This morning, I stepped out onto the porch and discovered this.

This morning, I stepped out onto the porch and discovered this strange, unsettling object waiting for me right outside my door. I finally forced myself to get closer, inch by inch, every single step making my skin crawl with an intense, instinctual dread. Up close, the anomaly looked even stranger than it had from a distance: it was swollen, pale-pink, and glistening in a peculiar way that immediately made me think of exposed, raw flesh. I snapped a quick photo of it with shaking hands and sent it over to my brother, fully hoping he would instantly recognize it, tell me exactly what it was, and calm me down. Instead, he just replied with a text saying, “What on earth is THAT?” which did absolutely nothing to soothe my fraying nerves.