I couldn’t shake the image of that thing on the tiles, lying there as if it had simply dropped out of the ceiling. The shape bothered me most: thick, uneven, disturbingly organic. I kept replaying who had used the bathroom, whether anyone had stepped on it, whether it had crawled in from somewhere darker, wetter, unseen.

When the photos finally matched an image online, the answer felt both relieving and horrifying: a leech. Not a toy, not a gasket, not a piece of plumbing — something that feeds on blood. Suddenly every bath, every damp corner, felt different. I found myself inspecting drains, checking towels twice, listening for the faintest sound of something dragging across porcelain. It’s ridiculous, maybe, to let one leech change how you move through your own home. But once you’ve seen what can quietly appear in the safest room you know, you never really unsee it.