lacked the power, inclination and basic reasoning skills to do anything about it anyway. “That's Squee's mom. You know, the woman that got kidnapped by Miss Bitters, then lived as a hobo with amnesia until my father found her.”
“Oh!” Her eyes widened further. “Why is she wearing that hideous pink tutu? I mean, those sparkles, those boots, they're bad enough...and they totally don't match the hair, but if you're going to wear bright pink, you need to wear it on solid black!”
Dib just stared at her, somewhere in the back of his mind noticing that she was wearing a pink cage skirt over a very short black one. It was really a waste of material, and thus resources, since it didn't actually function as clothing at all. It didn't really match all of the many colors in her hair either, but that was no surprise. After working one store over from her for nearly a year now, he was well versed in her hypocrisy.
She huffed when she received no response, leaning to the side to see that the sparkley woman had set off to rummage through the pants on the right side of the store. Marvin had already moved from the back to help her, which meant that it wouldn't be long before she was hurried out of the store with her purchases. The Trendy Subject had an image to maintain after all! “Hey, Squee!”
Shit! He'd been spotted! Todd started from his position of leaning against the wall near the entrance, attempting to latch on to Letta's arm. but she only laughed and used the contact to push him closer to the counter. “Umm, hi, Thelema.”
“Is your mother stuck in a time warp or what?”
Repressing an ever-present urge to state simply that Zim wasn't his mother, Todd looked over his shoulder at the crazed alien who was currently throwing item after item into Marvin's arms, and now Dib's as well, ranting about the stores severe lack of rubber pants. He sighed, knowing that he should have expected this kind of thing. At least Letta hadn't chimed in with something about transsexual aliens at the 'time warp' comment...which actually would have been ridiculously appropriate in this instance. “Or what.”
“What?”
“Yeah, I guess she is.” With Zim it was more like a 'mind warp', but whatever.
“I'm glad that you found her and all, but that must be like so embarrassing! And she makes you go out in public with her too...and like that?” She looked him up and down, taking in blue jeans and a simple green tee-shirt, then giving him a sympathetic look. “Parents can be so oppressive, can't they? Always judging you because of the way that you dress, always trying to get you to be a carbon copy of them.”
“Uh, yeah, I guess.” He really didn't know, at least not from personal experience, since his own parents had only ever wanted to forget that he existed. “Except I usually dress like this outside of work.” He smiled at her look of surprise, hoping that would be the end of the conversation...or maybe even any future conversations that she might have otherwise initiated.
Thelema grabbed at the material of his shirt to pull him closer, lowering her voice so that none of the others could hear. “Is it because they'll send you back to the crazy house? It is, isn't it!”
“Not really.” Annoyed, Todd sighed. He could tell by the awed, squeaky tone that her voice took on near the end that the idea excited her, which reinforced the feeling that he had gotten from her since they had met. She had only ever been motivated to stalk him during her breaks because being crazy placed him on the far edge of social 'conformity', making him a potentially appealing accessory for some one like herself to prove how nonconformist she was...but only if he was willing to conform to goth social rules, which seemed to involve dressing in expensive, name-brand black and complaining a lot.
“Come on, you can tell me.” She tried to make her smile look genuine because the flirtatious one that she had been throwing at him for weeks didn't seem to be working to her advantage. “I know what it's like to face down the establishment. Just last week someone pulled the Baphomet stickers off my bumper, right? And I knew it was that fat, fundy bitch that runs the Christian store down the hall because my eight ball confirmed it, so I put a curse on her.”
“O-kay.” That was...special.
“I'm the Grand High Exalted Priestess of the The First Evil Church of Satanic Divinity, so I got on line with all the other members-we don't have a physical church yet-and we cursed her car.” When he didn't look very impressed, she added, “It was a really evil curse. And now the paint is starting to chip, and that shows just how powerful we've become!”
“Yeah.” Todd nodded along, all the while wishing that he could make up an excuse to make her stop talking, that Letta would let him get away with waiting in the book store across the hall. It was bad enough that he had to listen, or pretend to listen, to her go on about whatever new 'dark' fade she was currently a master of when he was at work, but now-now not only was he not getting paid, but he knew that Pepito was hearing all of this because her voice had been rising steadily.
“So if you give me the names of the people oppressing you and making you wear those conformist clothes, I can take care of them for you.” She winked at him.
“Uh, no. That's-”
Pepito tossed a couple of shirts onto the counter, purposefully interrupting the conversation with a sarcastic smile. “Oh, really? Could you make them add too much bleach to the wash so the colors of their 'conformist' clothes run together?”
