Annoyances

                The beeping of my alarm jolts me awake. I quickly smash the snooze button, silencing the annoying beeping that woke me from my tranquil sleep.
                I sleepily look at the time on the digital alarm clock to see that it isn’t six o’clock in the morning yet. I’m definitely not going to get out bed before six in the morning. “Yeah, sleep is good,” I murmur stupidly to myself, half-asleep. I rest my head on my soft pillow and I quickly return to my peaceful slumber.
        ***
                I’m woken by the sun shining in my eyes.
                I squint at the sun that’s obnoxiously casting its ray of lights through my windows and into my eyes. When I realize that the sun is hanging in the sky instead of the moon, I quickly jump out of bed. It’s six o’clock in the morning, right? The moon should be out at this time. Why is the sun out?
                A sense of dread ties my stomach into a knot. I check my alarm in a panic. I see that it’s not six o’clock in the morning as it should be. It’s almost noon. I’m supposed to be in school right now.
                Oh, my God! I think, restraining myself from screaming, Why didn’t my alarm wake me up? What am I going to do? I just missed, like, five of my classes! Mom’s totally going to kill me when she finds out!
                My alarm begins to beep again. I glare at the beeping alarm clock with hatred burning in my dark brown eyes. It seems to be mocking me. “You suck,” I mutter angrily as if my words could hurt the inanimate object’s feelings.
                I turn the alarm off, silencing the annoying sound for the remainder of the day. After setting the alarm clock back on my nightstand, I quickly sprint to my closet. I yank off my pajamas and I pull on my grey jeans with a dark blue t-shirt. I pull a light blue sweatshirt off of its hanger and I put it over my t-shirt.
                I grab a pair of white sneakers from my closet and I rush to my dresser where my hairbrush usually is. As I force my feet into my shoes, I scan the dresser for my hairbrush. I don’t find the hairbrush. I usually leave it near the glass figure of a horse that my grandma bought me for Christmas a few years ago, but it isn’t there.
                Frustration washes over me. “I don’t have time for this,” I mutter angrily. I’m already late to school. I don’t need any more bad things happening to me that would make me later to school than I already am.
                I open each drawer in my dresser, thinking that I may have stupidly placed it in one of the messy, cluttered drawers, but to my disappointment, it isn’t in any of the drawers. A mixture of panic and frustration consumes me. “Are you kidding me? I just want to get to school, so my mom doesn’t kill me!” I shout to no one in particular.
                I rush downstairs, hoping that there will be a hairbrush in our kitchen drawer that I like to call the “junk drawer” since the drawer is filled with random items that are usually useless. It’s never been reliable before, but maybe �" just maybe �" it will be this time.
                When I get to the kitchen, I slide the drawer open and find an old hairbrush, relieving me of the stress of finding a hairbrush. The hairbrush looks overused, but it’ll be able to get rid of the tangles hiding in my hair. I grab the hairbrush and quickly brush through my hair without looking in the mirror to see if it looks like a mess or not.
                I place the hairbrush back in its drawer and I begin to search for my backpack. I look at the kitchen table where I left it last night, but it isn’t there. It’s gone missing with my hairbrush. “Kill me,” I mutter bitterly.
                I can’t go to school without my backpack. That’s like going skydiving without a parachute.
                Well, not as bad as that, but it’s still bad.
                Maybe it’s in my room, I think. I didn’t see my backpack in my bedroom before I left, but I may have glanced over it since I’m in such a rush. I’ll have to check my bedroom for my backpack.
                I climb up the stairs and I walk into my bedroom. I scan the room that has dirty clothes and late homework scattered across the hardwood floor, but I don’t find my backpack. Great, I think sarcastically, Time to check around the house then.
                I look throughout the entire household for my backpack, peeking in places that my backpack would probably never be, but I still can’t find my backpack. Where the hell did it go? I think bitterly. This shouldn’t be happening. My backpack should have been on the table where I left it last night. Whoever moved it will regret doing so.
                “I swear,” I angrily mutter, running down the stairs, “If I don’t find my backpack soon, I’m going to murder someone.” I walk into the kitchen, ready to call my mom and tell her what happened today in the hopes that she won’t rip my throat out when she arrives home, when I see my backpack innocently lying on the kitchen table as it was last night when I left it there.
                My backpack was not there before. It was definitely missing. How did it get back here? It couldn’t be a ghost, could it? I nervously think. Considering that I’ve met a vampire in this freaky town, it’s possible that there actually is a ghost teasing me.
