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Ashok’s eyes glazed over while the math YouTuber was explaining some formula. Damn it, he thought. I can’t do this now, I’ll get back to this later.
He closed his laptop and lay on the floor of his room in sheer exhaustion, not even bothering to get to the bed. He closed his eyes but could still see differentials and integrals dancing across the inside of his eyelids.
Ashok couldn’t remember the time, and didn’t want to open his laptop again to check. Was it three in the morning? Maybe four? Who could even tell. His phone vibrated and he didn’t bother looking at it. His eyes refused to open, his limbs refused to move, and his brain refused to think.
Ashok’s left ear felt cold as it pressed against the floor. Some machinery or devices were humming and vibrating. It was the kind of thing you would never notice if you had anything else to pay attention to, but which was totally obvious to acolytes in meditation, insomniacs struggling to sleep, and the proverbial fools watching paint dry.
But in addition to the humming, Ashok started to notice something else. He really didn’t want to think about it, but there was inhuman scratching and clawing, punctuated by high pitched squeaks. Someone, or something, was tearing apart the mysterious realm below the floorboards.
Ashok did not want to get up, but the clawing was getting louder and louder. He instructed his eyes to open and looked around at the room he was lying in, lit only by the study lamp on his desk. He rose from the floor and stood on his feet, reclaiming his rightful place among the bipedal primates of the genus Homo. He could still feel vibrations through his toes, and instinctually took a step back.
Suddenly a hole opened up in the floor and a pair of jaws snapped at the air. It was a rodent unlike any Ashok had seen in his life, a rat as large as a pit bull. It snarled and drool dripped down from its front teeth.
Each part was written in 15 minutes in a Joy of Writing session.