After giving him a quick once over, Thelema instantly knew that the darker boy was one of those wannabes that shopped at the Trendy Subject only to mix its merchandise with conformist clothes from other styles to the obscene point where you couldn't even tell what clique he belonged to! It was like he wanted to belong to them all, which basically just made him a sell-out to them all. She gave him a snoody look. “I bet your colors run anyway.”
“What the hell does that even mean?”
“It means that you probably don't know how to separate them for the wash; you can't even do it for your wardrobe. Just look at you. It's like you trying to be goth, but you don't wanna be kicked outta the Country Club.”
“Goth? I don't want be goth. Besides, goth is just about aesthetic tastes, fashion. There's no underlying philosophy that I'm betraying by mixing things together.” Actually, his own tastes, which she had sadly mislabeled, ran much more strongly toward punk, which did have underlying philosophical trends...but that wasn't the point. “And weren't you just talking about being oppressed for the way you dress?”
“Uh, yeah. By normal pretenders like you who clearly don't get how deep it goes.” She slid the shirts over the checkout sensor and dropped them into a bag so that the price would show on the digital readout. “Why are you here with Squee anyway? Don't you sit at one of the popular tables at lunch?”
Pepito gripped his debit card harder than he meant to as he slid it through the machine to pay for his items. It wasn't even funny how much he hated idiots like this. It was even worse when they belonged to alternative or minority subcultures and did the same things that they complained about to others. “Squee and I have been friends since elementary skool, so I'm going to go out on a limb here are guess that I know him fairly better than you.” She probably didn't even know his real name, not that he was about to tell her.
“You go ahead and think that, but you're still just a mundane.” She handed over the receipt as soon as it was printed, waving her hand at the boy in a 'get lost' motion before turning back to Squee. “So, Squee, like I was saying, my coven meets at this night club called The Underground, and if you wanted to go with me sometime, like this weekend, we could talk about putting a curse on anyone that bothers you.” She looked directly at Squee's 'friend', lowering her voice once more. “We could probably make his lunch table legs uneven!”
Todd raised an eyebrow at the purported 'evil curse', nearly laughing when he looked back at Pepito's expression. He was almost tempted to agree to meeting her there just to get a further rise out of him. “Sorry, Thelema, I'm going to be really busy. I have a whole lot of skool work to catch up on from all those absent days.”
Her smile faltered for a second. “Oh. But I can take care of that too! My magic has gotten a lot stronger ever since I learned the ultimate secret knowledge behind all ancient occult mysteries from the Necromonicon and the Nine Gates of the Kingdom of Shadows. I can use it to get rid of all your homework, or even let you see it yourself...for a small, nonrefundable fee, of course.”
Todd felt his left eye twitch. “No, thanks.” He'd already read those books anyway, or rather the fictional stories to which they belonged, but had experienced no reprieve in homework since then. He felt relieved when Pepito's hand wrapped around his upper arm to pull him away.
“Come on, Amigo, let's wait outside, shall we?”
Thelema launched into action, grabbing Squee's other arm herself, and shotting the other boy a scowl. “Wait, Squeee,” she whined. Digging into to large black bag with her free hand, she pushed aside a Sunset novel and an unread, but much brandished Satanic Bible to pull out a small note pad with a skull and a pink bow on the front. “Let me just write down some contact info.”
“Alright.” Todd agreed easily because he knew this type of placation was a quick escape. He didn't mention that she had already given him her information twice before, with no results.
“Okay. That first one is my email and the other is the The First Evil Church of Satanic Divinity's egroup.”
“Okay. See ya around.” He let Pepito drag him out of the store, even though Letta was staring them down from the position she and Leon maintained at the doorway. She seemed to get over it when they only went as far as the bench in the middle of the hall.
Pepito fell onto the bench dramatically with an emphasized huff, letting his bag slump on the floor beside it.
“Not happy?” Todd sent him an amused smile as he took the set beside him.
“No, I feel very slightly ill. It must be one of her all-powerful curses.”
He laughed. “Maybe. She didn't seem to like you very much, did she? When you think about it, it's kind of ironic.
“It's not ironic, Todd, because she is not a Satanist.”
“Ummm...she seems to think so.”
“Well, she thinks wrong...so very, very wrong.”
“So what, you get to decide who is and isn't a Satanist according to your own criteria?”
“Of course I do. And in any case, that was just a lot of empty posturing.”
Todd bit his lip to stop himself from laughing again as he looked at the skull-print note paper in what he hoped appeared to be a thoughtful manner. “So you think that I shouldn't join this egroup?” The look he received was flat and perfect.
“Amigo...may I see that?”
“Why, Pepi?” His voice suddenly grew more serious. “You're not going to kill her or anything, right? Because I was just having a laugh and...and you looked so funny.”
