He used to love my eyes

It was the middle of autumn, the trees were covered in yellow and orange leaves, the sun was dimly shining as if it were a lamp in someone’s big room, and the city looked almost peaceful from far away even though nothing in it ever truly was. The story—no, the chapter of a much bigger story begins here, in the city where the traffic lasts longer than waiting for another chapter of your favorite series, where people are more populated than flies, and where every street, every apartment and every dark window hides at least one thing no one outside is supposed to know.
And you know what comes with people?
Deaths.
“How many times do I need to tell you, Johan?! The trash won’t dissolve by itself!”
The couple lived in a small house, Johan and his wife Amelia. They had been together for less than half a year but somehow managed to get married at the young age of twenty, even though both families were against it and kept telling them that they barely knew each other well enough to make such a decision.
Amelia had pale skin, straight brown hair and grey eyes with beautiful lashes, eyes which Johan had always complimented, sometimes staring into them for far too long and saying that he had never seen such beautiful eyes before. Johan, on the other hand, had slightly darker skin, beautiful black hair and black eyes which worked almost like mirrors. Amelia used to joke that she could see herself in them better than in the bathroom mirror.
At the beginning they were happy, or at least that was how Amelia remembered it. Johan bought her cheap flowers when they had no money for proper ones, they walked around the city at night, shared food because buying two portions was sometimes too expensive and watched movies on the floor before they had properly arranged the house. Once, when Amelia got sick, Johan tried making soup for her and somehow managed to burn part of it, and she still ate it while telling him it was “emotional cooking.”
Those were small things, almost meaningless things, but Amelia remembered every one of them later.
Unlike the happy stories you’ve read, though, in this one the two of them did not get a happy ending.
It was the start of something bigger than just a dot on the last page.
Johan was lying on the couch, staring at the black television screen without even bothering to look at his wife, trying to ignore her as much as he possibly could because in his eyes she had slowly become nothing more than an annoying reminder that he needed to take care of “a useless woman,” as he called her during their fights.
After seeing the expression on Amelia’s face, which clearly was not a happy one, he finally mumbled out a sentence.
“Ohoho, so I work hard, bought this house which you stay in, wash the dishes, I give you money and you want ME to do more than that? Amelia, I am truly amazed by your logic, truly.”
The young woman stayed still, because it was very hard to believe that she had left her ex-boyfriend for such a mess when this man did not even seem to work properly. All he had been doing lately was lying on the couch, disappearing from the house for hours and coming back without explaining where he had been. The house was her grandmother’s property, which Johan definitely did not care to acknowledge, and the only thing Amelia could agree with was the money because he did somehow always have it, sometimes more than someone his age should reasonably have, but whenever she asked where it came from he only said that he had a well-paid job.
At first she thought he was simply tired.
Then she thought he was stressed.
Then she thought maybe she had done something.
Then she started trying harder.
When he came home angry she made him tea, when he refused to eat she left food outside his room, and when he complained that everything felt boring she bought his favorite chocolate and tried to joke with him like she used to. Once she even recreated one of their first evenings together, putting a blanket on the floor, buying cheap noodles and turning off all the lights except one lamp because they used to sit like that when they first moved in.
When Johan came home and saw it, he only stared.
“What is this?”
Amelia smiled.
“Remember our first week here?”
“Yes.”
“I thought maybe it would cheer you up.”
“It doesn’t.”
He walked past her and locked himself in his room.
Amelia ate the noodles alone.
She still told herself it was fine.
People have bad days. People have bad weeks. Sometimes people even have bad months, and maybe it was just a matter of time until Johan finally woke up from this strange confusion and became the person who once looked into her eyes as if there was nothing more interesting in the entire world.
Days passed, Amelia kept suffering from not understanding what she had done wrong while Johan became more and more absent from home, and the situation got worse when he started talking with a bunch of men slightly older than him whom Amelia had never properly met. She only knew about them because Johan loved telling her that they were better company than she was, and after he began spending more time with them he also started drinking, first rarely, then often, and soon he became uncontrollably angry at everything and everyone.
