Ghosts wearing faces
1565 Words
Addiction never announced itself dramatically in Fabrizio’s life.
There was no single moment where he looked in a mirror and realized he had become somebody else.
The transformation happened quietly.
Slowly.
One compromise at a time.
At first the pills only lived in his pocket during difficult nights. Then they started appearing during ordinary afternoons too. Eventually he stopped needing emotional reasons entirely.
His body began asking for them before his mind did.
That frightened him.
But not enough to stop.
Because the drugs still gave him something nothing else could anymore:
silence.
Not happiness.
Not healing.
Just temporary silence inside his own head.
And after losing Arka, silence felt priceless.
Months passed.
Fabrizio still worked at the farm, but barely. His father started assigning easier tasks after noticing how distracted he’d become. He forgot equipment outside during storms. Missed feeding schedules. Nearly got thrown from a horse one afternoon because his reaction time slowed badly.
That incident terrified his father more than Fabrizio himself.
“You’re not paying attention anymore,” he snapped afterward while checking the horse for injuries.
“I said I’m fine.”
“No,” his father said sharply. “You’re somewhere else all the time now.”
The words lingered painfully.
Because he was somewhere else.
Always.
Even while physically standing in front of people, part of him constantly wandered through memories instead.
The stable.
The river.
Rain against rooftops.
Arka laughing with cigarettes between his fingers.
Everything reminded him of someone he could no longer touch.
And the drugs only deepened that strange separation from reality.
Sometimes Fabrizio sat staring across open fields for hours without fully realizing time had passed. Other times he wandered through town feeling disconnected from his own body, like he was watching life happen through fogged glass.
His mother noticed the weight loss first.
“You barely eat anymore.”
“I’m eating.”
“You push food around your plate and disappear.”
Fabrizio stayed quiet.
Because he didn’t know how to explain what grief had done to him.
How every emotion now felt flattened except longing.
One night after another argument with his parents about work, Fabrizio rode his horse alone toward the edge of the countryside where the fields opened endlessly beneath dark skies.
Rain threatened overhead again.
Always rain.
He stopped near an abandoned shelter overlooking miles of wet farmland and lit a cigarette with shaking hands.
Then took two pills dry without water.
The relief arrived slower now.
That was new.
And dangerous.
His tolerance had already begun growing.
But eventually warmth still spread through him, dulling the sharpest parts of reality.
Fabrizio leaned back against the wooden shelter wall and closed his eyes.
Then suddenly—
laughter.
His eyes snapped open instantly.
For one impossible second he thought Arka stood nearby.
The sound felt that real.
His pulse exploded violently.
But when he looked around, the fields remained empty.
Only wind moved through tall grass.
Fabrizio rubbed both hands across his face hard.
Hallucination.
Or memory.
Maybe both.
That was happening more often lately.
Hearing things.
Seeing shadows that resembled Arka briefly before disappearing.
Once he even followed somebody through a crowded market because from behind they looked exactly like him.
When the stranger finally turned around, Fabrizio physically recoiled.
Wrong face.
Wrong eyes.
Wrong life.
Afterward shame followed immediately.
Because deep down he knew what he was becoming.
Obsessed.
Haunted.
Lost.
One humid night in Surabaya, Fabrizio wandered through crowded streets half-drunk and high after buying more pills from the same dealer he now visited regularly.
The city looked beautiful in a sick way after dark.
Neon reflections stretched across wet pavement while motorcycles screamed through traffic. Music spilled from clubs. Cigarette smoke drifted through alleyways packed with exhausted people chasing temporary escape from themselves.
Fabrizio fit perfectly there now.
That realization scared him more than anything else.
He no longer looked like the cowboy from the village.
His clothes hung looser from weight loss. Dark circles sat permanently beneath his eyes. His hands shook slightly whenever drugs wore off.
Even his posture had changed.
Bent slightly inward now.
Like grief physically reshaped his spine.
As he crossed a busy intersection, Fabrizio suddenly froze.
Across the street stood Arka.
Or at least he thought it was him.
Black jacket.
Motorbike helmet hanging from one hand.
Tattoo visible along his throat beneath neon lights.
Fabrizio’s entire body reacted instantly.
His heart slammed violently against his ribs while adrenaline cut through intoxication completely.
“Arka!”
The name escaped him before thinking.
People turned.
The figure across the street looked up briefly.
Then disappeared into moving crowds.
Fabrizio shoved through traffic recklessly trying to follow.
Cars honked violently while rain started falling overhead.