“No, she's too stupid to waste good energy on.” He quickly made a grab for the paper, taking out his cell phone to get on line when Todd gave no opposition. He held the cell out so Todd could also look at the screen. “Oh, look, you have to be approved to post on their board. And they have a link where they sell black market Church supplies that they steal in the name of Satan. And they will ritually desecrate the item for you for only six dollars and sixty-six cents more.”
“Oh, that's a good deal, right?” Todd laughed again when Pepito punched him in the arm. “Sorry, sorry. Should this, heh, not be funny to me?” He cleared his throat. “Because if it's offensive, I-”
“Todd, it's-oh, isn't that that girl that works with you?” He nodded toward an auburn-haired girl with light brown skin that seemed to be headed in their direction at a very fast speed that made her chest bounce. When she arrived to stand in front of them with a newspaper only a few seconds later, he assumed that he had been correct.
“Squee!” Vayoween only managed his name before she was out of breath from the run over. It wouldn't have been so bad if she had spotted him from Rob's instead of the Paranormal Store down the hall where she had been in the process of reading a small monthly paper, which she now held out in front of his face to make up for her lack of words. “Look...at...this.”
“The Paranormal Digest?” Pushing his sunglasses up into his hair, Todd took it from her hands to read the story on the front page. The large print at the very top, which immediately caught his attention, read, 'More To Skool Burning Than Meets The Eye'. Just below that was a subtitle of the article: 'Skool Burns As Overzealous Book Club Bleeds It Out To Stave Off Coming Invasion!' “Holy shit.” He scanned the rest of the article, all the while feeling the muscles in his stomach wind themselves into a tense, angry knot.
Pepito read what he could of the article over Todd's shoulder, this time laughing himself. “Come on, Todd, publications like this always publish outrageous lies and exaggerations. Everyone knows that.”
Looking up at Dib as he made his way over from the Trendy Subject, Todd narrowed his eyes. “Yeah, everyone except Dib.”
“What except Dib?” The paranormalist smiled extra big, using the most agreeable voice that he had when under stress, the one that he usually saved for when he had done something to incur his sister's wrath.
Todd held up the newspaper, waving it in the air like a flag for emphasis before bringing it back down to look at a certain section. “Listen to this. 'According to long time informant, Agent Mothman, and another anonymous witness, the fire that demolished the building was much too hot to have its origins in anything Earth-based. Authorities, as always, are keeping what little they know under tight wraps, but our sources have suggested that the fire, perhaps better described as an explosion, was an attempt by an aggressive alien species to stop a ritual of blood sacrifice via a large number of paper cuts being offered up by an underground book-love group that had learned from their Astral Masters of the extraterritorials' diabolical plan to enslave mankind!'” His voice rose progressively toward the end with the ridiculous nature of the claims, and then all he could do was glare at Dib for a long moment.
“Ohhh...that. Yes, well...you see...” Dib gave up. “I'm sorry, Squee. I didn't know they were going to add so much. I don't even know where that book-love stuff came from!”
“I have a pretty good idea.” Todd glanced over at the Trendy Subject, where Letta was currently trying to help Zim check out. She waved to him, and he didn't return it. He thought about sending her a different signal.
“You have to understand, though!” Dib picked back up, “I had to tell the world what's happened. It's a matter of global security! And it's probably not over!”
“Yeah, Dib, only no one believes you, and now there's a really stupid story with my photo on the front cover! As if I don't already get enough ludicrous questions about what happened!”
“Take it easy there, Amigo. It was pretty stupid, but at least no one really reads it, right?
“Even if they don't, now we really can't prove it if we need to because there's always going to be this...this trash! A simple background search is going to pull up that story, and no one will take us seriously. It's basic psychology. If you've got something to hide, make sure the public gets something related, but bigger and completely outlandish that no sane person would believe. Then whenever anyone brings up the real issue, people won't listen because it's already buried in crazy!”
“But, Squee, what I told them was the real story! And that would have happened anyway! It always happens with the paranormal because of religious nuts and people like Bill!”
“Whatever, Dib!” Todd stood up, shoving the paper into Dib's arms. “You still should have asked me.”
“Oh, come on! You weren't talking to anyone!” Dib called after Squee's retreating form, folding the paper under his arms that were now covering his chest in an indignant stance. He looked back and forth helplessly between Vayoween and Pepito.
“Sorry, Dib.” Vayoween padded his shoulder, still cringing a little from the unexpected argument. “I've got to get back to work.”
Pepito angled a thumb over his shoulder. “I should probably go after him. Then we'll get some lunch, and by then he should be calmed down.” He stood to leave before Dib could reply.
End CH!
