Nightmares...devious little things, aren't they?

The human brain is capable of processing and retaining a startling volume of information. That compact little organ above your shoulders is home to an extensive archive of decades worth of memories, experiences, facts, acquired skills... and a cache of all your greatest fears and your deepest insecurities.

And what does your brain do with that little cache? Does it keep it locked away, letting it lay dormant until a practical need for it arises? Oh, no, no, no. Your brain waits until you fall asleep, and then uses that cache to meticulously craft horrifying visions, specifically designed to terrorize you.

That is what a nightmare is.

And it's what you're about to see. Beyond this point is a series of ghastly, surreal sequences, produced from the darkest crevasses of the subconsciouses of the eleven Loud children.

If that sounds too frightening for you, I won't force you to stay. Now's your last chance to click that back button in the top left corner and choose something else to read.

...

No? You're still going to stick with this?

Very well. But don't say I didn't warn you.

Welcome... to the Nightmare House.

Lori sat up in her bed with a yawn and a stretch. She had read on a few health blogs that an afternoon nap was healthy for a teen girl, and after that power nap she could certainly see why. She felt completely rejuvenated after just an hour of sleep - or, at least, what she thought was just an hour of sleep. Glancing over at the clock on her nightstand, Lori was a bit surprised to see the reading "6:00" staring back at her. She could've sworn that she dozed off at 3.

Sheesh, how'd I conk out for that long?

Lori made a mental note to set an alarm for herself next time as she hopped off the bed and walked towards the door. Once she exited her room, she caught a whiff of expensive perfume wafting down the hall. That, of course, could only mean one thing; their parents were going out and leaving her in charge.

Sure enough, by the time Lori made it halfway down the stairs, she caught a glimpse of their parents standing in the doorway - Dad in a suit, Mom in a dress - giving a wave goodbye to the kids, who were all scattered around the living room engaged in various different activities.

"We'll be back later tonight," said Rita. "Have fun, kids!"

With that, the two of them shut the door behind them and went on their way, eliciting a raised eyebrow from Lori. Normally, such a departure would come with a reminder that she was in charge, and Lori couldn't imagine why they'd leave that part out. Regardless, she just shrugged it off and assumed that it just slipped their mind.

Besides, if her parents weren't going to remind them who was in charge, she was more than happy to do so herself.

"All right, listen up!" she announced with her usual gravitas as she reached the last step on the stairs. "Mom and Dad are gone for the evening, and you know what that means."

In stark contrast to the reaction she expected, her ten younger siblings all slowly craned their heads toward her, displaying flat, unaffected expressions. Their faces were indicative of, at most, mild confusion.

"What does that mean, Lori?" asked Lincoln, in a voice that sounded almost mockingly coy.

"It means I'm in charge, twerp!" barked Lori, outraged at his insolence. "So you all better start-"

"But haven't you heard, Lori?" asked Lola.

Lori blinked, a bit flummoxed over Lola having the gall to interrupt her. "Heard what?"

"Mom and Dad changed the rules, Lori," said Leni. As she continued, she turned away from Lori and started filing her nails. "They're not leaving you in charge anymore. They think we can handle ourselves."

"W-what?!" yelped Lori, as her fingers coiled themselves into fists and the veins in her forehead started throbbing. The very idea that they'd strip her of her authority, without even telling her, was borderline blasphemous.

"You're lying!" she cried, pointing an accusatory finger at Leni - who, in response just kept her gaze focused on her nails. "You're all lying!"

Luna took out her phone, placed it on the floor and coolly slid it across the floor until it lied at the eldest's feet. "If you don't believe us, call 'em up, dude," she said.

Lori snatched the phone up off the floor and started punching in Rita's cell number. "Well, maybe I will! And when I do, you'll all be in big... um..."

A short glance away from the phone revealed that Lori's threats hadn't fazed any of the children in the slightest. Only a couple of them were even bothering to look her way, and the few eyes that were resting upon her bore no traces of fear or even surprise.

"You know what? It doesn't matter," said Lori, dropping the phone. "Because I know for a fact that you can't handle yourself! Last time I left the house to you, it literally almost got destroyed!"

"And we've learned our lesson," said Lana. "We all agreed that we're going to be calm and play nice for the next few hours. So you can just run along to your room if you want."

Lana capped off her remark with a dismissive "shoo" gesture. Lori gasped, appalled at such a blasé gesture of insubordination, and stomped over to Lana as jets of steam started shooting out of her nostrils.

"Now you listen here, missy!" shouted Lori. "If you think I'm just going to go back to my room and trust you all to stay out of trouble, you're literally insane! So I'm just going to stand here and make sure that-"

"The fact that you still have yet to take the hint is quite astonishing to me," interrupted Lisa. "But let me spell it out for you in the bluntest way possible; we don't need you."

Lori balked, reacting to that terse sentence as if it were four consecutive punches in the gut. "W-what do you mean, you don't need me?!" she cried, a hint of nervousness entering her voice.

"Just what she said," said Lucy, as she rose from the couch and walked straight up to Lori. "We don't need you."

"You do so! Without me, you-"

"We don't need you," interrupted Lucy. Lori flinched, each word piercing her skin like a bee sting.

