(The following is a nonprofit work of fanfiction and is outside of the original canon. All names, characters, businesses, places, events, and/or incidents of any kind depicted within this story are being used for entertainment purposes only.)

(The Loud House and all related characters were created by Chris Savino and all rights belong to Nickelodeon.)

- Chapter Eleven -

A Rough Morning

To say that none of us had gotten a decent amount of sleep that entire night would be a very broad understatement.

No matter how badly we tried to close our eyes and let our senses wander off into our own little dreamworlds, we would find ourselves fidgeting wide awake even at the slightest noise that could be heard coming from any part of the house. Just one tiny smidgen of a sound was all it took to instantly perk our ears and make us tilt our heads up in full alert, hoping to Heaven above that it wasn't Freddy himself stalking after us. Despite whatever form of comfort Clyde's nightlight tried to give us, it did very little to help ease the near constant state of restlessness.

You know the song, Somebody's Watching Me by Rockwell? That was exactly what it felt like—for eight straight hours.

At last, when a tiny sliver of orange-yellow light from the morning sun peered into the living room, we felt very relieved that the night was over. But the experience had left us all feeling worn out and deprived of any form of sleep. Zach and Rusty were the first to get up, followed by Conner and myself. Stella sat up on the couch, still in her sleeping bag, her permed black hair now an unkempt mess and her eyes covered in dark circles like everybody else's. Clyde was the very last one to get up. He removed his glasses for a moment and rubbed his hands against his tired eyes.

This is definitely not how I imagined my first sleepover turning out, I thought.

"That was the worst night I've ever had in my life." Zach groaned, running his fingers through his messy red hair.

"Ugh, without a single doubt, man." an exhausted Rusty agreed, massaging the back of his neck.

"Dude, I can't even think straight right now," Conner admitted, his eyes nearly bloodshot. "My brain just keeps wandering off back to Freddy and that terrifying bladed glove of his. It's just so... so... Ugh..."

Now he knows exactly how I feel. I thought in my head, frowning unhappily at him.

"I can't decide which is worse," Stella uttered groggily, "Being made to watch the movie itself or waiting all night for Freddy to jump out at any moment."

"What time is it right now?" Clyde asked, stretching his stiffened back. I glanced down at my wristwatch and told everybody that it was now twenty-five minutes past six, which was a whole lot earlier than what I was used to. One by one, the six of us headed up the stairs and we each took our turns in the shower in the bathroom for about ten minutes. Once we were finished and dried ourselves off, we headed back down to the living room, feeling a little more refreshed, but still pretty worn out.

"I'll go and get us some breakfast," I said to the gang. "Save my dad some of the hassle. Anybody want a bowl of cereal?" After what we had gone through, none of us were in the mood to have ourselves a giant pile of food.

After raising their hands up with a collective "Aye!", I made my way over to the kitchen and went for the cupboard on the left side of the sink. From there I fished out six large white bowls and tablespoons. I then walked over and took out three of our opened boxes of cereal from the shelf inside the right-side cupboard. The selection we had were limited to Golden Grahams, Frosted Flakes, and lastly Mr. T—one of my personal favorites.

The very last thing I did was grab a gallon of cold milk from the refrigerator. Returning back out, we sat in our chosen seats again around the dining room table, and then poured ourselves some milk and each of our preferred cereal of choice into our bowls. And with that, the gang and I quietly ate our cold breakfast, having not muttered a single word for a few short minutes. That was until Conner unexpectedly let out a surprised yelp and he almost jumped out of his chair.

This caused us all to do the same, closely spilling our cereal bowls in the process.

"What?! What is it?!" Clyde exclaimed.

"Something just brushed against my leg!" Conner virtually panicked.

"Oh, gosh! You think it's him?!" asked Zach frantically.

"It's Freddy, isn't it?!" Rusty added with the same level of fear. "Please, don't tell me that it's actually him!" With utmost caution, I peered down underneath the table, a spoon in my hand for the sake of defense. Thankfully, I did not see Freddy himself. What I saw instead was the silhouette of a small creature with pointed ears and it let out a single "Meow". Fear instantly evaporated and was replaced with relief as well as an added dosage of frustration.

"You can all relax, guys," I said, sitting back up. "It's just Cliff." I forgot to mention one other detail; Charles was not the only family pet we owned way back when. Cliff was a fully-grown cat whose fur was colored black, had a large black nose, and a cream-colored muzzle. He made another "meow" as he crawled out from under the table towards my end. I tilted down a bit to his side and gave him a few graceful strokes across his fur-covered head, as well as several scratches behind the ears, causing him to purr very loudly.

