Free My Teacher Ate My Brain by Tommy Donbavand

I ran as fast as I could, my bare feet sinking in the soft sand, making it difficult to pick up speed. Behind me, I could hear the wet-throated scream of Miss Edwards, my maths teacher — or, at least, what was left of her. A glance over my shoulder confirmed what I feared — she was gaining on me. Her jaw, broken in the fight, hung loose and swung from side to side with each of her uncertain strides. If it wasn’t for the blood cascading down the exposed white bone of her chin, it would have looked as though she was yawning.
     
    Miss Edwards had always been good looking — the type of teacher fancied by older students and male staff alike. Her long, blonde hair always had that “just been washed” look to it, and she smelled like a spring day — all honey and strawberries. Boys actually fought to sit at the front in her maths classes — and my best mate, Callum, never let me forget the day I absent-mindedly doodled her name in my exercise book. He said I had a crush on her — but that was just stupid.
     
    Miss Edwards didn’t smell of strawberries any more. She smelled of rotten meat. Of terror. Of death.
     
    Her hair was matted with blood and lumps of grey that I knew had to be one of my classmate’s brains. I had to get away.
     
    Suddenly, my foot caught in a hole and a lightning bolt of pain shot up from my ankle as it twisted violently to one side. I fell, face first, into the sand, and for a second I almost gave up. I almost lay there and let Miss Edwards finish me off. But then I realised I was clutching something in my hand and I lifted my head to see what it was. I was still holding the spatula Mr Blake had handed me ready to cook sausages on the barbecue. I watched in fascination as the moonlight glinted on its shining, metal surface.
     
    GLARK!
     
    I flipped myself over onto my back at the sound — just in time to see Miss Edwards’s twisted face plunge down, teeth aimed squarely for my throat. I lashed out with the spatula as hard as I could, and caught her in the side of the face. The blow was enough to knock her to one side — but also enough to snap the head from the spatula. Now all I had was a jagged metal stick in my hand. And that was probably what saved me.
     
    Miss Edwards loomed back over me, a mixture of her blood and saliva spattering down on my cheeks like warm, sticky rain. Her eyes — milky and unfocussed — gazed down at me hungrily. And then I knew what I had to do. Placing the heel of my hand against the bottom of the spatula’s handle, I pushed the sharp end as hard as I could into one of her eyes. Her eyeball popped — I actually heard it — and then all resistance was gone.
     
    The metal spear sank deep into Miss Edwards’s brain and, with a final groan, her lifeless body slumped down on top of me. I turned my head to one side — partly to catch my breath and partly so that I didn’t have to look at what I’d just done.
     
    Then…
     
    FLASH!
     
    My vision flooded with white light and it was a few seconds before I could see clearly again. Slowly, everything came back into focus and I saw Callum kneeling in the sand beside me — his phone in his hand. He’d taken a photo of me and the corpse of Miss Edwards!
     
    “Whoooo-ooo!” he said, grinning like an idiot. “Josh finally gets the chance to cuddle his favourite teacher!”

By the time I pushed Miss Edwards’s corpse off me, Callum was gone — racing along the beach, shouting that he was going to “find someone else who was dressed up as a zombie”. Could he really think this was all make-believe? He’d seen the way I’d had to finish off Miss Edwards, and he still didn’t understand this nightmare was real! Mind you — I was having a hard time believing it myself.
     
    Things like this weren’t supposed to happen in real life — and especially not on school camping trips. This morning, I was just one of five kids from Liverpool who stayed after school a couple of times a week to help out with