gross.

The foot came down.

Then came up again.

With his right leg raised he peered down at the rough blue carpet, straining to see what he had stepped on. It had felt slimy.

Both feet planted firmly on the ground he squatted, elbows on his knees. Lying there was a moist, blackish shape.

He walked into the next room, carefully stepping high over the thing. He grabbed a roll of toilet paper from a decrepit laundry machine and ripped off a handful. Turning back to the doorway, very carefully, he picked it up.

It was roughly two inches long, and looked like a thin slug. He turned it over in the tissue, looking for anything… noticeable. It was dark on the top, light, sickly brown along the bottom. There was a miniscule triangular opening near one end, the only discernible difference. It’s a leech.

His right foot tingled.

He could feel his lunch starting to come up. Sick sick sick sick. Crumpling up the wadded tissue with the ends of his fingers, he kept it as far away from his palm and the rest of his body. With one frantic motion he hurled it into a toilet on his left.

Still filled with disgust, he spat into the bowl, then urinated into it for good measure. He then flushed the toilet, holding down the handle for longer than he should have. Turning on the shower he wet the floor, and then proceeded to scrub the bottom of both feet against the tiles, hard. He then washed his face with icy cold water, still nauseous.

As he walked out of the back room he kept his eyes glued to the floor, searching for any more traces of… anything. Then he turned around and scanned the ceiling near the doorway. Nothing. There was just the usual stuff you’d find on a basement ceiling: dusty cobwebs.

He walked as fast as he could without running into the stairwell and the next room. Once his body touched the bed his feet sprung off the floor. He once again looked everywhere for them.

Later that night, as he lay in that same bedroom, staring straight up at the ceiling, he felt his right foot. It felt- sensitive. This is impossible, he thought. The skin on the bottom of my foot is way too thick for anything to happen. It’s impossible. He rubbed the bottom of his foot against his left calf, then stopped. Whatever happened to his foot, if anything happened, he wasn’t going to spread it to the rest of his body.

Eyes wide open, he imagined them crawling under the door that he’d shut and locked, creeping up the sides of the bed, sliming their way up the walls and dropping onto his face. He slept- but he didn’t sleep well.