"Why don't you go bother Charles for a while, okay little buddy?" I asked my pet cat nicely. Cliff meowed again for the third time before walking out and disappearing into the living room, leaving the six of us to ourselves with our breakfast. Conner let out a long and deep sigh as he rubbed his dog-tired face with his hands and went back to eating his bowl full of Frosted Flakes.

"We totally should have watched Big Trouble in Little China instead," he grumbled aloud, his voice peppered with regret. I turned my gaze over to his direction with a scowl on my face, my eyes turning into narrowed slits.

"Oh, gee-whiz, Conner! You really think so?" I mildly snapped at him. Conner merely looked back at me and the rest of us with an embarrassed toothy grin.

"We probably still could," Stella suggested. "If it'll help us get our minds off of last night."

"Nah, let's just watch some cartoons," Rusty countered, after finishing a spoonful of Golden Grahams. "I'm not really in the mood for another movie right now."

"I'm with ya there, partner," Liam included. "And besides, today's Saturday anyhow." Having made up our minds, we finished up our breakfast and ventured back to the living room, putting away our sleeping bags, and turning the TV on. With the remote in my hand, we went through one station after another until we ultimately came across CBS, one of our favorite channels to visit when it came to the customary viewership of Saturday morning shows.

The first thing we saw on the screen were the end credits for Jim Henson's Muppet Babies. And thank the Good Lord Himself that it was already over too. Don't get the wrong idea though, I loved the Muppets about as much as anybody else out there in the world. But there was absolutely no way on this planet that I was going to allow myself to be caught dead watching a television program I believed was meant to be viewed by preschoolers.

A line has to be drawn somewhere, right?

Immediately after that came a rerun episode of Pee-wee's Playhouse, followed by Teen Wolf, and then Dungeons & Dragons, along with the occasional nostalgia-inducing commercial that played almost repeatedly in-between breaks; Fruit Islands Cereal, Reese's Pieces, Kool-Aid, McDonald's, Jell-O Gelatin Pops, Keebler's Chips Deluxe Cookies, Checker Mint Bubble Yum, the list continued on. I curled my nose into a sneer when one or two Barbie commercials for Mattel's Spectra came on the TV screen.

The most space age girl around? I questioned inside my head. Newsflash: she most certainly is not! The one and only Princess Leia is! We then saw McGruff the Crime Dog giving us the classic mantra, "Say no to drugs", like he would always do. More shows played afterwards, such as another episode of Dungeons & Dragons, Land of the Lost, and then a rerun of Galaxy High. By this point, the atmosphere in the living room had already calmed down, memories of last night now seemingly forgotten.

That is until I felt a pair of strong hands suddenly grab me by the delicate shoulders.

"Watcha watchin', bro?" a girl's voice cried out from behind me. At that moment, I let out a high-pitched squeal, my heart virtually skipping a beat as I sprang off the couch—if not out of my skin—now in fight-or-flight mode. The others had done the same, leaping off the couch close to me. Now up on my feet, I twisted myself around to see the culprit standing behind the coach, only to quickly relax when I saw Lynn, looking at me with a confused look on her lightly freckled face.

"Lynn!" I panted, clutching my hand to my chest. "Please, don't ever do that again!"

"Yeah, please don't," Rusty muttered, running his fingers through his curly orange hair. "We can't take anymore unexpected surprises at this point." My fourteen-year-old sports fanatic for a sister gave me a weird look.

"Sheesh, bro," she said. "You need to take a chill pill. I was just messing with you."

I glowered at my sister in response.

You have no idea what we went through the other night, I thought. What I was forced to relive all because of one stupid dare.

"Just messing with me?" I questioned her. "You almost gave me a ding dang heart attack!"

Lynn's brow furrowed and her nose curled into a sneer.

"What the heck is your damage, bro?" she asked now irritably. I sighed deeply while massaging the bridge of my nose.

"Lynn, I really don't want to talk about it right now." I replied with a grumble. The last thing that I wanted was to plainly admit to her that my friends and I had watched a certain R-rated horror movie none of us were allowed to watch and then possibly get in trouble with Mom and Dad about it later. But I somehow had the nagging feeling in the pit of my stomach that I wasn't going to keep my viewing—and now my second—of A Nightmare on Elm Street a secret for too long.

"What the darn heck is going on out here?" another voice abruptly came about. My gang and I gazed behind my sister, and we all saw Dad now standing before us, having just walked out from his and Mom's bedroom. He was dressed in his dark green pajamas and brown bathrobe, his brown hair lightly disheveled, and a stubble that was now starting to become visible. He had a look on his face which was perfectly balanced with concern and irritation.

"Oh, morning, Dad," I spoke up. "It's nothing. Lynn just scared us, that's all."

