A sinkhole the size of six football fields opens up outside the front door of average teen girl. Never mind, it’s not a sinkhole, it’s the yawning mouth of a creature living beneath the Earth that has been sleeping for millennia as layers of time have built up around it! The guy is not malicious at all he is just a huge sleepy thing let him live.
Girl is taken into police questioning about the incident because she is a prime witness or something. They tell her to leave her house but she refuses even though it’s right in front of the pit. Soon she has notebooks and journals and diaries filled with observations and builds janky little instruments to measure certain vital signs and other data points which she attaches to the outside of her window or her roof. She develops an intense obsession with monitoring the creature and observing everything about it. Meanwhile, the hole around the creature continues to grow wider and wider. She is told to leave her house for her own safety, but she can’t bear to leave it, so she stays, and her house falls in with her inside.
A couple months ago I had this idea for a story. Above is a lightly edited version of what I wrote in my Notes App while coming up with it.
Something about the mental image of a huge mouth opening in the ground and interrupting an otherwise normal scene appealed to me. Remember to call PG&E to confirm that there is no eldritch badger under your house before digging any holes.
