Astro's Nightmare

Movie Night

I don't sleep anymore as much as I used to, I can't; not after the horrors I witnessed, whenever I close my eyes I still see small glimpses of them. The memories come flooding into my mind and I lose sleep for days. Dandy locked me away somewhere after a week of this behavior and I haven't been freed since. I've been locked away for months, my mind feels numb, my limbs feel stiff with ichor bleeding out as I itch at them painfully.

In my last possible moments, I feel as if I should tell you about the events that occurred in this dream of mine, I've lost all of my friends, everyone thinks I'm insane — and you may too after I tell you this.

It was 6:43pm on a Saturday, a movie night usually on this day. Each night, a different toon would choose the movie we'd watch – and it just so happened to be...

"Shrimpo, it's your turn to pick." Sprout sighed, leaning against the wall and giving him a mean look.

"Oh hell yeah.." Shrimpo had a sharp, toothy grin, rubbing his hands together and comedically pulling out a tape. "We should watch this one!"

Vee snatched the tape from his hands and examined it carefully before looking back at Shrimpo with a disgusted look.

"Are you insane?!" She snapped, "This'll give half the toons here nightmares. Including me, because I'm the one displaying this shit, choose another one you bonehead."

"You pussy.." Shrimpo scoffed, Vee's screen displayed a "!" on it for a brief second before switching back to her face.

"Shrimpo just put it back.." Shelly facepalmed, slouching on the couch. "We can watch a dinosaur documentary, or a–

"If I have to sit through another 3 hours of dinosaur sex and egg laying I'm going to actually kill myself." Glisten interrupted, checking his nails and fixing his hair.

"You could've told me to turn it off, Glisten." Shelly sighed, rolling her eyes.

"I was fixing my nails. I don't have time to talk to people like you..." Glisten scoffed, Shelly growled under her breath before crossing her arms and turning away from him. Shrimpo snatched the tape back from Vee, who made no effort into trying to get it back from him, let alone keep it away from him.

"Shrimpo, I swear.. If you put that tape in, you're going to regret i–" Vee cut off as Shrimpo shoved the tape into her tape inserter, then closed it. A loading bubble displayed on her screen for a minute, then the movie started to play very ominously as the others (including Shrimpo) sat down to watch.

Vee had her arms crossed while she sat on the floor, wagging her microphone tail very angrily and tapping her finger on her forearm. Shrimpo snickered at her suffering, she stuck the middle finger at him.

Tisha was the only one who didn't really watch movies with us, especially horror movies (which is what we were watching at the moment), she was always busy cleaning the shelves, floors of fallen popcorn, or cleaning off Brightney's spare bulbs. She refused to sit down and would get in the way of the screen at times, every now and then I would hear someone say "Sit down.." "Tisha, just watch the movie." and "MOVE BITCH!!" ...that one was obviously from Shrimpo.

This is where a specific scene from the movie started to come into play, a "gore" scene, to be more specific. I looked over at Shrimpo before the scene popped up; he was rubbing his hands together mischievously with a smug look on his face, muttering something to himself as the scene changed when I turned my head back to the movie.

Oh god.

All I could see were guts scattered around, people morphing into disgusting creatures as their skin and eyes melted away. The other toons screamed in horror and I could hear Toodles crying as Rodger covered her eyes and bolted out of the room immediately, Sprout threw up, Tisha didn't even go to clean it, she just stared at the screen, terrified at what she was looking at.

Vee eventually started to twitch, before forcing herself to eject the tape and broke it into pieces once her face came back onto display. Angrily huffing and puffing while dusting herself off. Teagan and Glisten had fainted onto the ground (quite dramatically I'd say.) and Brightney used Finn's water to splash them back awake. I expected him to make a pun, but the look on his face told me he wasn't in the mood.

Shrimpo was only laughing while pointing at Goob for hugging Scraps out of fear.

"You guys are a bunch of pussies, can't even handle a bit of blood."

"A BIT?!" Vee shouted at him, "THAT WAS THE ENTIRE FUCKING ANATOMY CHART!! I SAW EVERYTHING, EVERYONE SAW THAT SHIT. LOOK AT WHAT YOU DID TO RAZZLE AND DAZZLE!"

Dazzle was crying his eyes out while Razzle tried to comfort him, Shrimpo didn't seem to care. He just laughed even harder, before I stood up and walked over to him – standing tall over him while I gazed down into his eyes deeply. He stopped laughing once we made eye contact, I kneeled down to his level and said one thing to him.

"Cut the attitude, or I'm going to give you a nightmare you won't forget."

I regret those words each day I spend in this room. They echo in my head every second.

Shrimpo only walked away, giving off a nervous smile; trying to hide his cowardness. I could see past his "toughness", he softened up whenever someone stood up to him. I'd seen that a few times with Cosmo, he'd stand up to Shrimpo to the point where he stopped picking on him. He only picked on people who seemed "weak" to him, never Shelly, and never Dandy – for obvious reasons.

Most of the toons immediately walked out when the scene started to play, I walked out and saw that Connie was hiding in a pot (trying to scare whoever walked by it), and Looey was shivering in fear. Goob ran over to hug him before immediately being reminded of what happened the last time he did that, Goob just hugged himself, slightly embarrassed. Flutter was busy "speaking" to Gigi about her diary and what to put in it later on, I went to go greet them before immediately being grabbed by my blanket and dragged back into the room where we'd watched the movie, Vee then closed the door behind me while the other mains stared at me in concern.

"Astro, we've been.. Discussing for a few moments now and we just want to ask – are you okay with passing out dreams for tonight?" Sprout asked, "I mean–you usually project your feelings through dreams onto others from what we've witnessed, some are good, some are..." He paused, shivering, "Soo.. do you wanna hold off for tonight?"

"Well, I uh-"

"Listen, you could end up projecting what you saw into everyone else's heads, and it would possibly traumatize them for a while or cause a fight or ruin friendships. And don't even try to do a shared dream cycle, it'll make things worse. Just hold off for tonight and wait to see if everyone's forgotten about it by tomorrow, okay?" He said, walking over to me and patting my back, smiling.

"Yeah, besides, everyone else can make up their own dreams!" Shelly said, "The only difference is that- uh- they can't control what happens!" She laughed nervously, Vee rolled her eyes.

"I'm getting sick of constantly having dreams of..." Vee paused, then shook her head, "N-never mind, do what berry boy said."

"Can you quit calling me that?!" Sprout said, looking at Vee.

"Like I said, you're a berry, you're a boy." She smirked, Sprout let out a sigh in frustration.

"Whatever, you out-dated tech.." He giggled, Vee tried to lunge at him but Shelly quickly grabbed her by the torso.

"Ahaha- good talk, Astro! We'll deal with this!!" Vee quickly gave up trying to punch Sprout and just flipped him off as he walked away. I calmly left the room while Shelly spoke to Vee.