“April, it’s time to get up!” my mom hollers at me from downstairs as I grumble and crawl out of bed.
“Coming, mom!” I yell back at her. Then I notice something; my room doesn’t have the plain walls that it usually has. They are full of the colors and doodles that I have always imagined they had.
As I slowly get up, everything in my room is exactly as I always imagined it. My mom is getting impatient with me because she yells at me again about being late for school.
When I get to school, the same thing that happened in my room happens here. All of my classmates and teachers look just like I imagine them. I guess my imagination has literally gone wild. The popular girl looks like a giant bee with a crown, and the sporty people look like the sports they play.
The idea of something like this is happening is ludicrous, and I cant believe I’m actually thinking that everything I’ve imagined has come true. Then I stop, my face turns white, and I begin to dread the fact that this is happening. My next class is math, and if the day continues as it has been going, my math teacher is a monster.
And I don’t mean an evil teacher; I mean a literal monster. If I am right, she has giant claws, with razor-sharp fangs, and a huge tail that could easily smash a small, scrawny teenager like me.
I walk into math with closed eyes and nothing but dread in my mind. As I find my seat, I hear a low growling and hear something like chains rattling in the background. I slowly open my eyes in my seat, and my stomach drops. My math teacher is a monster. She is a literal monster.
The bell rings, and my dreaded Algebra One math class begins. She begins class with a low growl, and all of my strange looking classmates sit straight upright, and I can easily see why. As she teaches, my math teacher slowly scans the class looking for people to give detention to, by my observations.
Nobody in my class is moving. Then, I suddenly get a huge itch on my arm. I try to discreetly scratch my arm, but apparently she has impeccable hearing, because she catches me as soon as I move my arm. She gives me detention faster than I can blink.
I go through the rest of class unable to fathom the fact that my teacher is probably planning on torturing me, or even eating me in detention. After math, the day goes by as quickly as expected when you are dreading something, and before I know it, I am sitting in detention with other victims of my evil teacher.
She slowly makes her way through the desks, and hisses, “Well, well, well, look at all the lovely snacks I have for today.” The color drains from everyone’s faces, and my teacher slowly makes her way to the kid in the very front row… and eats him!
Terror fills every cell in my body as what just happened sinks in. She just ate a student! Then she screamed with a fear-inducing cackle that would send shivers down any sane person’s body. I am so worried that she is going to eat me next, that I completely forget that I know exactly how to stop her.
But she doesn’t eat me. She just walks around the classroom, slowly eating and killing my peers. Horror and fear fills me when I realize that I am the last student in the classroom. I realize that I, April Luther, am the finale.
I am the one she planned on torturing the most. I am the one who will pay the biggest price. I had to sit through all of my classmates being eaten, and now she will eat me. I can’t believe she planned all of this; she planned on torturing me; she planned on putting me through all of this, just so she could eat me.
Terror fills every fiber in my body as she slowly, but surely walks toward the desk where I sit, shaking. She cackles once more and I am getting ready to die, wondering what it would be like to be eaten by my math teacher who is a monster. Then I remember. I remember that when I imagined this while sitting in math with my normal, non-monster math teacher, she dies when any form of water touches her skin.
Now I am not scared. I know exactly how to stop my math teacher.  All I have to do is get her close enough to my face so that my spit will reach her skin. Then she will die. Then, if I’m lucky, this crazy day of my imagination coming to life will be over.
Then, she cackles once more, and reaches my desk.
“I’m not scared of you, Mrs. Monster Teacher. I know how to stop you.”
“Now do you, small annoying imbecile?”
“Yes, I do.”
Just then, she reaches the point close enough for me to spit, and finally end this nightmare. As she opens her mouth, ready to end my life and get a snack at the same time, I spit in her face.
First, she looks shocked that I would do such a thing, then realization and horror fill her beady eyes. She just realized that I do know how to beat her.
“How could you?” she screams at me as she slowly turns into mist and disappears.
As she fades away into nothing, I reply, “Because, I know this is the only way I can wake up from my dream.” I’m not sure when I realized that this was a dream, but it took all of my fear away.
As I wake up, for real this time, I am glad for once that my bedroom walls are bare. I am also glad that my mom is yelling at me, and that I have to get up and go to school. But I am most glad that my imagination is not real. Maybe that’s why imagination is in our head. Maybe we’ll never know why.