by Julie Helms

Created on: December 08, 2011   Last Updated: January 11, 2012

The little boy had heard all the urban legends of the panoply of characters that roamed the sewers. There were rats as big as himself, covered in long fur, trailing naked pink tales as thick as ropes. Baby alligators had been flushed, then grown into monsters that came back up the toilet to bite your butt with their ragged teeth. Snakes, as long as his room was wide, coiled around the toilet bowl waiting to sink their poisonous fangs into anything silly enough to offer itself.

So he wasn't that surprised when one day he heard a woman's voice in the toilet. “Please help me, I'm trapped!”

The little boy stood stock still, staring at the gently rippling water in the toilet bowl. Nobody had warned him that people got flushed. How terrifying! What was he going to do? Only his dad was home and he was asleep. His dad was only to be awakened in the case of blood or fire. This situation didn't really fit either.

“Just a minute, I'll help,” the little boy said. He ran to his mom's closet with an idea. His mom loved to wear those long decorative scarves. He grabbed one that looked to be the longest and ran lickety-split back to the bathroom.

He stared at the toilet. Maybe he was just imagining it all. “Are you still in there?”

“Yes, I am. Could you get some help please?” the woman's voice responded.

The boy tied one end of the scarf to the toilet seat and flushed the other. It worked! Half the scarf was down the toilet so the woman could just pull herself up and out. Then he had a horrifying thought...what if she was naked when she got flushed and is too shy to come up.

He was a good boy. He left the bathroom, closing the door behind him, giving the woman all the privacy she needed. Off he went to play his video games.

Meanwhile, in the apartment below, a woman who was stuck in her bathroom because of a broken lock, was standing on the toilet, calling up through the air vent to the apartment above. She just needed someone to come open up her door to let her out. She scratched her head as she wondered where her would-be rescuer could have gone...

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