Halfway on the stairs, I reeled back, startled, and almost lost my footing. I strained my ears and tried to make out the source of the noise. It was a low, deep and menacing hum — and it was coming from my room.

Fleeting visions flashed into my mind one after the other: of masked men and monsters that I had seen in horror movies or read about in thriller/mysteries. Right at that moment my blood ran cold and the breath seemed to have been punched out of me. I gripped the railing with sweaty palms and contemplated my next move.

I had just arrived home from a boring family dinner. I had to study for a biology exam I had the next day so my parents had dropped me home before going off shopping. I had killed an hour on my PlayStation blowing up aliens and fighting galactic wars (possibly more than an hour during which I was supposed to be swatting up on the human anatomy).

After I had chanced to glance at my watch and gotten over the shock of time having passed so quickly, guilt overcame laziness and I decided to trudge into my room and start looking for the biology textbook which had gone missing many months ago.

But as I was climbing up the stairs, I heard the noise. Every nerve in my body seemed to reverberate with it. I was rooted on the spot. I had battled with a lot of villains in games, of course, but never in real life.

Indecisively, I wavered between calling the police and yelling to the neighbours for help, but my inner ‘Call of Duty’ veteran helped me make the final decision.

I tiptoed up the stairs, my heart beat wildly, my hands shaking. I reached the landing and started creeping up the corridor towards my room. My feet made no noise as I stepped over the thick carpet. The noise seemed to become louder and more threatening as I neared the door. I faltered in my steps for a moment and a wave of hesitation threatened to overcome my resolve, but I fought it down. I paused when I came to the broom cupboard.

There was an ominous creak, a muffled bang and a stifled yelp as I hit my foot against its ajar door — the thieves, or whoever they were, would surely know I was there.

But there was no movement and the noise hummed at me as mockingly as before. I grabbed a plastic broom to wield as a weapon and continued towards the door. I inhaled great shuddering breaths of air — and kicked open the door.

My eyes fell upon the cupboards first. The doors were wide open and clothes, lots of clothes of all colours and shapes had tumbled down from the shelf, as if the cupboards had regurgitated them.

It was a burglary, then. In my confusion I spotted a favourite shirt that I had not seen for many moons and a pile of dirty laundry that I had one hastily shoved into a drawer when my mother had told me to pick them up from the floor.

I swept my vision over the mass of junk and garbage that perpetually carpeted my room, but there was no one there.

I then realised I was still standing in a ridiculous pose that was the result of kicking open the door and brandishing the broom above my head, and hastily corrected myself. But the noise was still there, and I traced it to its source. On my dressing table laid my hair-dryer, striving piteously at full power to throw hot air at the wooden, now extremely hot surface of the table.

It was then that everything came to me in a flash. I had been in such a hurry to get ready before the dinner that I had strewn all my things out of my cupboard onto the floor when I couldn’t find my bracelet. I had also been in the middle of drying my hair when there had been a power outage, and I had forgotten to turn off the hair-dryer.

I whipped out the plug from the socket in horror and fanned the scorching table top futilely. I shuddered as I thought of what my father was going to say when the electricity bill came next month. I calculated that it must have been on for two hours at least. At the same time, I was extremely thankful that the house had not come down in flames — or I could have kissed the chance of getting the latest Nintendo model for my birthday goodbye.

Published in Dawn, Young World April 22nd, 2017