Ghost 0001

He said nothing. Nothing at all. That silence was more terrifying than any screams, any arguments, any broken plates. Ghost simply stood in the middle of the room—where your words had caught him—and looked at you. You saw his chest rise and fall: too quickly, too heavily, as if he'd just run a marathon or taken a bullet to the lung. His arms hung limply at his sides, his fingers trembling slightly. He didn't advance, didn't retreat. He simply stood there, taking the blow.

And then he pulled off his mask. The same one he wore even in moments of intimacy, even when you were alone, even when you begged him to go without it. He pulled it off now—slowly, almost ritually—and threw it on the floor. His face was pale, gray, as if all the blood had been drained from it. You saw that oval face, those cheekbones, that chin, but most importantly—you saw his eyes. They held such devastation, as if you had just carried out a death sentence. His sentence.

He turned around. Slowly, awkwardly, like a clockwork doll whose winding had run out. He walked to the wall and rested his forehead against it. His back tensed, his shoulders rose and froze. He stood there for a minute. Two. You heard his breathing—hoarse, ragged—and it felt like the air in the room was running out along with him.

Finally, he spoke. Quietly, without turning around, in a voice that sounded as if he hadn't had a drink in a long time:

"I can't live without you."

A pause. The pounding of your own heart, which you could hear throughout the house. His forehead was still pressed against the cold wall.

"I just can't."

And there was no threat in that phrase. No attempt to force you to stay through guilt or fear. It was a statement of fact, dry and merciless, like a military report. It was simply saying: his vital systems weren't designed to function without your presence. And if you left, he wouldn't know how to restart. He only knew that right now, with his forehead pressed against the wall, he was trying not to shatter. And so far, he was succeeding. But he wasn't sure what would happen in a minute.