Cleanout: A plug in a trap or drain pipe that provides access for the purpose of clearing an obstruction.

The clackalack was torture now.

Dulled jingling and jangling forcing its way through my head, oscillating fiercely so I couldn’t think. Eyes bleary, rubbed-red and grating; work had been a nightmare. I daydreamed away the day and nothing had been done.

This job is killing me. There’s too much on the table now, the deal so close to its conclusion and so much left to do, and what then? I knew that this would all be on my shoulders, and I knew that it sickened me to do it.

I could feel my stomach squirm at the thought of tomorrow, ulcers forming there. Two days at the most till the deal was closed, but tomorrow, it was D-day.

Until then, I needed focus, but could find none.
No focus to take the spotlight from me, except the dim and uncertain feelings of self disgust. My day flashing through memory, shunting like a skipping CD, ignoring all logic to flood the mind with the pithy acid of remorse, the most pathetic of all drugs.

And always, interruption, clackalack, clackalack, and I couldn’t think.

It had started two days ago. Fiercely at first, but always the same pattern. Three clacks with a long gap of silence between each, then three clacks, in quick succession, then a gap, then three more quick taps. Always at the same rhythm, never ceasing or stopping.

It was coming from the pipes.
They were an ancient maze that had ran through the building since its erection. They climbed walls and scurried across ceilings, brass and dirty green, covered in globules of ancient dust and grime that would never be cleaned.
And for the last two days they had greeted me as soon as I stepped into the apartment with their incessant jingle. I had told the janitor after some fourteen hours of a sleepless night, but said he had called when I was out and could hear nothing.
I had already called him twice more, I was sure he would come running soon.There was little point hiding from it though. I knew there was no way I was sleeping tonight, pipes or no, and It wasn’t going to kill me. I turned out the lights, and settled down to unsettled squirming. Six hours until work. I started counting the cracks in the ceiling.

In the morning it had stopped. It was replaced with the loneliness of a lost heart beat. I waited for a half an hour, holding my breath until my heart leapt up and hammered my lungs, forcing in sharp inhalations that hurt my chest.

I realised I was hoping it would start again.