One morning, early last week, my alarm slowly rang, louder and louder until it broke my temporary unconsciousness. I awoke, gently drifting back into a deep sleep until my second alarm pinged louder. This was my normal routine, a constant, repetitive back-and-forth between me and the obnoxious bells dragging me into reality.
When I finally decided to admit defeat to my rude bedside sidekick, I turned and it had vanished. I checked the floor and down the side of the bed to no avail. How could something I had heard so clearly and just pressed 'snooze' on really be gone? I lifted out of bed and looked around my messy bedroom. How had I let it get so disorganised? At least I'd managed to separate the dirty clothes from the clean ones in my dishevelled piles. I looked at the dirty clothes in dismay, closed my eyes and took a deep breath. As I opened my eyes, to my astonishment, they had disappeared. I blinked twice yet they were gone. This could not be a coincidence, first the alarm and now the clothes.
I looked to the clean mess on the opposite side of the room now and tried to do the same. I thought about how much of an annoyance they were and closed my eyes. I had figured I'd awoken with a superpower. A superpower that made things easy for me! It fixed everything around me. And so when I opened my eyes I knew what to expect, the clean clothes were gone! I ran to my drawers, hoping to find my clothes neatly folded within them and yet all I found was empty spaces. My clothes had completely disappeared!
I figured, this was not a superpower that fixed everything. So what was it? It seemed to make things miraculously disappear. I had heard of having a superpower of disappearance, but didn't that make you temporarily disappear? Not make everything else disappear! Days went by and I kept making obnoxious things in my life just disappear. I figured that they would reappear later in my life, but nothing materialised.
There just had to be something better I could do with this newfound power. I found myself thinking this every day on the way to work. Until one day I decided to take a detour and get some donuts on my way in. I thought that if the world had gifted me with this power the least I could do is be the guy that brings the free snacks into work. I couldn't make things reappear but I could buy some small bits of happiness.
On the way, I walked past a place I had never really glanced twice at. It was the cancer hospital. I looked and saw the people in the waiting room. I decided to make yet another detour and entered the building. Sitting on the nearest chair, I commenced a conversation with a couple. They were sat in silence, with sadness in their eyes. As I spoke with them, I learnt their situation and I figured the best use of my new power.