Theme: flawless tugboat

Mood: mysterious | Archetype: Everyman
Elements: disagreeable straw hide

I was in this room, a really ordinary sort of room, you know, beige walls, a slightly chipped coffee mug on a table. Nothing out of the ordinary. But then, there it was. Lying by the window sill, a straw. Not a normal straw, though. This one was thick, like dried, ancient wheat, but it had an unpleasant rigidity to it, almost brittle, and a strange, dull sheen. It felt... wrong. Disagreeable. Like it didn't belong in any drink, or anywhere really, and just looking at it made a knot tighten in my stomach.

A quiet panic began to build. Someone would see it. Someone would *know*. And what would they think? What did it even *mean*? I couldn't leave it there. So, with a furtive glance around, even though I knew I was utterly alone, I picked it up. It felt prickly, almost sharp, in my hand. I needed to make it disappear, to put it somewhere no one would ever stumble upon it, somewhere it would never hint at my brief, unsettling encounter with something so stubbornly, inexplicably *not normal*.

My eyes darted to the old, dusty cupboard by the fireplace. Perfect. Behind a stack of forgotten photo albums, nestled amongst the accumulated trivialities of a lifetime, I tucked it away. Out of sight, out of mind. But even as the cupboard door clicked shut, the oppressive sense of its presence lingered, a dull, unsettling hum beneath the surface of the otherwise perfectly average room. It felt like I'd just hidden a piece of myself, a secret part that was just as stubbornly, unpleasantly *there*.