The Ghost with a Grudge

My brain felt like a jam-packed cereal box that had been shaken too hard. Every flake, every tiny puff of sugar, was rattling against another, making a deafening racket. That’s what it was like to be me, Elara. One minute I’d be trying to focus on Mrs. Gable’s suspiciously bright pink knitting, and the next I'd be drowning in the sheer, unadulterated annoyance radiating from Mr. Henderson’s cat, Whiskers, who was currently glaring at a particularly fluffy dandelion. It was *exhausting*. I sometimes wished my superpowers would just, you know, take a five-minute break. Maybe a long weekend. A sabbatical. Anything.

And then, the weirdness. Oh, the weirdness! The garden gnomes in Mrs. Higgins’ prize-winning petunias had vanished overnight, leaving behind only tiny, perfectly circular indentations in the soil. Then, just yesterday, the entire town square had erupted in a spontaneous, ear-splitting polka outbreak. Not a band, not a radio, just… music. From thin air. Leo, my best friend and partner in all things slightly off-kilter, had declared it a ‘Level 7 Glitch in the Matrix,’ which was his go-to explanation for anything that couldn't be explained by, well, anything.

“It’s not a glitch, Leo,” I’d groaned, clutching my head as a phantom waltz tune echoed in my skull. “It’s… a feeling. A really, really grumpy feeling.”