Notes:
--Thelema: is a philosophy or religion[1] based on the dictum, "Do what thou Wilt" as presented in Aleister Crowley's Book of the Law: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thelema
--The character Thelema (who named herself after the religion) is a parody OC based on "101 rules of Satanism", which is Satanic religious satire. Thanks go out to :iconDesdemonaKakalose: for helping me design her! I didn't really get to do all I wanted to with her in that short time period, but she may make a second appearance in ch 20, so further help from anyone else is welcome.
-The journal for helping out with Thelema's design and/or reading the "101 rules of Satanism" can be found here: http://kailean.deviantart.com/journal/22895418/
--Those fictional books:
-”The Necronomicon is a fictional book appearing in the stories by horror novelist H. P. Lovecraft. It was first mentioned in Lovecraft's 1924 short story "The Hound",[1] written in 1922, though its purported author, the "Mad Arab" Abdul Alhazred, had been quoted a year earlier in Lovecraft's "The Nameless City".[2] Among other things, the work contains an account of the Old Ones, their history, and the means for summoning them.
“Other authors such as August Derleth and Clark Ashton Smith also cited it in their works; Lovecraft approved, believing such common allusions built up "a background of evil verisimilitude." Many readers have believed it to be a real work, with booksellers and librarians receiving many requests for it; pranksters have listed it in rare book catalogues, and a student smuggled a card for it into the Yale University Library's card catalog.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Necronomicon
-“The Ninth Gate is a 1999 film based on the novel The Club Dumas by Arturo Pérez-Reverte. Spanning several genres, The Ninth Gate is a mix of mystery, horror thriller, and neo-noir, and additionally portrays facets of the rare book business. The film was co-written and directed by Roman Polanski, and stars Johnny Depp as Dean Corso, a rare-book dealer hired by a book collector (Frank Langella) to validate a copy of The Nine Gates of the Kingdom of Shadows, a book by 17th century author Aristide Torchia.
“The Nine Gates of the Kingdom of Shadows, a book by 17th century author Aristide Torchia, one of only three surviving copies, now in Balkan's possession. The book contains nine engravings which, when correctly deciphered and the interpretations properly spoken, are alleged to raise the Devil.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ninth_Gate
Todd took a deep breath, looking down at the floor to allow himself a small break from his new surroundings, though it did nothing to stop the hideous mix of clashing songs that barreled from different stores to strike his ears all at once. It was only late September, and already there were Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas decorations and musics everywhere in the Mall! Many stores had all of the colors for the “upcoming” holidays out at once, resulting in an unbecoming assault to his eyes. He had read once that the holiday season, otherwise known as the shopping season, had been starting earlier and earlier ever since it had been commercialized.
“So, Zim, where are we getting you clothes from?” Letta dug around in her purse to find her dad's credit card.
“Ehh...somewhere with lots of reds and blacks. And boots. And rubber. Lots and lots of rubber. Rubber in the form of PANTS!” Even after he had started wearing more Earth-based designs, they had still been supplied by his computer. He knew that he would find nothing as suitable as Irken manufactured fabrics on this pitiful planet, but there had to be something better than the ratty, moth-eaten scraps that he had collected from the Sqeaky-child's mother's closet.
Dib rolled his eyes at the same old choice in uniform as well as the insane comment at the end that reminded him of a mooching demon he had been had by years before. “Trendy Subject, then?”
“No, not the Trendy Subject,” Squee sulked.
“We don't have to get it all from one place.” The blond shook her head, then smirked. “Besides, you just don't wanna go there cause you don't wanna see your boss next door.”
“So? What's wrong with that? And it's more that I don't want Rob to see me. He'll tell me to start coming back to work.”
Letta laughed before mocking his tone with the same question. “What's wrong with that? You do work there.”
“Yeah, but...I just don't want to yet.” Technically, with the money he would be getting soon, he could probably quit, but he wasn't sure yet. Part of the reason he had taken the job was because Brian had said it would help him with social interaction and self-assertion, things that he generally disliked and tended to avoid, but admittedly probably needed.
“Todd, you need to just suck it up already. You're going to have to rejoin the world again eventually.”
“I know...I'd just...rather not rush it. I'm already going back to skool, and it's really weird. People won't leave me alone.”
“Well don't wait too long or you might end up like my boss's friend. She dated some wacky freak that tried to kill her, and after that she locked herself up in her apartment for months. Then she really went off the deep end, too much time alone, she started imaging things...insane things.”
Dib rolled his eyes at the all-too-familiar phrase. “How do you know she was imagining them?”
“Uh, because they were insane? Her paintings started coming to life and crawling off the canvas. Even you can't twist that into some kind of sense.”
“I disagree.” He smirked. “In fact, I can already think of several possible- ”
“Stop!” Letta threw up her hands as if she could literally toss away the topic. “I don't want to hear it, Dib, and Todd doesn't need to hear it...and you don't even need to be thinking it...whatever it is.”
