The Glass Eye

The bell over the shop door jingled, soft and flat. Mara ducked inside, the July heat clinging to her neck like cellophane. Her aunt’s antique store smelled like old wood and varnished regret — all lace doilies, rusted birdcages, and chipped saints.

She was supposed to be dusting the shelves, but she liked the forgotten corners best — the ones no one ever asked about. It was in one of these corners, behind a stack of brittle sheet music and a cracked porcelain cherub, that she found it.

A small velvet box. Black. Tied shut with red string. Taped on top: a faded label in her aunt’s unmistakable script.

DO NOT SELL.

Of course, Mara opened it.

Inside was a single glass eye. Not milky or doll-like. It was clear — perfectly clear — with no iris or pupil. Just a smooth sphere, cool as stone, that seemed to catch more light than it reflected.

She held it up to her own eye.

At first: nothing.

Then: a flash — another room. A man sobbing in a threadbare armchair, his face buried in his hands. It was gone before she could process it. The shop was unchanged. Her fingers trembled.

She took the box and hid it in her backpack.

She did not tell her aunt. Not because she didn’t trust her — but because she couldn’t explain why it felt like the eye was meant for her.

She had always been drawn to broken things. As a child, she’d collected bottle caps, buttons, moth wings — anything abandoned or flawed. While other children begged for toys or sweets, Mara asked for what people left behind. Her mother used to joke she had the soul of a crow. Her aunt never joked about it at all.

That night, Mara lay in bed and turned the glass eye over in her palm. No visions. No sound. Just a faint hum under the skin, like cradling something faintly alive. When she fell asleep, she dreamt of a hallway she’d never walked down, lined with portraits of people she didn’t know — but they all seemed to recognize her. One night, she found herself standing before a portrait of a child whose face was blurred. The next day, while sweeping the shop, she caught a glimpse of the same blurred face in the reflection of the glass eye.

The next morning, she tried again in the mirror. Nothing.

But when she shut herself in the broom closet at the back of the shop, lights off, the air dense with mothballs and wax — she saw the man again.

This time, he looked up.

His face was damp. His eyes were wide. He was saying something she couldn’t hear. The room behind him was different than before: smaller, as if the memory itself had shrunk. The wallpaper looked like it was peeling.

She dropped the eye. It rolled under a shelf.

From that day on, she started seeking out time alone. The storeroom. The back garden. The cellar. Each time she looked, someone else's life flickered into being.

A girl brushing her hair by candlelight. A boy smashing a clock with a brick. A baby being handed to someone who wouldn’t stop crying. A man in robes scribbling something on the wall of a monastery, his hands shaking. A classroom with no windows, where children copied text they couldn't understand.

Some memories felt ancient — blurred and crackling like film reels. Others felt like they hadn’t happened yet, as if she were trespassing in futures still being written. In one vision, a boy whispered her name — not 'Mara,' but a version of it, stretched and strange, like someone remembering her from a dream.

Once, she saw herself — curled on her bed, holding the eye. In the vision, she was older. Her hair was streaked with grey. A door opened behind her, and someone stepped into the room — but the vision ended before she could see who.

She told herself it was a coincidence, a trick of sleep, stress, or the sluggish heat of July.

But each time she used it, it got easier. The images came faster. Clearer. And afterwards, her own memories — what she’d eaten, where she’d left her phone — grew faint around the edges.

Sometimes, the eye wouldn’t show anything. It would just sit cold in her palm until her ears filled with static and her vision blurred. When the world refocused, she’d find herself in a different part of the shop, with no memory of how she’d gotten there.

On the sixth day, her aunt caught her coming out of the storeroom, eyes glassy, hands shaking.

“Mara,” she said, voice low. “What did you touch?”

Mara hesitated, then pulled the box from her bag.

Her aunt’s face drained of colour.

“Oh god,” she whispered. “I thought I’d locked it away for good.”

“You knew?” Mara’s voice trembled.

Her aunt took the box gently, as if it might bite. “It’s not just an eye. It’s a piece — one half — of something that was never meant to be split.”

“I should’ve burned it,” she muttered. “But back then… I was curious too.” She looked at Mara, her face lined with something older than age. “I used it once. Just once. Saw my brother drowning, hours before the phone rang. I thought I could change it. I couldn’t.”

“Why keep this one?” Mara asked.

Her aunt’s mouth was tight. “You don’t just throw away a curse. You contain it.”

Mara looked down at her hands. They didn’t feel like hers.

“I see people,” she said. “All the time. But now they’re seeing me back.”

Her aunt was quiet. Then: “Do they speak?”

“Sometimes. I don’t understand the language. Or maybe I do, but I’ve forgotten it.”

Her aunt reached for the box. She hesitated. “It’s not too late, Mara. We can put it back. Seal it.”

But her eyes flicked down to Mara’s handwriting on the shop ledger — cramped, unfamiliar, not her usual looping scrawl. And when Mara spoke, just for a second, her voice sounded older. Not hoarse — layered, like two voices overlapping for a breath before realigning.

Mara didn’t move.

Because the eye was still in her pocket.

And lately, when she held it, she didn't just see — she felt. A chill on her arms that wasn’t hers. A pulse in her ear that beat too fast. Once, the unmistakable sensation of being watched from inside her own head.

And in the mirror behind her, the man from the visions was watching.

This time, he smiled.

The antique shop closed three days later. Shuttered windows. A handwritten sign: Family Emergency.

No one saw Mara leave.

But weeks later, in a different town, a new antique shop opened—smaller and quieter. The woman behind the counter wore gloves even in summer.

She rarely spoke. But some swore her eyes didn’t match — not in colour, not in age, not in expression.

In the back of the shop, on a high shelf dusted only once, sat a small velvet box.

Black. Tied with a red string. No label.

Inside: a single, clear glass eye — waiting.