The first time it moved, my entire body went cold.
One second it was just “something” on the tile. The next, it was alive—and feeding. Every quiet drip in the bathroom sounded like a warning. Each shadow felt contaminated. I thought I knew what was safe in my own home. I was wro… Continues…
I stood in the doorway, suddenly afraid to cross the same floor I’d walked a hundred times without thinking. The thing on the tile was no longer an “it” in my mind, but a living intruder that had crossed some invisible line between outdoors and in, wild and domestic, harmless and quietly dangerous. The bathroom’s familiar white surfaces now felt like a stage for something I didn’t understand.
When I finally matched what I was seeing to the photos on my phone, the word hit me harder than I expected: leech. A creature that belonged in murky water had somehow appeared under the clean, artificial light of my bathroom. I never did learn exactly how it got there. But the discovery left a mark: the realization that even the safest places can hide something quietly, disturbingly alive—waiting to be noticed.
