Poetry Pains -Dib Story

The classroom was full and loud. English classroom, middle school, exactly like the one you sit in everyday, despite having fourty years leg up on your school.

A teacher, utterly bored, slumped at a desk left of the whiteboard. She’d long given up on her dream of inspiring young writers, and her brunet hair flopped onto off in random directions around her young but tired face.

“Alright people,” she drawled, “instead of calling roll like all the other teachers do, I’m going to ask everyone to come up front and read their retarded, sub-human poetry for the class when I call their name.”

The entire class moaned loudly and shot death glares of the most painful kind at the offender.

“Oh will you be QUIET!” she snarled “if your going to whine, then let me give you something really freak out about.” She looked closely at each aprehinsive minor.

“You’ll all read the poem based on your personal, secret, and oh-so-very humiliating experiences for your peers. If I don’t think it’s embarrassing enough, you’ll get an F for a quiz grade. How about THAT?”

The children went deathly silent for fear of further punishment, and fear of revealing the poem they were assured to be confidential.

As the twitchy teacher read off the students names, inching further and further down the list, one boy in particular sunk into the cracks of his desk, vainly trying to escape his bleak fate.

His brown hair flopped in his eyes, a result of forgetting to comb it after his morning shower. His trademark trench coat, examined by every faculty member in the known world because it was 'suspicious', bunched around his shoulders and arms, giving the impression of melting.

“Jane-Darby Melton,” called the lady at the desk. “Get up here and read your stinking poem.”

A red headed girl stepped up to the plate (in a manor of speaking) with a hurt look on her face. She sped through, likely with the hopes of going too fast to be understood, something about a girl whose parent push her too hard, until she commits suicide, receiving startled glances from her preppie friends. And a couple cross signs too.

“Dib Membrane. Dib Membrane! You little psychopath, move your lazy butt up here and get reading.”

With a bit of his soul dying as he shuffled up to the front and looked out at all the student, wide eyes waited for some ridiculous theory about Bigfoot using the belt sander.

</i>It’s not my fault the stupid myth needed to make a freakin’ bird house

“Okay guys, I guess I’ll read this one” he grimaced down at the words he had written.

Out in the front row sat Zita, his purple haired classmate for three years in a row, the aforementioned redhead, and a suspiciously green skinned boy with inhumanly black hair among others.

“I titled this The Villain, and I swear if anyone laughs, I’ll rip out their innards and feed them to Bigfoot” his eyes rested on the green boy, who seemed to be the only one not bothered by his seriously insane remark.

“ahem,” he cleared his throat nervously, then allowed his voice to gain volume with every word he spoke:

“Perhaps you’re one of those who say:

Friends always know you best.

But who is closer to the heart

(Much closer than the rest)

The ally standing off to the side,

Or the enemy eye to eye?

And who would know the most of you,

Who takes the time to try?

The Villain

Whose very being stakes

In your own pass or fail?

And who would dare to follow you

Down the deathly trail?

The Villain

Who’s the one we love to hate?

Who’s the one who takes,

Every moment’s silent thought

With each move that he makes?

The Villain

So it must be said now,

It’ll come out at any rate:

Obsession’s purest form of love

The love I wish to hate.”

He looked up from his notebook, dazed, at the teens who gaped in awe of his poem- the raw emotion he spoke with, coupled with the fact that their two-syllable vocabularies couldn't cope with the ingenuity. Some of their heads were still smoking.

Slowly, ever so slowly, his honey-brown eyes turned to the one person who truly mattered, the raven-haired boy, with his emerald skin draining to a pale blue tinged green.

His normally hyper persona evaporated and he stared silently for a moment, as the hushed room looked on, now aware of exactly who his poem was directed at.

“Zim must go now” and with that elegant parting response, he dashed out of the room so fast, a few of the children bet on which locker he’d hit.

Dib looked on without a flinch, and then stumpled to his seat.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
As the bell rang, the last person to leave was the trench coat clad boy (who hadn’t taken in any of the lesson, as you might guess).

He grabbed his papers and binder, shoving his work inside it, and headed for the door.

“Later ms. J,” he muttered to the now snoring teacher, “thanks for ruining my life.” he hissed with just a hint of melodrama.

As he approached the door, he barely saw the shadow of someone on the other side.

If it’s Zita here to laugh at me, I’ll kill her

But it wasn’t. Once past the relitivly safe haven of the abandoned classroom, Dib realised Zim was the only person near by.

The oddly colored boy stared at his “nemesis” for a moment, then started hesitantly “I don’t know much of your filthy earth customs Dib-beast, but I think that it is this point at which..."

The trench-coat clad boy's eye's lit up, and he found himself hoping against hope...

"I’m... supposed to ask you on a…” he looked at anything but the boy in front of him as he searched for the word “...date”

The paranormalist tilted his head “so that means you…”

"I offer you the title of Zim's Love Pig, yes."

“And I…”

Zim cut him off "Of course you accept." he nodded "Why not? Zim is amazing after all. Even his enemy is taken with his BRILLIANCE."

“Sure, whatever you say.” Dib beamed, too happy to care.

"Exactly. Whatever Zim says. This will be interesting, I think... And now I can tell Brittany that I do to have a 'girlfriend'."

Dib reached a spur of the moment decision and flung his arms around the shorter boy, nearly squeezing out his squeedly-spooch in the process.

“...Dib-filth?” gasp

“Mmm?”

“We’re gonna be late for class”

FIN