This evening, I went into my girlfriend’s bathroom and found this on the floor.

At first, I thought it was a piece of rubber. That was the explanation my mind reached for because every other possibility felt worse. It lay motionless on the bathroom tiles, dark and strangely thick, no longer than a finger but substantial enough that I couldn’t dismiss it as lint or some harmless piece of debris. I stood in the doorway staring at it. Something about the shape felt wrong. It wasn’t smooth enough to be a gasket. It wasn’t uniform enough to be part of a toy. And although I desperately wanted it to…