The bathroom suddenly felt different.
A moment earlier, it had been an ordinary room. A place I entered without thinking.
Now every dark corner seemed suspicious.
Every damp surface looked like a possible hiding place.
Every pipe suddenly seemed like a pathway leading somewhere I didn’t want to imagine.
I began thinking about the people who had used the bathroom before me.
Had anyone noticed it?
Had someone accidentally stepped on it?
Had it been there for hours?
Or had it somehow appeared only recently?
The thought of accidentally touching it made my stomach turn.
I stayed away from it while trying to understand what I was seeing.
Eventually, curiosity won over fear.
I carefully moved closer and examined it again.
This time, I noticed something I hadn’t seen before.
The surface didn’t look like plastic.
It had a strange, moist texture.
And then I saw it.
A slight movement.
It was subtle—so subtle that I almost convinced myself I had imagined it.
But then it moved again.
My stomach dropped.
It wasn’t a piece of trash.
It wasn’t rubber.
It wasn’t some random object that had fallen onto the floor.
It was alive.
I immediately stepped back.
For a moment, I just stood there, trying to process what I had seen.
The realization was somehow worse than the uncertainty.
Because now I had a new question:
This evening, I walked into my girlfriend’s bathroom and spotted this on the floor. I’ve been sitting here for 30 minutes, staring at it and trying to work out what it is.
What exactly was it?
I didn’t want to touch it.
I didn’t want to get any closer.
So I did what most people would probably do in that situation—I started searching for answers.
I took a closer look from a distance and compared what I was seeing with pictures online. I searched descriptions of dark, soft-bodied creatures that could appear in damp environments.
The more images I looked at, the more familiar the shape became.
And then I found it.
A leech.
My heart sank.
A leech.
A small, blood-feeding creature that I had always associated with ponds, streams, muddy water, and places far away from an ordinary bathroom.
Yet there it was.
On the floor.
Inside the room I had considered completely safe and familiar.
Suddenly, all of my earlier thoughts came rushing back.
