At first I honestly thought it was a piece of trash.
It was lying on the bathroom floor slightly off to one side where the light from the ceiling barely reached. From a distance it looked like something small and rubbery that had been accidentally dropped and forgotten. It was dark irregular and completely out of place.
I came close to walking past it.
My first thought was that it might have fallen from a cleaning product a piece of packaging or a broken fragment of rubber. Bathrooms collect all kinds of small objects especially around the edges of cabinets drains and pipes.
I looked at it again.
Something about it failed to feel right.
There was something strangely organic about its shape. It was not flat like a piece of plastic or paper. It looked thick and uneven almost as if it had a body. The longer I stared at it the more uncomfortable I became.
I remember thinking What if that is not trash.
Almost immediately my imagination started running wild.
I stood completely still watching it from a safe distance. For a few seconds I tried to convince myself that I was being ridiculous. Surely it was some harmless piece of debris.
A small part of me refused to accept that explanation.
I took a step closer.
The bathroom suddenly seemed much quieter than before.
I began looking around.
I checked the corners first wondering if something might have fallen from behind the toilet. Then I looked beneath the sink around the pipes near the shower and along the edges of the walls.
I even looked up at the ceiling.
Nothing.
Everything appeared normal.
That ordinary appearance made the strange object on the floor even more unsettling.
I kept staring at it trying to figure out what I was looking at.
It was dark.
It was thick.
It had a shape that seemed almost too natural to be a piece of household debris.
Then another thought crossed my mind.
Did it move.
I immediately set that idea aside.
Of course it had not moved.
The idea was probably only my imagination.
I still could not shake the feeling.
I watched it for several seconds waiting for something anything to happen.
Nothing did.
At least nothing that I could see.