Amelia still tried to help.
When he came home drunk she left water near the couch, when he was sick she stayed awake in case he choked, and when he came back once with bruised knuckles she tried to clean the blood from his hand even after he told her not to touch him. He fell asleep before she finished, so she wrapped his hand in a bandage anyway.
The next morning the bandage was lying on the floor.
“What happened to your hand?” she asked.
“Nothing.”
“You were bleeding.”
“I said nothing.”
“I was just trying to help.”
“Stop trying.”
She remembered that sentence later.
One night when Johan was gone yet again, Amelia decided to walk in the park because fresh air helped her deal with those feelings, as she always said, and after some time she noticed several drunk men walking down the street. It was not unusual in such a big city, so she lowered her eyes and tried ignoring them until she suddenly heard a familiar voice.
“What the hell are you doing here?! Want to get yourself killed or what?!”
She stopped and looked over at the men.
There he was.
Johan.
Standing like he owned the whole town.
“Johan?!”
He could barely stand properly, which made it obvious that he was drunk.
“Are you blind or something?” he shouted.
“Yeah, that is me and this is you!”
He pointed at Amelia while the guys standing with him looked at her with judgment, their eyes like knives piercing through the already shattered heart of the girl.
“It’s late and… I don’t think it’s a good idea to—I meant to say that I… I am worried about your safety.”
“My safety? I never said that you must worry about that.”
His tone was somehow distant, not exactly cold, and that was worse because it sounded like the way someone speaks to an uninteresting stranger who keeps appearing at the worst moments possible.
“You are my husband. Of course I worry about your safety! I can’t just not worry!”
Johan sighed, turned around and his friends chuckled about something before doing the same.
“We will speak when I get home.”
That was the last thing she heard from him.
Then he was gone, the shadow of someone who did not want to be there, a person who came to a party only because they felt sorry that nobody else showed up, and Amelia noticed all of that but still allowed her blind love to win over facts that had already been placed directly in front of her face.
“Right…”
Her voice shook slightly as she closed her eyes and took a deep breath, because maybe after Johan got home they would finally speak like proper adults and maybe, if he was sober enough, he would explain what had happened to him.
The path home was darker than usual because none of the streetlights were working, which was strange for such a large city, and Amelia kept staring at the ground while trying to find reasons for everything.
“Maybe it’s alcohol… his friends… maybe I am not the reason he suddenly acts distant.”
She had done nothing bad.
Absolutely nothing.
Had she?
She remembered the food she cooked, the nights she stayed awake waiting for him, the chocolate he did not eat, the little notes she left near his door, the bandage he threw away and all the times she tried to make him laugh only to be met with silence.
A new feeling slowly crawled through her head.
She could not name it.
“He promised he would treat me better than my ex, but now… I’m not so sure anymore. He has been doing nothing except drinking, eating and calling me a useless wife… I don’t even care about the money or house anymore! What’s wrong with him?!”
For a few seconds she had the strange feeling that someone was walking behind her.
She stopped.
The sound stopped too.
Amelia turned around.
There was nothing.
Only the dark street, the empty road and the weak movement of tree branches in the wind.
She continued walking.
When Amelia finally entered the house, the faint smell of smoke and alcohol was coming from Johan’s room, a smell which had slowly sunk into the walls so deeply that sometimes she could notice it even when he was not home.
“He isn’t back yet… maybe I should wait.”
She sat on the couch and turned on the TV.
The news was talking about an unknown killer.
Twelve victims.
The detectives were not sure who the killer was, but lately strange evidence had been found at several crime scenes, a grey substance which the police described simply as “dust.”
“Oh, how many horrible people are out there…” Amelia thought to herself. “The ones who kill children who can’t protect themselves, the ones who kill their own families, the ones who hurt animals, the ones who hurt anyone weaker than them…”
The thought made her cold with anger and disgust.
Monsters.
The word appeared in her head for a second.
Then the front door smashed open.
Johan was standing there with a bottle of alcohol in his hand.
Amelia immediately stood up, unable to speak at first, and pointed at him before slowly lowering her hand because that strange feeling had returned.