"Oh, okay," he breathed tiredly, before rubbing his eyes and arching his back into a stretch until a satisfying pop or two was heard. No sooner than he had done so, Mom then walked out from the same bedroom door, garbed in her pink bathrobe, and she let out a very wide yawn. When she saw us, she made a soft smile.

"Good morning, kids," she said. "How was your sleepover last night?"

"We all had a blast, Mom," I told her half-truthfully. "We played some Dungeons & Dragons, ate a lot of pizza, watched a really fun movie, the usual stuff, you know? Like I said we were going to do."

If only that last part were true.

"What movie did you guys see?" she asked curiously. Looking from my left and right peripheral visions, I could see that the gang wordlessly eyed each other and shifted rather uncomfortably from my mother's question.

I know what you might be thinking; and yes, I already knew that it was wrong to lie to my parents. Believe me, I didn't like it as much as anybody else. But I also knew that as much as I wanted to tell them the whole truth about last night, I was far too afraid of risking the insurmountable possibility of getting yelled at for disobeying them. And worst-case scenario; a well-placed paddle on the behind with a wooden spoon. I mean, what kid wasn't afraid of getting spanked by their mom or dad?

What's it going to be, Lincoln? a voice in my head asked me. Lie to your parents or risk a sore bottom? Naturally, though mostly out of fear, I chose the former, wanting very much to keep my scrawny backside in one piece. I hesitated for a couple seconds before finding the ability to speak again.

"Big Trouble in Little China." I said with a big—but also lowkey nervous-looking—smile on my face. I turned to look at my friends, winking with my right eye so that Mom, Dad, and Lynn did not see it. "Isn't that right, guys?"

"Oh, yeah! Totally!" Rusty agreed, quickly catching on.

"Yep! It was really clutch!" Zach added.

"Full of action and humor!" Conner piped up. "A tubular match made in heaven, right Stella?"

"I couldn't agree more, Conner!" Stella replied without another second. "I was amped through the whole thing!"

"That's one pony ride I wouldn't mind going on again sometime!" Liam said, swinging his arm in fake excitement.

"Oh, for sure," Clyde agreed. "Makes me want to plan a trip to San Franscisco with my dad and Uncle Harold!"

"That's the one with Kurt Russell, right?" Mom asked us. I gawked at her strangely for a brief moment before hurriedly nodding my head in confirmation.

"Yep, it sure is," I said. You'd think after watching a movie like Big Trouble in Little China more than a couple times on the old Zenith, she would have already known by now. Appearing to be convinced by my lie, Mom and Dad soon walked off to the kitchen to make themselves some breakfast—as well as for the rest of the girls. Lynn, on the other hand, remained where she was, now staring at us with a growing level of suspicion in her eyes.

"What?"

"You're acting very weird, Lincoln," Lynn said, folding her arms across her chest. "Like, a lot weirder than usual."

"R-Really? What g-gave you that idea, Lynn?" I asked, chuckling nervously, my eyes shifting from side to side. Suddenly, my sister vaulted over the couch with relative ease and she stood right in front of me and the gang, her hands resting on her skinny hips. Her suspicious gaze hardened, appearing like they could easily melt through thick plates of steel, causing me to almost break out into a dread-filled sweat, my little heart beating speedily against my chest.

"You guys didn't watch Big Trouble in Little China last night, did you?" she questioned, her lips in a straight line, her eyes narrowing into slits. I gotta say, the more I remained silent, the more guilty I was starting to appear. I knew that if I didn't say or do anything real fast to relieve the growing tension in the living room, it was going to get worse. After what felt like a very long time, I finally thought of the first thing which came to mind and then I speedily twisted around to face my friends.

"Who wants to play on my Nintendo?" I asked rather quickly.

"I do!" Conner said, shooting his hand up in the air.

"Yeah, count me in!" Rusty included.

Wasting no more time than we already had, the gang and I swiftly got out my Nintendo Entertainment System without another word to spare. As I was just about to place Super Mario Bros. inside the console deck, I turned my head around to see Lynn still remaining where she was, her suspicious gaze still set on me. She then signaled a hand gesture to me, one where she pointed her two fingers at her own eyes and then directly at me.

"I'm watching you, Stinkoln." And with that, she walked back upstairs to her bedroom.

Once after she was gone, I let out a relieving breath I didn't realize I was holding in until now...

Sorry if this chapter is a little bit shorter than my previous ones. It was originaly going to be just as long, but then I decided to split it into two seperate chapters because I felt like each part was actually finished and could work a lot better as their own. So, that was what I did.

Still, I hope that you enjoyed what I've got and I look forward to posting the next chapter on the day after Thanksgiving.

And until then, I bid you all a wonderful week and a pleasant November. ;) Ciao!