Curiosity killed the cat. Or so they say. But for Clara, it wasn’t curiosity that got her into trouble. It was a simple mistake—a flick of the wrist, a careless gesture, something as small as the rice she threw down the drain. It should’ve been forgotten by now, the kind of thing that vanishes the moment the water swallows it up. But nothing disappears so easily, not in this world, and certainly not in the other one.
It started on a Tuesday. Clara had spent the whole afternoon in her cramped kitchen, cooking dinner for herself. The stove hissed and the clock ticked too loudly. She hadn’t been paying attention when the rice overflowed—just one of those tiny things, a slip, a little accident. So, she grabbed the bowl, leaned over the sink, and without a second thought, tossed the excess rice into the drain.
That’s when it happened.
The drain didn’t swallow the rice like it was supposed to. It spat it back out, a small sound, like a strangled gasp.
The rice piled up at her feet, too much for her sink, too much for her world. Clara froze, staring at the strange mound of rice. It was a lot. Too much, considering how small the pot had been. She bent down to scoop it up but stopped when something shifted beneath the surface—like the way a shadow moves when you’re not looking directly at it.
A low, almost imperceptible hum filled the room.
“That’s odd,” Clara murmured, but the words felt heavy. She glanced around, as if the walls might be watching her. She shook her head, trying to dismiss it. Rice doesn’t hum. It doesn’t move. But in that moment, it seemed to pulse with life, like a thousand tiny hearts beating in unison.
Clara didn’t know it then, but that rice had come from a place she couldn’t see, a place that didn’t belong in her world. The world beneath the drain.
And she had opened a door.
The next day, things started changing. Tiny things at first—no big deal. The bread didn’t taste like bread. It tasted like something… else. Not sour, but wrong in a way that made her stomach twist. Her reflection in the mirror—her eyes, they were too wide, too eager, like something was pushing its way out from behind them. The shadows seemed to whisper her name.
At night, the hum returned. Faint at first, but louder every time she went near the sink. By Thursday, the air in the kitchen had turned thick, as if the room had grown too small for her, too close. And when she opened the drain, she saw it—beneath the metal grate, just beyond reach—a flicker of movement. Something watching her from the depths.
“Hello?” she whispered, leaning closer, but the word tasted wrong on her tongue.
And then it appeared.
Not a thing, not a person. Not a shape, really. Just… a presence, a wave of cold that sucked the warmth from the room. It was like staring into a storm cloud, and she knew in her bones—this thing didn’t belong.
She should have backed away, should’ve slammed the cupboard door shut, but something inside her, something deep and buried, urged her to reach deeper.
She reached for the drain.
Her fingers brushed the cold, metal edge… and everything shifted.
The world around her cracked, like glass splintering in slow motion. She could hear the high-pitched whine, the hum that was now deafening. The rice, all of it, began to wriggle and shift on its own, each grain becoming a crawling thing. And the voices—so many voices, all whispering in languages she couldn’t understand—echoed in her ears.
Suddenly, there was a figure. Not a human figure, not entirely. A silhouette, made of shifting shadows and light, something else. It reached out, its hand too long, too thin, and it spoke, its voice echoing deep inside her skull.
“You shouldn’t have thrown it away.”
Clara’s heart hammered in her chest. “What are you?” she whispered, but the words felt like they were stolen from her mouth.
The figure didn’t answer. It didn’t need to. It leaned closer, and for a moment, Clara could see its face, if you could call it that. It was a patchwork of everything—eyes, but not human ones. Teeth, but not the kind you could bite with. A mouth, wide and endless, stretching impossibly.
“You released us,” it said, its voice soft but sharp, like nails dragging across glass. “You opened the door, and now we will collect.”
Before she could move, the room around her buckled and the world flickered. Everything spun, her kitchen, her apartment, her very existence—and then there was nothing.
When Clara woke up, the drain was empty. The rice was gone, the hum was silent, and everything seemed… normal. But it wasn’t. She could feel it now, deep inside her, the echo of what she had let loose, the thing that had followed her back.
And that’s when she knew the truth.
Curiosity had killed the cat. But the rice—that rice? It had killed much more.
