University reopens after the summer holidays,
A bare chested, 21-year-old, Aryan woke up this day feeling elevated. In mind and body. He didn’t feel lazy or the usual cringe at the identical 10-hour schedule stuck to his mirror. In fact, he was feeling hopeful. Standing at 6’1”. He could observe more muscle definition to his linebacker body.
“Wai-wait for me!”, Aryan shouted at his bus taking off. He pushed himself into the crowded bus, with his bag in front. By the time the bus arrived in front of the school, Aryan felt that he had burned away most of his breakfast.
“Don’t push! I’m getting off!”, Aryan wiped his sweat under the bright sun as he mumbled to himself, “Life is a struggle, you will understand when you reach my age….Yeah dad, I think I understand well enough.”
“Oy! Are those the kind of words someone with biceps as big as my thigs should utter? I am sure the passengers gave a wide berth the moment they saw you. And anyway, commute to university is a ritual everyone goes through.” Peter gave short 2 finger salute as he made his way through the crowd of students.
Aryan smiled back as he observed, “You’re awfully early. Don’t tell me you’re still pining after her? Here to get an early glimpse? Either confess or forget her bro. no one likes stalkers.” Aryan had yet to see the girl from first year, peter was “drooling” over. But from how smitten Peter was, Aryan could guess that she must be out of his league...way out of his league.
“Ah! How can you call me a stalker? I just need time to make a good impression or what? did you think she would accept some stranger confessing to her? Anyway, can we talk about you? Did you think about joining our team today? I’m telling you we can destroy those freaks from the computer department if we join us.”, Peter deflected as he pulled at the straps on his bag. Standing at 5’9” jet black hair with flecks of brown hair, Peter was good looking and funny enough to get himself to a girlfriend. But no. Peter had Riya living rent free in his head since the day he first saw her.
Aryan sighed as they made their way to their lecture hall. Brushing his hair aside he answered, “I need to think about it. After all Riya must be beautiful, so if you get shot down. I just might make a move(grins).”
(….)
When the silence stretched unbearably long, Aryan felt guilty for poking at his best friend’s sore point. “Are you perhaps upset?”
“No, Ryan did you hear that? Something exploded.”
“Exploded? Wha—”
A sudden ripple in space twisted across land and air. Aryan like all others in the vicinity, landed on his butt. Peter was right. Only an explosion could have had such effect. Few minutes passed but nothing happened. Aryan checked his phone and noted that the authorities were dismissing the incident and advising the people to carry on with their work. Aryan met Peter’s eyes, they had to investigate this…but after class.
2 hours later in classroom,
A professor with an emotionless disposition, enough to make a robot jealous was teaching to an unenthusiastic class. The students were either talking to each other or were more interested in their phones hidden beneath the desk.
Aryan had occupied one of the window seats. His eyes were fixed on the field outside. To be specific, on the new girl from the first year. He couldn’t be blamed. If someone looked up at the building from the field, they’d witness most of the students stuck to their windows. The only difference was that Aryan was more impressed by her talent in football than her looks. Its not that Aryan didn't notice how good looking she was, He just wasn't interested, not in 5 years, not after his major blunder with his childhood sweetheart, when he was just 16 years old.
'All I need for my future, is a good job and take any woman ready to be my wife...'
Aryan was lost in his thoughts, when all of a sudden, a sharp pain buzzed in his head before he heard a male voice.
Entertain me
Clutching his head, It took some time for the pain to subside. Aryan spun around to look at his classmates.
“Whoever pulled that prank is going to get his ass—"
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He stopped midsentence as he witnessed his classmates and the professor waving their hands in front of each other as if navigating an invisible screen in front of them. They all had their eyes closed. But Aryan could see their eyeballs moving in their sockets.
“Huh, what are you guys doing?”
This couldn’t be a prank. Even if it was, there was no way they could convince the professor to be in on it. When Aryan looked out the window, he was shocked to find people in the same state everywhere, waving their hands in the air frantically.
“What’s going on? Wait does this have something to do with the voice in my head?”
The lights were out. With no fans, Aryan started sweating in the building heat as sweat beaded on his forehead.
“Is this incident isolated to just our university or our region? And why am I the only one awake?”
Aryan tried his smartphone. But no matter how much he tried he couldn’t get it to switch on. It was not just his smartphone that wasn’t working, he tried his benchmate’s and finally the professor’s; conclusion- somehow everything electric has been shut down.
