Artfully Yours by Isabel North

she got it up, it groaned back down.
    “Here,” Jenny said beside her moments later and handed her a piece of string.
    Elle held up the string. “Oh, good. Time to MacGyver it.”
    “Make a loop and sling it around the handle,” Jenny said, picking at a roll of duct tape to find the beginning. She zipped out a strip and cut it. “Leave a long end.”
    Elle did, handing the free end to Jenny.
    “Get the handle up and hold it.” Jenny pulled the string taut, taking the strain of the handle. She laid it along the side of the cistern, slapped the piece of duct tape over it to keep it there, zipped off another piece, and made a sturdy silver X.
    “Nice,” Elle said. “Very resourceful.”
    “Thank you.”
    “Think it’ll hold?”
    Jenny stuck another couple of pieces of tape onto the string. “Yup.”
    “Fantastic. Now all we have to do is unblock it.”
    Jenny’s nose wrinkled, her shoulders drooped, and she turned to Katie. “What did you put down there, honey?”
    Katie stopped jumping. “Nothing.”
    Jenny closed one eye at her and made the other really big.
    Katie laughed. “Nothing!”
    “Darn it,” Jenny said. “The blockage must be…something else.”
    They shuddered. Elle took in Jenny’s pinched white face. “You put Katie to bed—” protect the eyes of the innocent , “—and I’ll make a plan.”
    Ten minutes later, the plan hadn’t much developed beyond Jenny’s, “Just stick your arm down there.”
    “No!”
    “You’re a nurse. Bet you’ve had your hand in worse places.”
    Sad but true. “And if you don’t get off my case, I’ll tell you about it in extreme and graphic detail. Besides, all those other times I had gloves and scrubs and methods of sterilization and hazardous waste disposal protocols.”
    “Then we just try flushing it again. Maybe it simply needs to pass. Like a kidney stone.”
    “It’s possible.”
    Jenny glared at the toilet. Then she whacked it with her crutch. “I’ve had it!” she whisper-yelled, mindful of her daughter in bed two doors down from the bathroom. “Stupid dumbass motherf—”
    The toilet gulped.
    “Hey,” Elle said, “that might work. Don’t break it, but give it another tap.”
    Jenny smacked it. The surface of the water in the bowl shivered, and something dark surged up from the U-bend.
    “ Run! ” Elle shrieked.
    They dashed out, slammed the door, and stood with their backs to it, panting.
    “The heck was that?” Elle gasped.
    Jenny covered her mouth to hold back the giggles.
    “Was it a bird ?” They had tossed a ratty old parrot cage earlier. “Did that thing have wings?”
    “Hell if I know,” Jenny managed to say, “but I’m thinking demon. Go look.”
    Elle eyed her. “I’m not going back in there without a weapon.”
    Jenny offered her a crutch.
    Elle batted it away. “I need a damn plunger.”
    “It’s nine p.m. on a Sunday night. I know I didn’t bring a plunger from home. From my ex-home. Nowhere’s open to buy one. And the odds of finding one in this junkyard?”
    “You found string and duct tape.”
    “That was my string and duct tape, from my ex-junk drawer.”
    Elle chewed her lip. “Not exactly a cup of sugar, but I guess I could go and borrow one from the neighbor,” she said reluctantly.
     
    Elle drove the short distance to the Adams place and turned down the track to where the house was set well back from the road, surrounded by trees. She wondered if Mr. Adams still lived there. She kind of hoped not. He wasn’t a nice guy.
    The lights were on in the house. Good start. The idea of getting the angry old man out of bed to ask him for a plunger wasn’t something she relished. Elle jumped out the car and jogged up the driveway. She banged on the door and waited. Banged again. No answer. “Hello?” she called. Still nothing. She went back to her car, jingling the keys in her hand, trying to decide if she had the nerve to go pound on the back door.
    A faint glow of light gleaming from the