                “Okay,” I anxiously gulp, shaken up by the strange phenomenon, “I’m just going to go to school and pretend this never happened.” I grab my backpack off of the table and I sling it over my shoulders. I’m about to leave the house when I realize that I don’t have the keys to the house with me. I’ll need them to lock the door behind me when I leave.
                I look to the kitchen counter, expecting the keys to be where I left them when I arrived home from school yesterday, but they’re not there. Fear squeezes my chest. “Oh, my God,” I breathlessly whisper, my heart ready to burst from my chest, “Who took them?”
                I’m about to break down in tears when I suddenly notice that the house keys are hanging on the coat rack by its lanyard. “Oh,” I giggle, feeling embarrassed that I almost had a mental breakdown over nothing. I grab the keys by their lanyard and I pull them off of the wooden coat rack that is beginning to collect dust.
                The sound of glass breaking suddenly echoes throughout the house. A shiver runs down my spine. Fear paralyzes me. I’m the only one in the house and I’m definitely not the one who broke glass. So, who was it then?
                I slowly turn around, expecting to see something so horrible that it would make me faint in terror, but I only see one of the cupboard’s wooden doors hanging open. Glass shards are scattered across the tile floor. The culprit who caused this mess has disappeared to my relief. I was afraid that some creepy monster would be behind me and try to attack me.
                I want to leave the house immediately to get away from the creature that is causing this mess, but I can’t leave the house in this state. My mom would be so angry at me. But is it really worth it to stay here to clean up this mess with the creature? Okay, I think, Should I leave and get away from whatever is in this house or face mom’s wrath when I come home from school?
                There’s no doubt about it. I’m staying here to clean this mess. I’d rather be in the same place as this monster rather than having to come home to be scolded by my mom. My mom’s probably more threatening than this monster.
                I’m about to grab the dustpan to clean up the glass shards on the floor when the annoying sound of my alarm clock suddenly rings throughout the house. Anger induces me. The sound of my alarm clock is more annoying than it ever was before. It’s time to get rid of whatever is causing this ruckus and the only way to do that is to consult the journal.
                I run upstairs to my bedroom where the journal is. When I rush into my bedroom, my eyes land on a gnome-like creature standing on my dresser with the glass horse that my grandma gave to me as a present in its small hands. It has pointed ears and a big, round nose protruding from its chubby face. Its green skin is covered with a thin, tattered cloth that barely covers its round body.
                I gape at the creature, wondering what it is. It doesn’t seem to notice me. It continues to push the glass horse towards the edge of the dresser. When I realize that it’s going to knock the horse off of the dresser and break it, I demand, “Stop that!”
                Its small, slanted eyes dart towards me. It scampers away from the horse in a panic when it sees me. It jumps off of the dresser and it runs into my closet. I walk into my closet and search for the creature, but I can’t find it. It seems to have magically disappeared.
                Well, at least I know it’s not a ghost now, I think as I walk over to the black satchel lying on my nightstand near the beeping alarm clock, But what was that?
                I turn my alarm clock off before opening the satchel to pull the journal out from the bag. I begin to flip through the pages of the journal, trying to find a picture of the gnome-like creature in the old book.
                I finally turn to a page with a picture of the creature drawn onto it. The picture of the creature looks almost identical to the one that’s making a mess of my house. The page is titled Boggarts. The creature that has been causing chaos in my home is a boggart.
                I begin to read from the passage silently. A boggart is a fae creature known for its relentless mischief, the journal states, It is part of a collection of ‘bugbear’ type of spirits, which includes bogles, bogies, and boogeymen. A boggart resembles gnomes in appearance except for its tattered and dusty clothing. They are rarely seen, but make themselves known by noises and mishaps.
                They are clumsy creatures and prefer cluttered, dark areas to hide in. They are hard to get rid of once an infestation starts. To get rid of a boggart, the home owners must act in a manner more annoying than the boggart. If that does not work then it’s advised that the home owners leave their house.
                No matter how much I hate this house, I know that I can’t leave it alone with a boggart infestation. I think it would break my parents’ hearts if they had to leave this place. I’ll have to drive the boggart off before my parents arrive home. I also need to get to school before school hours are over.
                I check the time. It’s almost one o’clock in the afternoon. School is over in about an hour. I’ll have to get rid of the boggart before then. I don’t how I’ll do it in time, but I’ll make sure to succeed.
                The boggart chose the wrong person to mess with. To its misfortune, it chose the household with me in it. Although I don’t like to admit, I can be extremely annoying. This boggart doesn’t stand a chance against me.