“Wait am I dreaming? maybe this is all just a weird dream and I will wake up any second.”
The tall guy at the backbench finally exclaimed,
“What’s this? Why is it so dark? Where is everyone?”
“Ahh- I can finally hear someone. Where are you? can you see what I’m seeing?” a girl shouted from the front. Very soon the entire class went off. Some huddled together holding hands like children while others kept cursing and mumbling something inaudible or unrecognizable.
“You guys should try opening your eyes. It’s dark because your eyes are closed.”
Aryan tried explaining things to them. But unfortunately—
“Closed?? How do you figure I can see my hands and fingers then? Which idiot would close his eyes at 12:00 in the morning, in the middle of a freaking class?”
“Oy! There’s a clock ticking down. Do we just choose as it tells us to? What do I even choose? Someone help!”
Ginny, the teacher’s favorite, tried to warn everyone, “Stop! Don’t touch anything. This might be dangerous.”
The tall guy at the backbench guffawed, “Is that you Ginny? well now I just have to select the card I want and you can’t stop me b****.”
‘Cards?’
As Aryan watched his classmates waving their hands foolishly. He had this sudden urge to record and troll them on social media, sadly the phones were down. 😐
A calculator made of heavy metal materialized in thin air and dropped onto the fingers of the tall guy. Its weight almost crushing his fingers on the desk.
“Ahhh motherf—Wait! guys he’s right! Open your eyes! (guffaws) you guys look like such a bunch of idiots!”
Conveniently forgetting that he used to be part of this bunch, Siddharth (Sid) glanced around the room to spot Aryan staring at his calculator.
“Huh dude? Did you choose before me? What did you choose? Forget it, let me tell you what I got. I chose the strongest card in the bunch. Master Engineer! It had 4 stars! 4! How many does your card have? Forget it, let me capture a video of these fools.” Stifling his laughter, barely succeeding, he fished out his phone from his pocket and got his socks knocked off his feet.
“WHAAT? Why isn’t my phone working? Did you do something?”
Aryan pinned him a ‘you are dumb’ look from 8 rows down and 4 columns across.
“It’s the same for everyone, Sid. All electronic devices are out.”
Sid blinked twice at him, “I had important stuff in my phone. It’s my life. And also, how will I record these fools?”
“Fu** it! If Sid can choose a card so can I.”
With that more students opened their eyes. Few students received strange objects while a twig materialized in Ginny’s hands. As Aryan tried to make sense of the situation, a scream sliced across the room from near the front door.
A transparent slime monster had made its way from under the closed door and was attacking a male student. The atmosphere chilled as the student screamed. His hands were being pulled into the slime monster’s body. Some of the fairer sex screamed when they witnessed his hands bursting into a cloud of blood inside the slime’s transparent body.
“S-Someone help him!”
Aryan couldn’t believe his eyes, yet he couldn’t deny the horrible butchery happening right in front of his eyes. Somehow, he found his voice.
“Sid! Do something.”
The tall guy gritted his teeth as he rebutted, “What do you expect me to do with a calculator? Calculate its viscosity?”
‘We’re screwed aren’t we?.... Wait ‘entertain me” does that mean it wants me to fight this thing?’
Aryan made a decision as he spotted a fire extinguisher. He grabbed the fire extinguisher before setting it off. The white fog confused the slime, delaying it. As Aryan tried to force it out the classroom. A small stream of fire flew beside him, landing a blast onto the body of the slime and sending Aryan flying backwards.
A splitting headache and a spinning classroom greeted him when Aryan opened his eyes. The slime was dead along with the male student, but everyone crowded around Ginny, chanting her name thanking her.
“Wh-what happened?”
Sid offered a bottled water as he cursed, “That bit** shot flames from her twig. It killed the slime, turning it into a puddle of water. Everyone’s complimenting her, forget that she killed the tony and almost you in the process.”
Tony was the guy being attacked by the slime. Ginny enjoyed the attention she was getting, boasting about her ‘gold coins’ and ‘experience’. From what he could gather, Ginny received a notification upon killing the slime. She had received 100 xp and 2 gold coins for the kill. Her conclusion, they were playing a game, and with higher the player level better their chance of survival.
A flash of golden light at the periphery of his vision, attracted his attention. A card lay submerged under the dead slime’s body.