In the dark of the night...

Today our heroine faces a most gruesome enemy: paranoia. It sprang out at her suddenly, like the homeless man behind the garbage pail in San Francisco. It was not the gradually creeping sort at all. She was startled almost out of her wits! By what, you ask, dear readers? A sound. An irregular tipping, tapping sound right at her window. A sound not commonly heard in wintertime. Snow makes no sound at all, and wind causes a different sound when it sweeps the branches of close trees on the wall by the bed. This is a different sound. A sometimes solitary, sometimes quick succession of taps. Is it creaking? Could the wall be buckling beneath the weight of snow on the roof? The last several storms left 3 feet of snow in the yard, how much has accumulated on the house? Every day there is a story on the news about a building whose roof has collapsed. Airplane hangers, stores, greenhouses, all have crumbled under the pressure. But all of those roofs are flat. How flat is our quivering heroine's? Why has she never cared to look! There are also the trees to consider. Numerous trees have lost branches or completely fallen over. The snow and ice weigh heavily on their branches, forcing them down from their lofty stature. A tree could fall onto the roof, breaking its already faltering will to hold up against terrible stress, causing the whole structure to come down into her supposedly safe and cozy bed! How can the parents sleep through this terror?!

And yet, the possibility exists that these sounds are not in fact harbingers of a horrifying end for our dear girl. There is a fine drizzle tonight, and the temperature is 34 degrees fahrenheit. Just above freezing. It's possible that the light rain and comparatively warm air are melting the snow. The unsettling noises could be the sound of water dripping. Perhaps the icicles are loosening their grips on the gutter and are falling to their well-deserved peril (icicles are nasty characters, as anyone who has examined them would rightly know).

As the girl considers the latter proposition, she remembers the wise words of her highly educated doctor. "Calm down." Yes, yes, we must remember the powerful capability of the mind to create unlikely scenarios. Twice already (a third incident was narrowly avoided) our poor heroine had worked herself into such a terrified frenzy that she fainted. She was examined by professionals with expensive medical equipment, and it was deduced that there are no problems with her heart or brain, so the episodes of syncope must have been caused by mental and/or emotional stress. 'Yes,' she thinks to herself, 'I have been silly. I've been foolish. I must not worry like an old woman.' So she took some deep breaths and with only some hesitation retired to her bed with a book.