"Stop saying that this instant!" Lori demanded, in a desperate attempt to reassert her authority. At that point, Lori didn't care what their parents said. She wasn't going to be talked down to by an eight-year-old girl who only came up to her...

...chin?

When Lori looked down at Lucy, she noticed that the top of her head, which normally stood no higher than Lori's chest, was now level with her chin. Did Lucy just go through a growth spurt without anyone noticing?

"We don't need you," Lucy repeated. This time, the sentence was echoed by the rest of the siblings, all speaking in the same low, flat monotone as her. Lori doubled over in pain, clasping her hands over her ears in an instinctual attempt to block out the message.

"I said stop!" she cried. "Or I'll... I'll..."

When Lori stood back up, she noticed that her eyes were now level with Lucy's. Her Third Grader sister was now somehow just as tall as her.

"We don't need you," repeated the younger siblings. "We don't need you."

With every repetition of the phrase, Lucy's face seemed to ascend higher and higher beyond Lori's eye level. Lori's eyes darted around the room, scanning it for any kind of reaction from the rest of the room. How was the rest of the family so unperturbed by Lucy suddenly getting bigger?

Then, in the midst of her panic, Lori looked to her right and saw the armchair in the living room, noticing that she could barely see over the top of the armrest. The answer hit her like a bag of hammers.

Lucy wasn't getting bigger. She was getting smaller.

When she turned back towards Lucy, she found that she was now joined by the rest of the family, all grouped together and staring her down while they repeated that cursed four-word phrase. At this point, to her horror, her height was just barely above Lisa's, and she was still shrinking.

"Stop, please!" she begged, in a voice that was an octave higher than usual. Sadly, her requests fell on deaf ears; the family continued to chant, and she continued to shrink, until even Lily towered over her. Lori, with her heart now chilled with fear, backed away from her titanic siblings, only to trip and fall over a knot in the carpet. Upon sitting up to find what tripped her, she was served with a sobering reminder of how little she had become. The knot, which was too small for her to even notice just a moment ago, now looked to be the size of a basketball.

While she was still reeling from the realization, the now-enormous Lincoln stepped forward, bent down and picked her up, gripping her firm - not firm enough to hurt, but firm enough to remind her how easy it would be for him to squish her.

"Guys, I think Lori's getting a little excitable," he said, paying no mind to Lori as she hopelessly pounded her tiny fists against his finger. "Maybe it's time we put her away for the night."

Lori gulped. Put me away? She could only dread what Lincoln meant by that, but she figured she was about to find out, whether she liked it or not.

With Lori squirming in his fist, Lincoln crossed over to the other side of the room, towards the fireplace. Resting atop the mantelpiece was an empty, lidded glass jar, with a label that read "'Big' Sister" on the side.

"You can't do this to me!" Lori yelled, thrashing about as Lincoln pinched her by her shirt collar, unlidded the jar and dangled her over it. "I'm the oldest! You have to do what I say!"

Lincoln, not even bothering to respond with anything more than an eye roll, dropped her into the jar. Lori, desperate to reclaim her freedom while she still could, tried to jump out of the jar, only to find that she couldn't jump nearly high enough to clear it. At most, her fingers could barely graze the rim. The tallest child in the Loud House was now too puny to escape from a foot-tall container.

Lincoln just sighed, shook his head and slapped the lid on the jar, sealing her inside. Lori could do nothing but watch aghast as he walked back to the center of the room to join his other sisters. Lori knew that, with her out of the picture, the kids would start spiraling out of control any minute now.

But as she looked through the glass, the scene she saw play out was just as tranquil and mellow as the one she walked in on a moment ago. Lily was playing with blocks, Lisa was helping Lynn with her homework, the twins were playing checkers, Lucy was reading a book, Lincoln was playing his 3DS, Luan was in the kitchen making pot pies for dinner, Luna was listening to music, and Leni was filing her nails. There wasn't a single thing going on that she could find objectionable. Lori's heart sank like a stone once the reality of the situation dawned on her.

They didn't need her. Not anymore. One moment she was the respected, authoritative head of the household, the next she was an ornament on the mantelpiece with a size to match her significance.

Lori's tiny body started trembling with rage, a recalcitrant refusal to accept this new reality welling inside her. She wouldn't accept it. She couldn't accept it.

Lori screamed at the top of her lungs and started jumping around and ramming her fists against the glass wall. None of her younger siblings even troubled themselves to look her way, either because they couldn't hear her through the jar or because they cared that little about her grievances.

With her fury still swelling, Lori charged at the wall and rammed herself into it, over and over again - an action that would prove to be rather unwise just a few seconds later. For one thing, it still failed to attract the attention of any of her siblings. More importantly, after ramming the wall for the fifth or sixth time, Lori started to feel the floor beneath her wobbling about. She looked down to see the bottom of the jar angled precariously over the edge of the mantelpiece. It seemed that, in the midst of her tantrum, Lori had failed to notice that she was moving the jar further and further away from the wall.

All of her anger in that moment was overtaken by dread, and she frantically ran back towards the other end, trying to rebalance the jar. But by that point, it was too late. After teetering on the edge for a fraction of a second, the jar slipped off the mantelpiece and plummeted downward.

The sound of glass shattering against the floor was the last thing Lori heard before she woke up.