Dream CLXXI

I was puttering around the house when there was a knock on the door.  A middle-aged man, who looked like a service man of some sort, told me he was here to inspect the plumbing.  He had to prove that it was "up to code."

I let him into the basement.  The basement was very large, filled with old furniture and such.  There were also parts of sculptures and some painting stuff I'd used a while ago.

As he was checking various pipes, an older woman came up to me and asked where the bathroom was.  She was already looking inside a room that had fixtures, but it was not connected to the water supply.  I pointed her to the room in the corner and brought her over, leading with my flashlight.  I handed her the flashlight, but she said she preferred a different one that she'd brought with her; however. she had left it on a cabinet back near the door.  I told her to wait, then duly went and got it for her.

I went and checked with the plumber.  He said things were looking good, that the system was old but seemed fine.  As I looked over the basement, I saw a number of Christmas presents, and figured my brother was storing his family's gifts here.  A number of them appeared to be old, used housepaint brushes.  I figured one of those was probably for me.

I walked back over to the door and saw one of my paint brushes lying on a table.  It looked like I hadn't cleaned it, and I thought idly of doing so, reaching for it.

Instantly, a horde of white fibers extruded from the brush end.  I withdrew my hand in shock, and the fibers withdrew back into the brush.  "Hey, look at this," I called out.

The plumber came over, and when I reached for the brush, nothing happened.  I touched it, and a huge mass of black, bubbling fibers came out of the end.  They were threatening to spill off the table, so I knocked the brush further back.  The fibers withdrew for a moment, then immediately came back.

Just then, his wife was inspecting some of the pipes, and pressed a relief valve.  A huge rush of water shot out; she stepped back in shock.  "It's not hooked up!" she said.

I could see that there was a pipe toward the ceiling that didn't seem to be attached to anything.  Back near the wall, there was a giant rubber tube structure that was just laying against the wall.  I could see where it would fit onto the lone pipe, which would then feed the relief valve.  I had a panic then, because the structure had fallen a couple of months before, and I thought of all the water that must have flowed out onto the floor.

I tried to manipulate the large structure so it was fitted properly, but was having difficulty moving it with any precision.  I thought I had gotten it hooked into the pipe's projections, but when I asked the plumber, he said no, that the loops aren't actually closed, and we'd need to get parts.

So we left the house.  It was a nice sunny day, but there were large pools of water everywhere, forcing us to take a rather circuitous route to the hardware store. 

Once we found what we needed, we saw that the flooding had increased, so we had to take an even longer route to get back to the house.

Some of the streets were so steep, I thought I'd help, so I got behind the plumber and tried to push from behind.

"What are you doing?" he asked, his voice very slow and cautious.

"Trying to help?" I said, but he looked at me strangely.  I stepped back from him, and surveyed the land.

The light from the sunrise seemed to show that everything was fine now, and the path back to the house was clear.