The Snake in the Toilet
The morning began like any other — quiet thoughts, soft light, and the familiar shuffle toward the bathroom. Still half-asleep and thinking about breakfast, the narrator expected nothing unusual.
That calm ended the moment the lid lifted.
At first, confusion — a motionless pause where the mind tries to catch up to what the eyes see. There, resting in the water, was a dark shape, still but strangely deliberate. The air seemed to thicken as time slowed. Something in that bowl was alive.
A faint ripple spread across the surface. Then another. The movement was slow, controlled — not the random drift of an object, but the subtle turn of something with intent.
Leaning closer, the narrator caught a glint of color beneath the waterline: smooth, black scales, glistening faintly in the bathroom light. In that instant, the illusion shattered. It wasn’t debris, or plumbing gone wrong. It was a living creature.
A snake.
The shock hit like cold water. The most ordinary of rooms — a place of privacy, routine, even safety — had become the stage for something primal. Heart pounding, the narrator backed away, caught between disbelief and fascination.
In a few breathless seconds, the ordinary had become extraordinary. Morning calm had turned into confrontation — human and animal, domestic order and wild intrusion.
Later, they would remember the detail most clearly: how the water barely moved, how the light shimmered across those scales, how fragile normal life can feel when nature slips quietly back into it.
