Our Lady of the Not-So-Immaculate Plumbing Works

More about Our Lady of the Not-So-Immaculate Plumbing Works

Bill was 68 and forgotten. He’d once thought he could be an artist, but poverty erased that dream. No one loves a poor man. Bill knew it well. His only companion was faith, worn and ritualistic, like the Bible he’d read every morning for decades—2,348 times through, but who was counting? He lived in a crumbling room in a four-story SRO, where the walls breathed mold and decay. He worked nights as a janitor, cleaning up other people’s messes, invisible to the world.

The pipes in his building had started acting up—at first just a low rattle, then louder, more insistent. Every day after Bill finished his rosary, the noise would start, clanging in the walls like it had something to say. At first, he ignored it. But as the days went on, it became impossible to shake the feeling that the noise was… intentional.

One morning, Bill was reading from the Gospel of Luke:
“And Mary said, ‘Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to thy word.’”
The pipes groaned, louder this time. Bill looked up. It wasn’t a coincidence. The timing, the intensity—it all felt deliberate. The rattling followed his prayers now, a dark echo to his faith. He tried to push it from his mind, but the noise seemed to mock him, dragging him deeper into unease.

Days passed, and the pipes grew worse, rattling like chains, the sound always coming just after his readings. One night, he read from the Wedding at Cana:
“His mother saith unto the servants, ‘Whatsoever he saith unto you, do it.’”
The pipes banged hard. Bill jolted, his heart pounding. The message was clear. Do something. But what? He wasn’t sure anymore if this was a plumbing issue or something darker, something he couldn’t see but could feel closing in.

By now, Bill’s nights were sleepless. The pipes never stopped. Even in the silence, he could hear them in his mind, rattling, always rattling. He sat in his cold room, Bible on his lap, flipping aimlessly through the pages, waiting for something to make sense.
“But Mary kept all these things, and pondered them in her heart.”
The pipes fell silent. The stillness was suffocating. What was he supposed to ponder? What was it trying to tell him?

Maybe there were no answers. Only noise. Only the clanging of pipes in a broken building, just like the broken man who lived inside it.

The next morning, the rattling began again. And Bill, with shaking hands, reached for his Bible.