“What?! None of this is your business! I give you money! I work hard! I buy you clothes! And you? You do nothing except get in my way, you ungrateful brat!”
He hit her across the face.
The pain itself was not the worst part.
Something inside her stomach twisted, not from the hit but from a completely different injury, one that had been growing deeper every day and felt almost like an illness she could neither cure nor control.
“I… I am sorry… I was just worried—”
“I don’t give a single damn about you! Stop this nonsense and go back to your own business! Oh, how I wish we would’ve just been strangers!”
Strangers.
People who don’t know each other.
People who will never meet.
People who have different lives.
People who feel nothing toward each other.
That is what he wanted?
For some reason Amelia remembered the sunflower.
The burned soup.
The night they slept on the floor.
His voice telling her that he had never seen eyes like hers before.
All of that, and now he wanted them to be strangers.
She launched herself into her room and slammed the door, her eyes wide open because all this time she had been loving, caring, waiting, forgiving and almost going crazy for someone who wished they had never known each other.
Was it a sick joke???
That had to be it, right?????
She wasn’t the reason this happened, yeah??????
“S-strangers?”
Her breathing became uneven.
“I let him argue with me… punch me… yell at me…”
She looked into the mirror.
“I waited for him.”
Her reflection stared back.
“I cooked for him.”
She moved closer.
“I stayed awake when he was sick.”
Closer.
“I tried to cheer him up.”
She smiled.
“I tried.”
Her smile slowly widened.
“I tried.”
Instead of crying she suddenly started laughing, first quietly and then louder until the sound became hysterical and almost unrecognizable.
“I changed!!”
Her fist hit the wall.
“I changed!!”
Again.
“I DID!”
She looked at the picture of herself and Johan together, holding hands and laughing at something that did not matter anymore.
“I’m laughing right now but I feel nothing! Absolutely nothing!”
She turned back toward the mirror.
“I tried, Johan… I tried to be nice to you… I’ve sacrificed my own self for you… now… who am I without you, love?!”
Her fist slammed into the mirror.
A crack appeared across her reflection.
Then another.
Then dozens.
The mirror shattered.
Small fragments fell to the floor and each piece reflected something different, her mouth, her smile, half of her face, one grey eye, another grey eye, dozens of little versions of Amelia staring from the ground.
The noise was loud enough to be heard through the whole house.
Footsteps came quickly.
The door opened.
“Brat!! What have you done?!”
Johan had returned.
He looked around furiously, staring at the pieces of the mirror which he had once given her as a gift, and then finally looked directly at Amelia.
“You…”
There was no emptiness in his eyes anymore.
Only hatred.
“You are crazy!!”
Amelia did not respond.
She slowly fell to the floor, her long brown hair covering most of her face so that only her grey eyes could be seen.
They were wide.
Almost glittering.
Focused completely on him.
Johan hated it.
The eyes which he once loved to look at were now making something inside him feel uneasy.
“Don’t you dare look at me like that!”
Amelia did not blink.
“Do you hear me?!”
“Or else?”
Silence.
A piece of mirror cracked under Johan’s shoe.
Then another.
He looked down.
The biggest fragment was lying near his foot.
His hand dropped toward it.
His fingers closed around the glass.
Amelia watched him.
And Johan launched at her—
The last thing Amelia remembered clearly was running outside the house with Johan somewhere behind her, maybe shouting, maybe not, because by then every sound seemed mixed together.
She reached the road.
Two white lights suddenly filled her vision.
A horn.
The sound of wheels.
Then—
nothing.
She woke up in a hospital bed.
Everything was white.
The walls, the blanket, the ceiling and especially the lights, which looked like glowing fragments of mirror hanging above her, and when Amelia tried to stand she realized that her body did not properly respond, which for one horrifying second made her feel as if she had no body at all and existed only as eyes and thoughts beneath those lights.
“Dear! You are awake!”
She slowly turned her head.
Johan was sitting beside the bed.
He stood up with relief when he saw her move.
