Sleep tight, Oscar

This was my Monday morning:

After turning off my alarm I rolled out of bed, stumbled to the hallway and made my way to our bathroom. My roommate was standing in front of the sink brushing her teeth.
"I'm almost done," she said. She spit, rinsed off her toothbrush and opened the cabinet above the sink. "I just need to put in my contacts."
"You're fine." I leaned against the door frame and covered my mouth as I yawned.
We started to chit chat about our plans for the day when an odd sound came from the living room.
Blub...blub...blub
"What's that?" I turned to look into the kitchen.
"I don't know..." She tilted her head. "It kind of sounds like Oscar,"

(That's what we named our water heater.)

We stood silently for a few seconds listening.
Suddenly, the water in the toilet started to bubble. Huge air pockets exploded from the water's surface every few seconds.
Bloop, bloop, bloop...
"Um..." I scratched my arm and tried not to smile. "Our toilet is burping."
"I'm going to call Kyle," she said.

She went down the hallway to call our landlord and I stepped into the bathroom to get a better look. The toilet would burp about two or three seconds after Oscar The Water Heater. I swear they were communicating. They were talking. I leaned against the wall and wondered what a water heater could possibly have to say to a toilet. 

I felt a little left out.

"It's still doing it, right?" my roommate yelled from her room.
"Yeah," I called back.  I stepped away from the wall and leaned over the toilet bowl to get a closer look.

And then this happened. 

(That's me on the right)

"Gah!"

"What's happening?" My roommate yelled from her room.

Water gushed from the toilet and quickly spread across the floor. Something black and murky started to seep out of the shower drain and fill the bottom of the tub.

"Gah!" I screamed again. "I'm drowning!"

I splashed around like a crazy woman for the first 13 seconds, picking up rugs, moving trashcans, lifting shower curtains. By the 14th second I realized I better do something about the waterfall so I made my way to the toilet, lifted up the tank cover, poked around inside and pulled the first lever I saw. 

Sweet watery peace.

I had one hand in the tank, one holding on to the cupboard above me, one foot on the toilet and the other on the sink. I looked like a moist female Spider-Man. An impressive amount of water slowly settled on the bathroom floor. My roommate stood in the doorway, her hand to her face and her phone to her ear.

"Kyle," she said. "There's a lake in our bathroom."

Needless to say, I didn't get to shower before work that day. Kyle came over a few minutes later, tapped the pipes and poked around the furnace. After an hour he decided we must have had a slight blockage that just passed through on its own.

I think differently. Before I go to bed now I sneak out to the living room, lean up to the utility closet and whisper good night to Oscar. I don't want him to feel neglected. If he's not appeased he might gurgle hostile somethings to the kitchen appliances.

It gives me the willies just thinking about it.