A Polka-Dot Poltergeist

My brain felt like a popped popcorn kernel, all fluffy and scattered with no real direction. One minute, I was trying to concentrate on not tripping over my own feet in the grocery store aisle, which, let me tell you, is a Herculean task when you can feel Mrs. Higgins’ existential dread about her dwindling prune supply radiating off the shelves like cheap perfume. The next, BAM! Spontaneous polka music. Not like, a radio playing in the background. No, this was full-on, oom-pah-pah, accordion-blaring, tuba-thumping polka music that seemed to emanate from… everywhere and nowhere.

“Elara, are you okay?” Leo’s voice, bless his video-game-addled brain, cut through the sonic assault. He was standing by the cereal boxes, his eyes wide, not from the music, but from the fact that the entire shelf of Frosted Flakes had suddenly rearranged itself into a perfect pyramid. “Did you see that? It’s like the cereal boxes have a secret society!”

I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to filter out the overwhelming sensory smoothie. The polka music was a bright, jarring yellow. The pyramid of cereal was a shaky, unstable blue. And underneath it all, a faint, persistent hum of… something. Something grumpy and theatrical. Like a Shakespearean actor who’d been forced to wear a clown nose.