“Fine then! Go ahead and just pretend that the Earth is flat and unchanging. One day you'll see.” One day they would all see! And then they'd be sorry!
“So what happened to her?” Todd asked.
“My boss's friend? Oh, she got over it eventually. Tenna says she gets out a lot more now. She doesn't date much, but who could blame her? She still goes to therapy at times, and just recently she started running one of the group sessions at the D.H.M.I. If you hadn't been in the children's ward, you probably would have met her.”
“Oh. Well, that's not so bad.”
“Not now it isn't, but the important part is that she went through hell to get to where she is now. It started with a traumatic event, but spiraled out of control because she let the fear take over her life.”
“No, I get that. But I'm not afraid anymore. I just don't like all the attention because of what happened at the skool.”
When they finally made it to the Trendy Subject, Todd was pleased that Rob wasn't over visiting the manager, Anne Gwish, as he occasionally did in hopes of getting a date. What he usually ended up with instead was a job babysitting Anne's nieces, Hoara and Terra Bull, which he would, of course, carelessly thrust upon his own workers in addition to their paid duties. He shuddered at the thought of the high-stung twin girls and their relentless need to watch My Tiny Horses on all of the display TVs in the store.
Luckily, they didn't seem to be accompanying their aunt, whom he could make out through a window in the back room smoking, against mall regulations, and talking inanely on the company phone, today. Marvin, dark-skinned teenage boy with a closely cropped mohawk and a face full of piercings, restocked merchandise while a girl whose name tag read “Thelema” looked up at them to pop a bubble with her chewing gum from where she leaned against one of the four display cases that surrounded the checkout counter that she was obviously in charge of.
The bored expression melted from Thelema's face like a cheep wax mask when her eyes landed on Zim and his ridiculous getup, and Todd hoped that would be enough to distract her from recognizing him despite his sunglasses and new hair cut.
“Hey, Dib! Dib, come here!” Thelema reversed her position, leaning forward instead of backward against the display case closest the group of new customers.
Groaning, Dib jerked himself away from Zim, taking as much pleasure as he could in the way that the ex-invader stumbled in the high heels when his support was removed to make up for the fact that he was going to have to talk to the annoying pseudo goth before him. She was the type of person that Gaz would refer to as a 'lame ass poser'. “Yeah?”
“Who's that...that person there?” She pointed a wiggling finger with an inverted pentagram in white out on top of a black painted nail at Zim.
Dib took a deep breath, not sure if he wanted to waste the time it would take to impart the entirety of the answer to someone whom he was already sure wouldn't believe it. Over the years that kind of thing had become tiresome, especially when said person lacked the power, inclination and basic reasoning skills to do anything about it anyway. “That's Squee's mom. You know, the woman that got kidnapped by Miss Bitters, then lived as a hobo with amnesia until my father found her.”
“Oh!” Her eyes widened further. “Why is she wearing that hideous pink tutu? I mean, those sparkles, those boots, they're bad enough...and they totally don't match the hair, but if you're going to wear bright pink, you need to wear it on solid black!”
Dib just stared at her, somewhere in the back of his mind noticing that she was wearing a pink cage skirt over a very short black one. It was really a waste of material, and thus resources, since it didn't actually function as clothing at all. It didn't really match all of the many colors in her hair either, but that was no surprise. After working one store over from her for nearly a year now, he was well versed in her hypocrisy.
She huffed when she received no response, leaning to the side to see that the sparkley woman had set off to rummage through the pants on the right side of the store. Marvin had already moved from the back to help her, which meant that it wouldn't be long before she was hurried out of the store with her purchases. The Trendy Subject had an image to maintain after all! “Hey, Squee!”
Shit! He'd been spotted! Todd started from his position of leaning against the wall near the entrance, attempting to latch on to Letta's arm. but she only laughed and used the contact to push him closer to the counter. “Umm, hi, Thelema.”
“Is your mother stuck in a time warp or what?”
Repressing an ever-present urge to state simply that Zim wasn't his mother, Todd looked over his shoulder at the crazed alien who was currently throwing item after item into Marvin's arms, and now Dib's as well, ranting about the stores severe lack of rubber pants. He sighed, knowing that he should have expected this kind of thing. At least Letta hadn't chimed in with something about transsexual aliens at the 'time warp' comment...which actually would have been ridiculously appropriate in this instance. “Or what.”
“What?”
“Yeah, I guess she is.” With Zim it was more like a 'mind warp', but whatever.
“I'm glad that you found her and all, but that must be like so embarrassing! And she makes you go out in public with her too...and like that?” She looked him up and down, taking in blue jeans and a simple green tee-shirt, then giving him a sympathetic look. “Parents can be so oppressive, can't they? Always judging you because of the way that you dress, always trying to get you to be a carbon copy of them.”