Doctors came in and examined her, explaining that she had bruises, a concussion and one deep wound on her head but nothing that should not eventually heal.
One of them looked at Johan.
“What happened?”
He paused.
Only for a moment.
Then his face changed into something full of fear, pain and concern.
“It was a car accident.”
His hands were shaking.
The doctor nodded and left.
Johan waited until no one else was close enough to hear them and then leaned toward Amelia.
“I… it was my fault. I am so sorry. I didn’t mean to hit you.”
The words were hollow, and no matter how hard he tried to make them sound real they felt more like a badly told joke than an apology.
Amelia smiled.
“It’s my fault too… I’m also sorry for breaking the mirror.”
Her eyes remained wide.
Silently glinting.
The days in the hospital were all the same, white walls, white lights, white blankets and the smell of medicine, while Amelia lay in bed remembering everything in pieces.
The car.
The glass.
The mirror.
Johan.
Sometimes normal memories returned too, although they no longer felt completely normal. She remembered the sunflower but its petals looked grey, remembered Johan cooking soup but could not clearly see his face, remembered him telling her that her eyes were beautiful but his voice sounded strangely far away, as if the memories belonged to someone else and she had simply found them somewhere.
Johan visited sometimes.
Twice a week.
Sometimes less.
He said he cared about her and wanted to make up for what had happened, and one day he even brought roses.
Amelia stared at them for a long time.
“You used to buy me sunflowers.”
Johan looked confused.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
The roses stayed untouched until the nurses removed them.
Then there were the pills.
Red pills.
Amelia did not remember their name, only their color.
They made her feel weak, slow and strangely disconnected from reality, as if her body and soul were gradually moving away from each other, and the longer she took them the more she started looking at people differently.
The nurse who shouted at an old patient.
Monster.
The man on TV who had killed his family.
Monster.
The drunk outside the hospital grabbing his girlfriend by the arm.
Monster.
The person who abandoned an animal.
Monster.
Johan.
…
Monster.
Soon Amelia no longer felt lonely, sad or afraid.
Only hatred remained.
A boiling feeling that somehow kept her alive.
The more she stared at the white walls, the more she remembered.
Or at least thought she remembered.
Was Johan any better than a killer?
Someone who attacks people weaker than him?
Someone who lies?
Someone who hurts?
Someone who gets money from some unknown job and refuses to explain it?
Then one evening she saw the report again.
The unknown killer.
More victims.
Smoke.
Dust.
Amelia stared at the television.
Smoke.
Johan’s room always smelled like smoke.
Dust.
Sometimes when he came home there had been grey dirt on his shoes.
Money.
The secret job.
The strange friends.
The disappearing.
She remembered his bruised knuckles.
She remembered the nights he came home at strange hours.
She remembered all the questions he refused to answer.
Everything connected.
Too easily.
Almost perfectly.
“It was him.”
Her voice was quiet.
All this time.
Johan.
The money.
The job.
The disappearing.
All lies.
Maybe the car had been planned too.
Maybe he had wanted her dead.
And the pills?
The red pills made her weak.
Confused.
What if Johan was mixing poison into them?
Amelia stared at the plastic cup beside her bed, where one red pill was waiting.
She looked at it for several minutes.
Then smiled.
She finally understood.
Or maybe she didn’t.
No one knows.
That night Amelia disappeared from the hospital.
The security cameras did not show anything clearly. One recording showed the corridor at 2:14 in the morning, completely empty, and at 2:15 it was still empty, but shortly after that the image flickered and for less than a second something pale seemed to be standing at the far end of the hallway.
Then the camera cut out.
When the image returned, Amelia’s bed was empty.
She came home.
The place she wanted to forget most.
Johan was there, lying on the couch half asleep.
Several pieces of the broken mirror were still on the floor.
He had never cleaned all of them.
Amelia stood in the doorway and looked at him before lowering her eyes toward the glass.
She picked up one piece.
Too small.
Another.
No.
Then she found it.
The sharpest one.
She stepped forward.
CRUNCH.
Johan moved.
Another step.
CRUNCH.
His eyes opened.
