Eyes but No Hope

The evening was supposed to be ordinary. I had just returned home from the office, exhausted yet relieved to finally rest. The familiar sound of my keys rattling in the lock echoed in the quiet hallway. Usually, my dog would rush to the door, tail wagging, paws tapping frantically on the floor in excitement. But this time, silence greeted me.

For a moment, I thought maybe he was asleep. But when I stepped inside, there he was sitting perfectly still in the middle of the living room. His body was tense, rigid, almost unnatural. His tail didn’t move. His chest rose and fell with shallow, mechanical breaths. But it wasn’t his stillness that unnerved me. It was his eyes.

He stared directly at me, unblinking, with a look that seemed to pierce through my soul. Not pleading, not joyfuljust hollow. Like he was trying to tell me something, something urgent, but his voice had been stolen away.

I set my bag down slowly, almost afraid to break the silence. The air inside the house felt heavier than usual, as if I had walked into a place that didn’t belong to me anymore. I knelt down, reaching for him, whispering his name. He didn’t flinch. He didn’t move. Only his gaze followed me, like a spotlight that wouldn’t let me escape. His eyes shimmered with a strange mixture of fear and resignation.

“Are you okay, boy?” I asked, forcing a chuckle to break the tension. My hand hovered just above his head, but before I could touch him, a chill crept up my arm. My skin prickled with goosebumps, as though I had reached into a freezer.

The room seemed to grow darker. The corners filled with shadows that hadn’t been there before. My own heartbeat sounded unnaturally loud in my ears, thudding like a drum in an empty hall. That’s when I noticed it—his reflection in the window.

It wasn’t right.

In the glass, my dog wasn’t sitting still. He was thrashing violently, teeth bared, as if trapped behind an invisible barrier. His mouth opened wide, screaming soundlessly, eyes wide with terror. Yet in front of me, he remained motionless, staring… pleading.

I froze, my breath caught halfway in my throat. My eyes darted between him and the reflection, unable to process what I was seeing. Then the reflection snapped its head toward me. The movement was too sharp, too unnatural. And though the dog in the room didn’t move, the one in the window pressed its muzzle against the glass, blood seeping from its gums, eyes blackened voids.

A wave of nausea churned in my stomach. My legs wanted to run, but they refused to obey. I stumbled back, my hands trembling, the weight of dread crushing down on me.

Then my dog my real dog blinked. Slowly, deliberately. His eyes softened, as though he was begging me to understand, to see what he could not say.

And then I heard it. A whisper. Low, raspy, not from him but from behind me.

“He tried to warn you.”

My blood ran cold. I spun around, my body moving on instinct. But there was nothing. Just the suffocating dark swallowing the corners of the room, stretching wider, deeper, as if it was alive. The whisper still lingered in my ears, curling like smoke.

When I turned back, my dog was gone. The living room was empty. The leash by the door dangled loosely, swaying slightly as though someone had just brushed past it.

My knees weakened. My throat tightened. The silence pressed in harder, thick as stone.

And then I saw them.

Only his eyes remained floating in the dimness watching me with sorrow, with silence, with no hope.