“Uh, yeah, I guess.” He really didn't know, at least not from personal experience, since his own parents had only ever wanted to forget that he existed. “Except I usually dress like this outside of work.” He smiled at her look of surprise, hoping that would be the end of the conversation...or maybe even any future conversations that she might have otherwise initiated.
Thelema grabbed at the material of his shirt to pull him closer, lowering her voice so that none of the others could hear. “Is it because they'll send you back to the crazy house? It is, isn't it!”
“Not really.” Annoyed, Todd sighed. He could tell by the awed, squeaky tone that her voice took on near the end that the idea excited her, which reinforced the feeling that he had gotten from her since they had met. She had only ever been motivated to stalk him during her breaks because being crazy placed him on the far edge of social 'conformity', making him a potentially appealing accessory for some one like herself to prove how nonconformist she was...but only if he was willing to conform to goth social rules, which seemed to involve dressing in expensive, name-brand black and complaining a lot.
“Come on, you can tell me.” She tried to make her smile look genuine because the flirtatious one that she had been throwing at him for weeks didn't seem to be working to her advantage. “I know what it's like to face down the establishment. Just last week someone pulled the Baphomet stickers off my bumper, right? And I knew it was that fat, fundy bitch that runs the Christian store down the hall because my eight ball confirmed it, so I put a curse on her.”
“O-kay.” That was...special.
“I'm the Grand High Exalted Priestess of the The First Evil Church of Satanic Divinity, so I got on line with all the other members-we don't have a physical church yet-and we cursed her car.” When he didn't look very impressed, she added, “It was a really evil curse. And now the paint is starting to chip, and that shows just how powerful we've become!”
“Yeah.” Todd nodded along, all the while wishing that he could make up an excuse to make her stop talking, that Letta would let him get away with waiting in the book store across the hall. It was bad enough that he had to listen, or pretend to listen, to her go on about whatever new 'dark' fade she was currently a master of when he was at work, but now-now not only was he not getting paid, but he knew that Pepito was hearing all of this because her voice had been rising steadily.
“So if you give me the names of the people oppressing you and making you wear those conformist clothes, I can take care of them for you.” She winked at him.
“Uh, no. That's-”
Pepito tossed a couple of shirts onto the counter, purposefully interrupting the conversation with a sarcastic smile. “Oh, really? Could you make them add too much bleach to the wash so the colors of their 'conformist' clothes run together?”
After giving him a quick once over, Thelema instantly knew that the darker boy was one of those wannabes that shopped at the Trendy Subject only to mix its merchandise with conformist clothes from other styles to the obscene point where you couldn't even tell what clique he belonged to! It was like he wanted to belong to them all, which basically just made him a sell-out to them all. She gave him a snoody look. “I bet your colors run anyway.”
“What the hell does that even mean?”
“It means that you probably don't know how to separate them for the wash; you can't even do it for your wardrobe. Just look at you. It's like you trying to be goth, but you don't wanna be kicked outta the Country Club.”
“Goth? I don't want be goth. Besides, goth is just about aesthetic tastes, fashion. There's no underlying philosophy that I'm betraying by mixing things together.” Actually, his own tastes, which she had sadly mislabeled, ran much more strongly toward punk, which did have underlying philosophical trends...but that wasn't the point. “And weren't you just talking about being oppressed for the way you dress?”
“Uh, yeah. By normal pretenders like you who clearly don't get how deep it goes.” She slid the shirts over the checkout sensor and dropped them into a bag so that the price would show on the digital readout. “Why are you here with Squee anyway? Don't you sit at one of the popular tables at lunch?”
Pepito gripped his debit card harder than he meant to as he slid it through the machine to pay for his items. It wasn't even funny how much he hated idiots like this. It was even worse when they belonged to alternative or minority subcultures and did the same things that they complained about to others. “Squee and I have been friends since elementary skool, so I'm going to go out on a limb here are guess that I know him fairly better than you.” She probably didn't even know his real name, not that he was about to tell her.
“You go ahead and think that, but you're still just a mundane.” She handed over the receipt as soon as it was printed, waving her hand at the boy in a 'get lost' motion before turning back to Squee. “So, Squee, like I was saying, my coven meets at this night club called The Underground, and if you wanted to go with me sometime, like this weekend, we could talk about putting a curse on anyone that bothers you.” She looked directly at Squee's 'friend', lowering her voice once more. “We could probably make his lunch table legs uneven!”
Todd raised an eyebrow at the purported 'evil curse', nearly laughing when he looked back at Pepito's expression. He was almost tempted to agree to meeting her there just to get a further rise out of him. “Sorry, Thelema, I'm going to be really busy. I have a whole lot of skool work to catch up on from all those absent days.”
