It was half past Wednesday when I woke up to the sound of noises, silently echoing around my room. I looked up, then down, then up, then down, then my neck hurt. I saw nothing, but heard more than enough to tell me that there was something in my room. I rolled off my bed and looked under it. There was nothing underneath, save for a few dirty magazines and a hot cross bun that I didn’t remember putting there. I opened my wardrobe door and found only a line of neatly folded clothes and some more dirty magazines. I asked the radiator if it had heard the noises also, but got no reply. It was obviously asleep. When I could not stand it any longer, I left my room for the sanctity of the living room. Surely in there the noise could not follow me. But follow me it did, not only into the living room, but all around our house. In the toilet it buzzed. In the kitchen it hummed. In the dining room it hummed some more.

There was nobody else in the house, so I was alone with the noise. In the kitchen I picked out a knife from the drawer. If the noisemaker should choose to attack me, I was prepared. I swung it to and fro in practice for my self defence, looking not dissimilar to Jackie Chan having a stroke. My martial arts expertise may have been lacking, but my irritability more than made up for it. I returned to the living room, which was the largest room in the house but also the most magnolia painted. I crouched down in the corner and started to strategise in my head. As I sat there, my head filled with notions of extraordinary fight scenes and special effects, my gaze was suddenly turned to the door. The handle on the door was slowly turning and soon the door was slowly opening. “Hello?” a voice whispered. I did not answer it, because I was taught never to talk to strangers, and I hadn’t assessed whether the owner of this voice was a stranger yet. I didn’t have long before I found out. It was a voice familiar to me. Very familiar. The voice was that of my father, who turned on the lights and stared at me with utter confusion written all over his face. I smiled slightly, feeling comfortable in the knowledge that my father was at hand to help me in my struggle to overcome the mysterious noisemaker. He put his work bag down and walked over to me.

“What are you doing?” he asked.
“I’m scared.” I replied, wrongly.
“Scared of what?” he asked.
“Of whatever is making that strange buzzing noise.” I said.

He then thought for a moment, before doing something rather odd. He put his hand in my pyjama pocket and pulled out a little clock that was vibrating and making a ringing noise, which had been muffled inside my pyjama pocket.

“It’s your alarm clock you fool.” my father said.
“Oh.” I replied.

I still had the knife in my hand, so I lifted it up and then brought it down rapidly onto the clock, which shattered into a million pieces. It may not have been a million exactly, I did not count, but it was quite a lot I can tell you that much.

“That’s sorted that one then.” I said, and then I went into the kitchen to make some porridge.