by Christine Lorraine Morgan, April 10, 2026

1951

The incessant ringing of the phone from its perch next to her bed wasn’t helping Mrs. Miller’s sleeplessness. Its high-pitched bells pierced the darkness of her bedroom.

Just as she decided to shut it up by answering it, the ringing stopped.

Now the only remaining sound left of the night was the rain tap-tap-tapping against her window.

Mrs. Miller wanted to sleep, but vivid memories of her life “before” were keeping her awake on this spring night in 1951. She had buried her beloved husband a month ago, and visions of what her world was like with him around continuously crashed into the reality of the present moment in which she existed but he did not.

Sullenly, and with subdued movement, she rose from the warmth of her bed to gaze out of the rain-spattered window.

In a flash of a second, Mrs. Miller felt glad that she had not been able to sleep, because even through the rain, from the light cast by her front porch bulb, she was able to discern two dark figures stealthily creeping past the front of her home. It was well after midnight, and in her sprawling suburban community, that meant most everyone was fast asleep.

Heart pounding, she gingerly picked up the black phone receiver that had been ringing so annoyingly just a few moments ago. If she called the police quickly enough, maybe they could stop whatever bad thing was happening before it got started.

She reached out to dial the seven-digit number to her local precinct, but there was no dial tone. The main lines connecting her neighborhood had been cut by the perpetrators. This indicated that she was not capable of making a phone call for help.

It also meant that she was alone and helpless, about to face some kind of very scary trouble with no way to seek assistance.

But why would they pick my house?? This question raced through her mind, and the answer was easily deducible. It was probably because her late husband John had insisted they have the biggest, prettiest ranch in the subdivision. That it was a ranch was the other part of the answer, because it was a one-story structure which made it a target for burglars due to easy access through windows and various other ground-level openings.

Mrs. Miller remembered seeing a futuristic movie once in which people had telephones in their cars, and alarms that would go off if intruders tried to break in to someone’s house.

With only seconds to act, she made a plan.

Aside from needing to possess the best house in the community, John also needed something else. He found it necessary to own the absolute loudest ringing alarm clock available because he had a tough time getting out of bed in the morning. John’s wake-up clock was so noisy that their next-door neighbor, Mr. Haggerty, had complained about it last summer because everybody’s windows stay open during the heat.

It measured six inches in diameter, weighed about two pounds, and had oversized glow-in-the-dark digits, with two round metal bells on its rounded top. And when those bells rang, people woke up, including those fast asleep on the next block.

Mrs. Miller grabbed John’s alarm clock, fumbling with its dial controls in the dark, biting back tears of blinding fear that were on the verge of overtaking her.

Trying to be as silent as possible, she released the rusty latch at the top of her wooden window, opened it, leaned out as far as she could, then turned the clock’s hand control until its alarm’s peal sliced through the silence.

She then drew upon every fiber of her softball-playing past and pitched the ringing clock across her short side yard, over Mr. Haggerty’s four-foot tall white picket fence, straight into his window bedroom window, shattering its glass with a sound so horrifically scary that Alfred Hitchcock would admire it. She held her league’s record for longest pitch, a point of her past that had never come in handy until that moment, and what a perfect time it was to resurface.

As it turned out, the pair lurking about the neighborhood that night had not targeted Mrs. Miller’s house, but instead the one across the street from her. It had been rumored that the woman living there owned over a dozen valuable fur coats, which the potential robbers wanted to steal and sell on the black market.

It was true, her neighbor Mrs. Alloway did own over $10,000 worth of highly sought-after furs. Luckily, she was savvy enough to store her valuable coats in a nearby temperature-controlled fur vault. By this point in modern times, most women strove to own at least one decent fur coat, two if possible. Thus fur vaults were a fairly common type of facility.

Within seconds of the shattered window caused by Mrs. Miller’s forceful pitch, the police switchboard was flooded with calls placed by her frantic neighbors.

“What’s the problem?” asked the Police Chief.

The gum-chomping operator covered her microphone with her hand. “Something about glass breaking and bells ringing and somebody says they caught two cat burglars on their veranda or something like that.”

After things had calmed down for Mrs. Miller and her neighbors, she lit up a Lucky Strike to calm her nerves.

* * * * * * * * *

2026

Marie Miller was having difficult falling asleep, so she swallowed two of the tablets prescribed by her doctor to help her rest. She had buried her husband last month, and had been diagnosed with depression, so her primary care specialist thought it best for her to pursue a course of medication to help her endure such trying times.

While Marie slept, two would-be perpetrators were quickly scared off by local police after several neighbors’ outdoor surveillance cameras caught them prowling around the neighborhood. The incident occurred shortly after midnight.