Her smile faltered for a second. “Oh. But I can take care of that too! My magic has gotten a lot stronger ever since I learned the ultimate secret knowledge behind all ancient occult mysteries from the Necromonicon and the Nine Gates of the Kingdom of Shadows. I can use it to get rid of all your homework, or even let you see it yourself...for a small, nonrefundable fee, of course.”
Todd felt his left eye twitch. “No, thanks.” He'd already read those books anyway, or rather the fictional stories to which they belonged, but had experienced no reprieve in homework since then. He felt relieved when Pepito's hand wrapped around his upper arm to pull him away.
“Come on, Amigo, let's wait outside, shall we?”
Thelema launched into action, grabbing Squee's other arm herself, and shotting the other boy a scowl. “Wait, Squeee,” she whined. Digging into to large black bag with her free hand, she pushed aside a Sunset novel and an unread, but much brandished Satanic Bible to pull out a small note pad with a skull and a pink bow on the front. “Let me just write down some contact info.”
“Alright.” Todd agreed easily because he knew this type of placation was a quick escape. He didn't mention that she had already given him her information twice before, with no results.
“Okay. That first one is my email and the other is the The First Evil Church of Satanic Divinity's egroup.”
“Okay. See ya around.” He let Pepito drag him out of the store, even though Letta was staring them down from the position she and Leon maintained at the doorway. She seemed to get over it when they only went as far as the bench in the middle of the hall.
Pepito fell onto the bench dramatically with an emphasized huff, letting his bag slump on the floor beside it.
“Not happy?” Todd sent him an amused smile as he took the set beside him.
“No, I feel very slightly ill. It must be one of her all-powerful curses.”
He laughed. “Maybe. She didn't seem to like you very much, did she? When you think about it, it's kind of ironic.
“It's not ironic, Todd, because she is not a Satanist.”
“Ummm...she seems to think so.”
“Well, she thinks wrong...so very, very wrong.”
“So what, you get to decide who is and isn't a Satanist according to your own criteria?”
“Of course I do. And in any case, that was just a lot of empty posturing.”
Todd bit his lip to stop himself from laughing again as he looked at the skull-print note paper in what he hoped appeared to be a thoughtful manner. “So you think that I shouldn't join this egroup?” The look he received was flat and perfect.
“Amigo...may I see that?”
“Why, Pepi?” His voice suddenly grew more serious. “You're not going to kill her or anything, right? Because I was just having a laugh and...and you looked so funny.”
“No, she's too stupid to waste good energy on.” He quickly made a grab for the paper, taking out his cell phone to get on line when Todd gave no opposition. He held the cell out so Todd could also look at the screen. “Oh, look, you have to be approved to post on their board. And they have a link where they sell black market Church supplies that they steal in the name of Satan. And they will ritually desecrate the item for you for only six dollars and sixty-six cents more.”
“Oh, that's a good deal, right?” Todd laughed again when Pepito punched him in the arm. “Sorry, sorry. Should this, heh, not be funny to me?” He cleared his throat. “Because if it's offensive, I-”
“Todd, it's-oh, isn't that that girl that works with you?” He nodded toward an auburn-haired girl with light brown skin that seemed to be headed in their direction at a very fast speed that made her chest bounce. When she arrived to stand in front of them with a newspaper only a few seconds later, he assumed that he had been correct.
“Squee!” Vayoween only managed his name before she was out of breath from the run over. It wouldn't have been so bad if she had spotted him from Rob's instead of the Paranormal Store down the hall where she had been in the process of reading a small monthly paper, which she now held out in front of his face to make up for her lack of words. “Look...at...this.”
“The Paranormal Digest?” Pushing his sunglasses up into his hair, Todd took it from her hands to read the story on the front page. The large print at the very top, which immediately caught his attention, read, 'More To Skool Burning Than Meets The Eye'. Just below that was a subtitle of the article: 'Skool Burns As Overzealous Book Club Bleeds It Out To Stave Off Coming Invasion!' “Holy shit.” He scanned the rest of the article, all the while feeling the muscles in his stomach wind themselves into a tense, angry knot.
Pepito read what he could of the article over Todd's shoulder, this time laughing himself. “Come on, Todd, publications like this always publish outrageous lies and exaggerations. Everyone knows that.”
Looking up at Dib as he made his way over from the Trendy Subject, Todd narrowed his eyes. “Yeah, everyone except Dib.”
“What except Dib?” The paranormalist smiled extra big, using the most agreeable voice that he had when under stress, the one that he usually saved for when he had done something to incur his sister's wrath.
