Rachael sits on her chair, swinging from side to side. She’s pretending to shuffle through her notes, when really she’s busy on her phone. She’s smiling, I notice as she types away. Who is she talking to? I sneakily take a glance at her phone, but I can’t spot a name. I keep glancing to see if she’s watching me as I type this. She leans over and says, “Oh my god, this is a good story!” I laugh at her comment.
She goes back to looking at her phone, but we both jump in fright when we hear a loud noise. Footsteps, loud and mean, coming down the corridor. At the same time I can hear the sky thundering in the distance. “Gosh, is there an elephant in the school?” Jody, a girl in our class, asks.
“Sounds like it.” Her friend, Meghan comments.
Suddenly, the footsteps stop, replaced with a loud shrilling scream. Rachael and I simultaneously look up, our faces covered with fear when we see what’s standing a few meters across from our desks.
A big, fat monster. Literally. It looks like a hybrid between Mr. Blobby and a giraffe – but only with fangs, and no eyes. Oh, and Rachael says it has furry eyebrows – but that’s not important. “Do giraffes have eyebrows?” she asks, as if this is the most appropriate time to be asking questions when the monster has our teacher trapped in its mouth, blood dripping from his skull and falling down his face. Shame, he was just about to retire.
“Brilliant! No coursework.” The rest of our class cheer, clapping hands and throwing their folders away – as if they’d need them when their teacher is dead.
But still, apparently I’m the only one with a brain in this situation. Why can’t any of them see what I see? A horrible, ghastly monster – that just ate our teacher?
The monster burps, setting aside our teacher and clapping its belly as if to say: “Ah, what a wonderful nutritious meal!” Meghan stands up, almost robot-like, and approaches the monster. Smiling, she thanks it for brutally murdering our teacher. Oh, what is happening? Even Rachael is acting completely delusional and idiotic – which, despite her ‘wild’ party weekends, is totally not like her.
The monster cranes its giraffe neck, and everyone in the room but me stands up. I hesitantly stand up too. The monster obviously has some sort of control over them – I may as well act like it has one over on me too, unless I want to be its next meal.
The monster leaves the room, and everybody follows. I hesitantly follow, still wary of the situation. When I exit the room, I see bodies. There’s a big pile of dead teachers at the back of the hall, next to the stairs, and several pupils are adding more and more bodies to the pile. What is this – kill all teachers day?
Maybe I read too many books, but I’m starting to feel like I’m trapped inside a Darren Shan novel.
********************************************************************
It’s been a few hours since I watched my teacher die. 5PM. School should have been over an hour ago, but the doors are locked. Lockdown. The monster, which I now like to call Blogaffe (actually, I heard somebody speak to it in a foreign language – the only word I could understand was ‘Blogaffe’. I’m going to guess that’s its name.), actually shut us off from the outside of Hell world. All of the phone lines are cut off, there’s no internet signal, the windows have some sort of weird unbreakable invisible barrier protecting them and everyone, excluding me, is acting like Blogaffe’s slaves.
“Mwerh hoo ga sava grrrr oof.” Blogaffe... speaks to me?
“What did it say?” I ask the person standing next to me.
“Master. Not ‘it’. Master. He said ‘find a pair of shears and smooth my hooves.’” The boy shrugged, but I couldn’t help feel like there was a hidden message behind his words. But still, where on Earth am I supposed to find a pair of shears?
“Right. ‘Master’. Thanks.” I wonder through the halls, aimlessly searching for a pair of shears. There, in the mess called the Janitor’s closet is a pair of steel shears. I pull them free from the rubble of lost shoes and coats, but quickly toss them to the side when I notice something at the end of the first floor hall.
A hole in the window barrier. The barrier is invisible, but there’s a crack on the window – electricity sparks flying out of it. Has somebody tried to break free? My question is answered when I notice a small girl’s sizzled body lying limp on the floor. Is it safe? Probably not. But is it worth facing my possible death, rather than pretending to be some monster’s slave in school for the rest of my life? Definitely.
I pick up the shears and hesitantly step towards the hole in the barrier. I use the shears to pry open the barrier, making the crack bigger. Maybe the girl sizzled to death because she touched the barrier. I take a careful step, and place my foot past the barrier. No sizzle, no death. I push my whole body through the man-made crack and find myself being sucked into another universe.
********************************************************************
Where am I? I’m standing on a salt ground, the sky is purple and the air is warm. There’s nothing in sight. The place is deserted. Crystal snowflakes fall from the sky (which is strange – they’re actually made of crystal.) I admire the beauty and the simplicity for a further ten seconds, when suddenly the floor in front of me cracks and opens and a podium rises from the ground. I have to stagger backwards to prevent being swallowed up by the big, giant hole.
Standing on top of the podium, is a monster even more horrendous than Blogaffe. I can tells it’s a he, and he looks almost human – apart from the fact his eyes have melted over his face, his skin is red, pimply and burnt, his nose is half-attached, half-unattached to his face and instead of a mouth, he has a zip across his face. And when he opens that zip to speak... flies escape from it, which he snatches quickly with his hands and gobbles them up. His voice is hoarse when he speaks, “Ah, I knew you’d come. It was only fate that you’d arrive here, at precisely this moment.”
The monster grows larger in size, and pulls the flesh off of it’s body, releasing all of my dead teachers – only they look like terrifying zombies. They all lick their lips and walk towards me at a slow pace. I try to move but I can’t.
I scream. They’re going to eat me.
