Downpipe Blocked 📍

She tugged on her wellingtons, the rubber stiff from disuse, and marched outside. The downpipe, a slender, white PVC column running from the gutter to a cracked concrete splash block, looked innocent enough. But when she peered up at the gutter, she saw it: a dark, wet dam of decomposing leaves, moss, and a single, inexplicably shiny tennis ball.

She looked out the window at the downpipe. It was no longer silent. It was humming a low, gurgling song. And she understood, with a cold, certain horror, that she hadn't unblocked the pipe. She had opened a door. downpipe blocked

Eleanor had inherited 17 Maple Drive from her Aunt Margaret, a woman who had treated her bungalow like a ship’s captain treats a vessel. Every tile, every gutter, every whisper of the drainpipes had been accounted for. Eleanor, a graphic designer who preferred the clean logic of a screen to the messy physics of the real world, had let things slide. The autumn had been a spectacular riot of colour, and the giant sycamore tree in the front yard had surrendered every single one of its copper-coloured leaves directly onto the roof. She tugged on her wellingtons, the rubber stiff

The first time the gurgle started, Eleanor ignored it. It was a low, wet cough from the downpipe outside her kitchen window, easily dismissed as the old house settling after a spring shower. By the third week of November, the cough had become a death rattle, and then, a silence so complete it was more ominous than any noise. She looked out the window at the downpipe

Eleanor laughed, a sharp, hollow sound. It was a prank. Some neighbourhood kid. But the paper was old. The ink had the sepia tinge of time. She turned the page.

She fetched a ladder, a trowel, and a bucket. The first scoop of sludge came out with a wet schlorp —a black, gritty paste that smelled of ancient rainwater and rot. She worked methodically, pulling out fistfuls of the muck. But after clearing the gutter, the downpipe remained a mute, stubborn plug. She poked a garden cane down the top. It went about two feet and stopped. Solid.