At first he looked confused.
Then he saw her.
Amelia stood there in dirty hospital clothes, her brown hair hanging over part of her face, her skin almost colorless beneath the weak light and her grey eyes reflecting it so sharply that for a moment they seemed to glow.
“What the hell?!”
Amelia kept walking.
CRUNCH.
“Amelia?!”
Another step.
“What are you doing?!”
She smiled.
Johan backed away.
For the first time since their relationship began he looked truly afraid of her.
Not annoyed.
Not angry.
Afraid.
“You can’t do this to me!! You can’t do this to a human!! You monster!”
Amelia stopped.
Her hair fell across her face like it had that night, leaving only the grey eyes visible, the same eyes he once stared into while telling her that he had never seen anything like them.
She lifted the piece of glass.
“I don’t kill humans.”
Johan stared at her.
A small crack sounded beneath her foot.
“And you are not correct.”
She stepped closer.
“I kill monsters like you.”
The police came the next morning.
According to the official report they found one body, male, twenty years old, surrounded by blood and pieces of broken mirror.
The eyes were missing.
No clear murder weapon was officially identified.
Amelia was nowhere to be found.
Only one large piece of glass remained near the body, and some officers later claimed that if you looked at it from the right angle, you could almost see a grey eye reflected inside.
Almost.
A week later the number of deaths in the city increased.
At first no one connected them, but soon people started noticing that the victims had something in common.
An abusive husband.
Dead.
No eyes.
A murderer recently released from prison.
Dead.
No eyes.
A drunk man who attacked people outside bars.
Dead.
No eyes.
Then other alcoholics.
Then cruel people.
Then people who had never been convicted of anything at all.
Every body had the same thing in common.
The eyes were gone.
Broken glass was always nearby.
Reporters started talking about a serial killer while the police kept telling people not to spread rumors, which of course only made the rumors spread faster.
Some called her Amelia.
Some called her the Grey-Eyed Woman.
But one name became more popular than the others.
**Shattered Glass.**
People said she removes the eyes because monsters do not deserve to see the world like humans do, they said mirrors crack when she is nearby, and they said sometimes you can hear glass breaking even when there is no glass anywhere in the room.
They also said she only kills bad people.
At first that made some people feel safe.
Then someone asked a very simple question.
Who decides what makes someone a monster?
The law?
Other people?
Her?
Maybe Johan really was the unknown killer.
Maybe the money really came from murder.
Maybe the dust really belonged to him.
Maybe he had been poisoning Amelia.
Maybe she discovered everything.
Or maybe Johan was only an abusive husband.
Maybe the pills were exactly what the doctors said they were.
Maybe the dust meant nothing.
Maybe the killer on television had absolutely nothing to do with him.
Maybe Amelia’s injured mind simply needed everything to make sense, and once she found an explanation she never questioned it again.
No one knows.
And Amelia certainly isn’t going to tell you.
People say that if Shattered Glass chooses you, the first thing you hear is a quiet crack, like someone stepping on a tiny piece of mirror somewhere behind you, then another one slightly closer, and sometimes the lights begin flickering while the television or phone screen goes black long enough for you to notice your own reflection.
People who claim to have survived say there is sometimes someone standing behind that reflection.
Brown hair.
Pale skin.
Two grey eyes.
If you turn around, there will be nothing there.
At first.
Then somewhere inside the house you will hear the sound of glass shattering.
Closer.
They say if you see two glowing grey eyes in the darkness, do not look directly into them, do not run, do not scream and, whatever you do, do not tell her that you are human.
Johan tried that.
It did not help.
She does not chase humans.
She chases monsters.
At least that is what she believes.
And perhaps that is the scariest part, because as one says, the hunter is always worse than its prey.
So if one night you hear something crack in the room next to yours and you know there is nothing made of glass there, maybe stay quiet, maybe close your eyes and maybe think very carefully about the worst thing you have ever done.
Because somewhere in the darkness, two grey eyes may already be looking at you.
The eyes he used to love.
And right before the glass shatters, you might hear a woman whisper:
“I kill monsters.”