Maybe it really was just ancient insulation finally pushing through a hairline crack after years of pressure and neglect. Old buildings do strange things when they age, and materials behave in ways we do not always predict. Maybe it was a dried nest, abandoned long before I moved in, its original purpose erased by time. Maybe it was the fossil of some forgotten repair job, a remnant of a solution layered on top of another solution until no one remembered the problem it was meant to fix. All of these explanations are reasonable. None of them are comforting.
The unsettling part is not what it was, but how easily it disappeared. One wipe, one explanation, and the space returned to normal as if nothing unusual had ever been there. No trace. No answers. Just a clean wall and the lingering sense that something had been erased before it could be understood. There is something deeply human about being more disturbed by the unknown than by the unpleasant itself. If it had been identified, labeled, categorized, it would have lost its power. Instead, it remains unresolved.