                I suddenly hear the sound of glass breaking again from downstairs. “Stop breaking stuff, you little pest!” I yell, knowing that the annoying boggart is the culprit who broke the glass object. Silence fills the house.
                Alright, I think, smiling mischievously, You like dark places, huh, you stupid boggart? Well, that’s about to change.
                I dart around the house, grabbing every flashlight, lantern, and lamp that I can find. After gathering the items, I place them in every dark corner in the house that I can find, illuminating the dark places. When I have the entire house glowing, I evilly chuckle alone in the kitchen. “How do you like that, boggart? You have no dark places to hide in now!”
                There’s a moment of silence before I hear glass breaking upstairs. I begin to wonder if it’s angry with me.
                The sound of glass breaking continues and I hear loud thuds of large objects toppling over onto the floor. Yeah, it’s mad, I think.
                The boggart continues to topple objects over and smash things into pieces. “Stop doing that!” I demand, running upstairs to stop the boggart from making a mess. My mom is going to be furious when she sees what the boggart broke. I might be able to clean it up, but I can’t repair the objects that it broke. If it keeps breaking more things, I’ll get in more trouble.
                I search the rooms upstairs for the boggart until I hear the sound of my alarm clock beeping again. It’s in my bedroom.
                I tiptoe to my bedroom, hoping that I’ll catch the boggart by surprise. I peek into my bedroom to see the boggart standing on my dresser with the glass horse in its hands. It lifts the glass horse in the air and it’s about to throw it on the ground to break it when I suddenly jump into my bedroom and exclaim, “Put that down!”
                The boggart’s dark eyes glare at me. It pulls its lips back to reveal sharp teeth and it snarls at me. It chucks the glass horse on the ground, breaking it into pieces before my eyes. I stare at the shards sadly. The glass horse was a gift that meant a lot to me and the little pest broke it.
                Anger consumes me. I’m going to make sure that the boggart is driven off soon. I don’t want it staying here any longer. “Fine then, boggart. Let’s toughen up the game,” I say, giving the creature an icy glare.
                I grab a white t-shirt lying on the floor and I shape it into a ball. I throw it at the boggart. The creature is hit by the piece of clothing. It falls over on the dresser with the t-shirt lying on top of it. It struggles to push the t-shirt off of its body, but to its misfortune, it’s not strong or smart enough to get the t-shirt off of itself.
                I walk over to my dresser and I pull the boggart out from underneath the shirt. I lift the round creature in the air with both of my hands. “Ha! Got you now!” I triumphantly state. I begin to wonder what I should do with it. Should I throw it out of the window and hope that it will leave my house alone?
                The boggart claws my hands with its tiny yet sharp nails, leaving thin scratches on my skin. “Ow!” I hiss. The stinging pain from the scratches makes me drop the boggart. The boggart lands on its bottom when it reaches the ground. I thought it would have been harmed from the long fall, but it quickly jumps to its feet and scampers away without a limp instead.
                “Stupid boggart,” I angrily mutter under my breath, looking at the scratches it left on my skin.
                It still hasn’t been driven off. I need to find a new way to annoy the boggart. I have the perfect idea of how to annoy it, too. I’ll definitely drive it away from my house if I put this idea into action.
                I grab my laptop and I turn it on. As I wait for my laptop to turn on, I hear the sounds of things breaking from downstairs. I want to run down there and stop the boggart, but I ignore the sounds instead. I know that it won’t be breaking things after I do this annoying action. I’ll let it have its fun for now.
                After my computer loads, I turn my volume as loud as it can go and I begin to play Nicki Minaj’s song, Anaconda. The song blasts throughout the house, making me almost go deaf. The sound of glass breaking stops when Nicki Minaj begins to rap about a boy toy named Troy that used to live in Detroit.
                I carry the laptop downstairs to where the boggart is. I notice the boggart standing near the window. It gives me a deep glare, unwilling to leave the house.
                I begin to loudly sing the chorus of the song. The boggart must not take a liking to my out-of-tune voice since it immediately opens the window and jumps outside. I look out of the window to watch the boggart run away into the woods. The boggart is finally gone. “Haha! Yes!” I shout triumphantly, “Its old man ears didn’t like my great taste in music! I win!”
                Just then, the door opens and my mom walks into the house. I awkwardly stand in the kitchen, holding the laptop that’s blasting Anaconda throughout the house, with glass shards and toppled tables surrounding me.
                This won’t end well.