cunningcoyote

Somewhere in the sprint between Blank Street and Nada Avenue Dib realizes something's not right. Well. Aside from the whole horrible nightmare dimension hosted entirely inside his own brain thing. Besides that. The dimension inside Dib's head is a world of monsters. Of nightmares. Things have teeth where there should be no teeth, the people he knows contort in on themselves to become grotesques he's never seen before, and yet he knows them on sight. He knows all of them like he's known them forever. In a way, he has. That's the thing about this place. His classmates, his teachers, his family, that guy who sells used monkey bladders from the trunk of his car: they're all monsters but they're all reflections of real people. The nightmare is just a reflection of his world—the real world. (Nothing's ever a 100% positive but Dib's pretty darn sure the world outside his head is the real one. Absolutely. Probably. …Hopefully.) The same rules apply to the city itself. The buildings

It happens when he’s not looking and always seems to stop as soon as it starts, but it always happens. Every day without fail. He keeps a monitor for it because this planet’s rotation changes, and it changes all the time. Too fast. Everything here moves too fast to chase down and his legs aren’t long enough to catch it. (It’s not his fault his legs aren’t that long. He can’t help it.) It’s awful here. Too fast, too much, too loud, too putrid, too big, too cold, too hot, too smelly, too different, too different, too different and it never. stops. It’s awful here. But it’s not awful all of the time. That’s why he monitors and keeps check, so he won't miss it. Today, there aren’t any clouds to cover it up, and he gets a clear view. It always happens, even behind the clouds. Even if he can’t see it. Even if he slept through it. When the sun sinks below the concrete teeth of the city skyline, after the yellows leech into the orange and the orange drips into the reds, in that little