“Arka!”
Nothing.
Only strangers.
Only noise.
Only city lights blurring together while panic consumed him completely.
He searched for nearly an hour afterward through crowded streets and alleyways before finally collapsing exhausted outside a closed storefront.
Rain soaked through his clothes while he sat shaking beneath neon reflections.
And slowly realization settled in:
He didn’t even know anymore if he actually saw Arka.
That terrified him.
Because now memory and reality were beginning to blend together.
The drugs made that worse.
Sometimes when high enough, Fabrizio swore he could feel Arka beside him physically. Smell cigarettes and rainwater suddenly. Hear his voice whispering memories into darkness.
At first those moments comforted him.
Eventually they started frightening him.
Especially when sobriety returned.
Because every hallucination only reminded him harder of reality afterward.
Arka was still gone.
Still unreachable.
Still trapped somewhere inside a life Fabrizio no longer understood.
One evening while sitting outside the stable half-asleep from pills, Fabrizio heard footsteps approaching behind him.
He smiled instinctively before turning around.
Arka always walked softly like that.
But it wasn’t him.
Only his father.
The disappointment hit so violently it physically hurt.
His father stopped immediately after seeing his expression.
“You thought I was somebody else.”
Not a question.
A realization.
Fabrizio looked away.
“I’m tired.”
His father sat beside him slowly.
The silence between them stretched heavy.
Then finally:
“You loved him, didn’t you?”
Fabrizio stopped breathing.
The countryside around them suddenly felt terrifyingly quiet.
“What?”
“That boy.”
His father’s voice remained calm. Gentle even.
“You loved him.”
Fabrizio stared blankly ahead while panic and relief collided violently inside his chest.
His entire life he imagined this truth being discovered through anger. Violence. Rejection.
Instead his father simply sounded sad.
Fabrizio’s eyes burned instantly.
But he still couldn’t answer.
Couldn’t force words through his throat.
His father sighed quietly.
“I knew something was hurting you.”
That nearly broke him completely.
Because suddenly Fabrizio realized he had not been hiding nearly as well as he thought.
Pain always reveals itself eventually.
His father looked out toward the dark fields.
“You don’t have to explain anything.”
The kindness in that sentence destroyed the last remaining wall inside Fabrizio.
Tears slipped down his face before he could stop them.
Silent at first.
Then worse.
His shoulders shook violently while years of fear, grief, longing, and shame finally cracked open all at once.
And for the first time since Arka left, somebody finally saw his pain clearly.
His father didn’t speak much afterward.
He simply sat beside him quietly while Fabrizio cried beneath endless Indonesian skies.
But even that moment of connection couldn’t stop what addiction had already started doing inside him.
Because grief may have opened the door—
but now dependency had entered too.
Within weeks the pills stopped being enough alone.
Fabrizio started mixing substances recklessly.
Alcohol with pills.
Stronger drugs offered by strangers in clubs and alleyways.
Anything capable of numbing memory more completely.
He told himself he still had control.
Addicts almost always do at first.
Then came the mornings where he woke up unable to remember entire nights clearly.
The missing money.
The shaking hands.
The nausea.
The headaches.
The desperate need for another hit just to feel normal again.
And somewhere underneath all of it, Arka remained.
Not physically.
But spiritually.
Emotionally.
Haunting every version of Fabrizio’s life like a ghost wearing human skin.
Sometimes Fabrizio hated him for it.
Not truly.
Never truly.
But enough to think dangerous thoughts during lonely nights.
You left me.
You abandoned me.
You chose them over me.
Immediately afterward guilt always followed.
Because deep down he knew none of that was fair.
Arka hadn’t wanted this either.
They were both drowning separately now.
Just in different oceans.
One rainy night Fabrizio returned alone to the hill where they once dreamed about escaping together.
He brought pills, cigarettes, and a bottle of cheap liquor.
The wind blew violently across open fields while thunder rolled somewhere far away.
Fabrizio sat in wet grass staring at the horizon for hours.
Half-drunk.
Half-high.
Fully heartbroken.
Then quietly, into the darkness, he whispered:
“Why wasn’t I enough?”
The wind carried the question away unanswered.
And somewhere deep inside himself, Fabrizio began realizing something horrifying:
He no longer feared death the way he used to.
Not because he wanted to die.
Because living had started feeling unbearably empty without the person he built his future around.
The fields stretched endlessly beneath storm clouds around him.
Beautiful.
Silent.
Haunted.
Just like him now.
- Writer