Todd held up the newspaper, waving it in the air like a flag for emphasis before bringing it back down to look at a certain section. “Listen to this. 'According to long time informant, Agent Mothman, and another anonymous witness, the fire that demolished the building was much too hot to have its origins in anything Earth-based. Authorities, as always, are keeping what little they know under tight wraps, but our sources have suggested that the fire, perhaps better described as an explosion, was an attempt by an aggressive alien species to stop a ritual of blood sacrifice via a large number of paper cuts being offered up by an underground book-love group that had learned from their Astral Masters of the extraterritorials' diabolical plan to enslave mankind!'” His voice rose progressively toward the end with the ridiculous nature of the claims, and then all he could do was glare at Dib for a long moment.
“Ohhh...that. Yes, well...you see...” Dib gave up. “I'm sorry, Squee. I didn't know they were going to add so much. I don't even know where that book-love stuff came from!”
“I have a pretty good idea.” Todd glanced over at the Trendy Subject, where Letta was currently trying to help Zim check out. She waved to him, and he didn't return it. He thought about sending her a different signal.
“You have to understand, though!” Dib picked back up, “I had to tell the world what's happened. It's a matter of global security! And it's probably not over!”
“Yeah, Dib, only no one believes you, and now there's a really stupid story with my photo on the front cover! As if I don't already get enough ludicrous questions about what happened!”
“Take it easy there, Amigo. It was pretty stupid, but at least no one really reads it, right?
“Even if they don't, now we really can't prove it if we need to because there's always going to be this...this trash! A simple background search is going to pull up that story, and no one will take us seriously. It's basic psychology. If you've got something to hide, make sure the public gets something related, but bigger and completely outlandish that no sane person would believe. Then whenever anyone brings up the real issue, people won't listen because it's already buried in crazy!”
“But, Squee, what I told them was the real story! And that would have happened anyway! It always happens with the paranormal because of religious nuts and people like Bill!”
“Whatever, Dib!” Todd stood up, shoving the paper into Dib's arms. “You still should have asked me.”
“Oh, come on! You weren't talking to anyone!” Dib called after Squee's retreating form, folding the paper under his arms that were now covering his chest in an indignant stance. He looked back and forth helplessly between Vayoween and Pepito.
“Sorry, Dib.” Vayoween padded his shoulder, still cringing a little from the unexpected argument. “I've got to get back to work.”
Pepito angled a thumb over his shoulder. “I should probably go after him. Then we'll get some lunch, and by then he should be calmed down.” He stood to leave before Dib could reply.
End CH!
Notes:
--Thelema: is a philosophy or religion[1] based on the dictum, "Do what thou Wilt" as presented in Aleister Crowley's Book of the Law: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thelema
--The character Thelema (who named herself after the religion) is a parody OC based on "101 rules of Satanism", which is Satanic religious satire. Thanks go out to :iconDesdemonaKakalose: for helping me design her! I didn't really get to do all I wanted to with her in that short time period, but she may make a second appearance in ch 20, so further help from anyone else is welcome.
-The journal for helping out with Thelema's design and/or reading the "101 rules of Satanism" can be found here: http://kailean.deviantart.com/journal/22895418/
--Those fictional books:
-”The Necronomicon is a fictional book appearing in the stories by horror novelist H. P. Lovecraft. It was first mentioned in Lovecraft's 1924 short story "The Hound",[1] written in 1922, though its purported author, the "Mad Arab" Abdul Alhazred, had been quoted a year earlier in Lovecraft's "The Nameless City".[2] Among other things, the work contains an account of the Old Ones, their history, and the means for summoning them.
“Other authors such as August Derleth and Clark Ashton Smith also cited it in their works; Lovecraft approved, believing such common allusions built up "a background of evil verisimilitude." Many readers have believed it to be a real work, with booksellers and librarians receiving many requests for it; pranksters have listed it in rare book catalogues, and a student smuggled a card for it into the Yale University Library's card catalog.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Necronomicon
-“The Ninth Gate is a 1999 film based on the novel The Club Dumas by Arturo Pérez-Reverte. Spanning several genres, The Ninth Gate is a mix of mystery, horror thriller, and neo-noir, and additionally portrays facets of the rare book business. The film was co-written and directed by Roman Polanski, and stars Johnny Depp as Dean Corso, a rare-book dealer hired by a book collector (Frank Langella) to validate a copy of The Nine Gates of the Kingdom of Shadows, a book by 17th century author Aristide Torchia.
“The Nine Gates of the Kingdom of Shadows, a book by 17th century author Aristide Torchia, one of only three surviving copies, now in Balkan's possession. The book contains nine engravings which, when correctly deciphered and the interpretations properly spoken, are alleged to raise the Devil.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ninth_Gate