Zootopia Fanthologies: Alone

Time Setting: May 21st, 2016

"Aggh! I can't look!"

Judy Hopps and Nick Wilde both sat motionless on the couch in Nick's apartment. Screams of terror and fright rang in their ears as they watched Nick's TV set intently. Like most animals across the great city of Zootopia did when they wanted to avoid sleeping, they were sitting up late in Nick's apartment, watching scary movies.

Judy now cowered behind Nick's couch, hovering between there and the door to the bathroom, where she had been for the past half an hour, hiding behind the shower curtain and praying for the nightmare to end. Her huge violet eyes were wide open in fear, and the whole of her compact rabbit body trembled like a tender branch in the wind. She gripped the back of that couch like it was going to fly away if she didn't hold on.

Her friend Nick, however, was motionless. Judy couldn't really tell if Nick was scared or if he was just focused on the screen intently. However, the insane twitching of his fox tail was a pretty sharp clue that he was not as brave as he appeared to be.

On the screen, the terrified female wolf lead, stared directly into the darkness, obviously in fear. The music calmed to the point of non-existence. Nick's green fox eyes widened. He then spoke back to his friend Judy.

"Hey, Carrots," he said with a slightly nervous smirk on his face, "how much you want to bet—"

Suddenly, the bestial, red-eyed monster on-screen popped into frame, eliciting a scream of terror from the female lead, and a jumpscare that fired Nick's fox body straight up in the air like a rocket from a tube. Judy cowered even further behind the couch, as though the monster on the TV was going to pop out and tear her limb from limb, something that was now happening to the poor soul in the film. Nick (at long last) recognized his friend's fear, and made an executive decision: turn off the TV. The finality of the black screen was a welcome sight.

Judy, panting like she'd been running for two and a half hours straight (something that she had only ever pulled off once without collapsing afterwards), turned to Nick with a look of desperation, her eyes bulging.

"Can you not, like, EVER, get one of these horror movies out again, Nick?" she said relatively calmly, then added a pitiful "Please?"

Nick nodded in agreement, and they headed back into his warmly illuminated kitchen, where Judy had placed her stuff for the evening: her carrot pen and her cell phone, along with a bowl of popcorn she had made. As Judy and Nick went about putting away their things, they spoke to one another.

"Hey, Carrots, I'm sorry about this evening," he explained. "It's been kind of a tradition in the Wilde family to stay up and watch movies late at night."

Nick's face was overcome with nostalgia as he thought of the days back when he was living with his mother.

"I remember the time when I was six, watching 'A Christmas Canary' and falling asleep dreaming that fox ghosts from the past, present and future would be following me and showing me my gravestone."

Nick shuddered at that thought.

"I still have trouble thinking about it."

Judy then spoke, her nerves totally shot as she shakily put away the clean popcorn bowl.

"All I remember doing on Christmas was eating my Aunt Thelma's carrot cakes and then going to bed. Speaking of which, I'd better get back to my apartment."