I shot up from the ground, my breathing stuttered by my enormous amount of panic.

I was so confused by my new surroundings. It was dark, these weird particles were floating around in the air like dust, and this crazy gross & disgusting slime enveloped my PJ’s. I coughed a couple of times, probably choking on those particles in the air. Gross.

“Where am I?” I asked, and after no one answered my question, I looked around me some more. Trees were scattered around me like I was in the woods, but nothing more. The wooded area I was in seemed endless. For some reason, I had this gut feeling I knew my way. Like… like I’d been here before. Though I know I haven’t.

Familiar gurgling & groaning noises, accompanied by squeaking sounds, crept into the vacant area. Memories from the previous day rushed through me like a flood of terror. Me biking home from the library after some studying in a quiet area, Mom telling me she & Dad were going out to dinner with a couple of old friends, my sister telling me she was going to sleep. The scarier memories of the previous night: me cutting my arm on a shard of broken glass from a cup I’d dropped, the gurgling noises that got louder and louder as that… monster got closer to me. It pulling me into a weird dimension filled with creepy slime and these weird particles in the air, like snow… but almost frozen in place.

The gurgling, groaning, and squeaking noises got louder. I ran through the forest, hoping that the instinct that I knew my way through this creepy place would carry me to the end.

Soon, the trees started to fan out, and I reached the end of the creepy freaking forest. And I saw something that scared the living daylights out of me.

Saw.

My.

SCHOOL.

I’m not kidding!!

My middle school was standing right in front of me, and now I don’t know whether to be glad I have a place to hide or scared, because this could be a hideout for the creature that was tailing me.

The school was vacant, covered in the same slime that everything else was covered in. As I came close to it, the school wasn’t actually vacant.

It was pretty crowded in there. But not with kids.

With those monsters, some looking like demogorgons and demodogs from “Stranger Things.”

They all acted like I wasn’t even there until I got inside the school.

Then I was noticed because I busied myself staring at the oddity of this. These demodogs were walking in the hallways of the school, pressing their monstrous, inhuman… paws, for lack of better words, against some electronic tablet on the lockers, opening them up and grabbing their books with their creepy & scary mouths. Their mouths opened like tulip petals expanding from the flower to reveal thousands of sharp teeth, almost like shark teeth, but perfectly lined up in their disgusting & graphic mouths. The demodogs proceeded to then carry their school books in their mouths, somehow without destroying them. The demodogs talked to each other through growls and groans, which made me make a mental note to myself that I would never ever want to end up here ever again. Did I mention ‘never ever again?’

As I walked through the creepy and R-rated hallway filled with nightmarish creatures, I saw classrooms where demogorgons were teaching the demogorgons. They talked about the best strategies to hunt on humans, where the best places are to find humans, things like that.

A Demogorgon/teacher had an actual chalkboard with a diagram of the human body, and it was using a pointer stick to show each and every weak spot of the human, including both female and male parts.

Don’t ask me how I figured that out. There was a lot of writing on the board to describe that.

Probably because a Demogorgon & demodogs’ language is really messed up so neither species can understand what each other were saying. I mean, they were speaking by using gurgling, squeaking, and groaning noises to communicate, so that alone was messed up in its own little way.

A day in the life in what seemed like the supernatural world, or what I now will call “The Upside Down”, courtesy of “Stranger Things” and how this world was identical to mine except the fact that there were weird snow-like particles in the air, weird slime covered everything here, and gross-disgusting creatures infected this place in graphic ways.

That’s when a Demogorgon noticed me while it was teaching a lesson. I froze in place, now scared to death I would get eaten by this monster.

What did I do in life to deserve this? I was a good friend to Alexa, I was good to my family, I got good grades. Is this the punishment for being a good kid? To die by getting eaten by a Demogorgon and/or class of demodogs? I hope not!

It started to chase after me, ready to pounce on me.

“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!” I screamed at the top of my lungs, running as fast as my legs would carry me.

You know, I’m glad I run both cross country and track. I can run really fast for short distances and long distances, which was especially helpful in this situation, where I was being chased by a Demogorgon.

Is this SERIOUSLY my reality? WHY??!!

As I ran deeper into the forest, the squeaking and gurgling noises coming from the Demogorgon trailing me & enveloping me in sheer terror – and denial of the reality of my luck – I started to make out human voices.

They sounded distant, but at the same time, close. But I recognized them. They were my family’s voices.

“Maddie! Are you there?” called out my older sister, Blake.

“Come out, come out, wherever you are!!” yelled out my younger brother, Logan.

“Maddie!! Maddie!!” called out Mom & Dad.

Though I knew it would reveal my location to that scary Demogorgon, I answered. I hoped that my family would get me out of this creepy place – that almost mirrored the normal world, but with weird slime and particles floating mindlessly in the air – before, it would find me.

“Mom? Dad? Blake? Logan?” I asked, my voice off-pitch with both fear and desperateness.

“Maddie! We’re here! Where are you?” yelled Blake.

The Demogorgon got closer to me, and now I was trapped in the forest.

I really wish the school wasn’t infested with demogorgons and demodogs.