Her parents thought it was just a game. Little kids talked to their pets all the time, and their daughter loved the small goldfish swimming lazily in its round glass tank on her dresser.
Every night before bed, she leaned in close and whispered, cupping her hands around the glass. Her parents would laugh from the doorway, hearing her soft voice: secrets, rhymes, little stories.
But one night, after she fell asleep, her mother swore she heard another voice. Faint, muffled, coming from the tank itself. A whisper that wasn’t her daughter’s.
She dismissed it as imagination. But soon, neighbors began to notice something strange. The girl would whisper to the goldfish, pause, and then nod as if listening to a reply. When asked what it said, she would only smile and say, “It tells me things you don’t want to hear.”
Her father once leaned close to the tank when the room was silent. At first, only the sound of bubbles. Then, a faint word. His own name.
The next morning, the goldfish floated belly-up in the water. The girl didn’t cry. She simply asked for another. “It said it wasn’t finished yet,” she explained calmly.
And when the new fish arrived, she began whispering again.
