Alec Morrison was born with a face that could turn "no" to "yes" in a heartbeat.From the moment he hit puberty at fourteen, everything changed.
The awkward kid with braces transformed into something evolution would be envious of overnight. His jawline became sharp, his cheekbones were far more pronounced, and those piercing blue eyes that his mother always said were too pretty for a boy suddenly became his greatest asset. He wasn't from a poor home but they were one medical bill away from being in that bracket.
By sixteen, Alec was walking around his local mall with his mother but was soon approached by a shady looking man in glasses.
"You, kid! You ever think about modeling?" the agent asked the moment their eyes met, handing him a business card dapped in gold.
Alec's mother was skeptical, but he knew instantly that this was his ticket out.
By seventeen, he was walking runways in Milan and Paris, Alec was on the rise and the top was his only destination at this rate.
By twenty-one, his face was across billboards in Times Square, advertising everything from perfumes to luxury watches as looks were all that truly mattered in this world.
He remembered standing beneath his own movie premiere, a beautiful woman on each arm.
Alec had a single thought in that moment because he had accomplished everything he thought he could.
"I've made it. I'm untouchable," Alec thought to himself. The world was his playground, and he played hard.
There was no woman he couldn't get. Supermodels, actresses, heiresses, they all fell at his feet. Alec didn't chase, he simply existed, and they came to him like moths to a flame.
"Alec Morrison just walked in," he was used to hearing people whisper at exclusive clubs.
"Oh my god, he's even more gorgeous in person," The compliments never stopped.
His Instagram had millions of followers, his DMs were flooded with offers, both professional and personal. He lived in a penthouse in Manhattan, drove cars that cost more than most people's houses, and partied at clubs where the velvet had an exclusive parking space reserved just for him.
Money flowed like water, six-figure contracts were the norm. He was the face of three major brands, pulling in close to two million a year at his peak. Life was perfect, and Alec enjoyed every bit of it, maybe a little too much.
It started innocently enough, a line of cocaine at an after-party to keep the energy going.
"Come on, Alec, everyone's doing it," his agent had said upon noticing he was low on energy due to his hectic schedule, sliding a small mirror across the table.
"You want to keep up with the Italians, don't you? They party till dawn," The agent urged him.
"Just this once, I can handle it," Alec told himself.
Everyone was doing it, and Alec wanted to fit in with the elite crowd he now ran with.Then it became a weekend thing, then a weekday thing, then an everyday thing.
The pills came next, prescribed by a doctor who asked no questions as long as the checks cleared. Painkillers, benzos, stimulants, whatever he needed to get up, calm down, or keep going.
"You look tired, Mr. Morrison," the doctor often said before handing him another prescription. "This should help," He added.
"I'm not an addict," Alec tried to convince himself before swallowing four pills at once.
But Alec was young, beautiful, and invincible. Or so he thought.
The cracks began to show around twenty-eight.The late nights and chemical cocktails started taking their toll.His face, once flawless, began to show signs of aging.
Fine lines appeared around his eyes, his skin also lost that youthful glow, developing faint wrinkles that no amount of makeup could fully hide. His cheeks, once sculpted, began to sag slightly.
The bookings slowed as well. Agencies started going with fresh faces but this was simply code for younger models who were yet to burn themselves out.
[[Alec, baby, you're still great, but... the client wants to go younger this season.]]
His agent said over the phone, her voice laced with false sympathy.
[[It's not personal, you understand.]]
"Not personal?" Alec stared at his reflection in the mirror through his phone screen, seeing what they saw, a fading star.
"This is my face.This IS personal," Alec mumboled to himself.
By thirty, Alec's phone rang less and less. By thirty-one, it barely rang at all.
His savings, which should have set him up for life, had evaporated. The drugs weren't cheap, and neither was maintaining the lifestyle he had grown accustomed to. The penthouse went first, then the cars. He moved to a modest apartment in Queens, then to a studio in a questionable neighborhood. His designer wardrobe was sold piece by piece for half the prices.
At thirty-two, Alec was completely washed up.The modeling agencies had dropped him entirely.His social media followers dwindled as he stopped posting.
Who wanted to see a has-been's descent into obscurity? The women who once threw themselves at him now looked through him on the street, not recognizing the shell of the man he had become.
But the addiction didn't stop. If anything, it intensified. Without money, Alec turned to loan sharks, men with names like "Vic the Knife" and "Tommy Knuckles" who operated out of the back rooms of bars.
"You're good for it, right pretty boy?" Vic had asked, gold teeth glinting shining.
"Because if you're not... well, we got ways of getting our money back. The organ market's booming these days," he added.
Alec nodded without hesitation, his hands shaking like the addict he had become.
"I'll figure it out. I always do." Alec thought to himself but his life was proof this was a lie.
But he never did. He borrowed from one to pay another, creating a web of debt that tightened around his throat with each passing day. Twenty thousand became forty thousand became sixty thousand. The interest was crushing, compounding daily.
He knew they were coming for him.The threatening phone calls started three days ago.
[[You got forty-eight hours, Morrison. Then we're coming to collect, one way or another.]]
"Maybe it's better this way," Alec thought, staring at his last bag of heroin. At least he could have one final hit, one last escape from the nightmare his life had become.
That final day, Alec stumbled to the market, his long blonde hair, one of the few remnants of his former beauty, unwashed and hanging in his face. He was going to buy something cheap to eat, then head back to shoot up one last time before they found him.
He never made it home.
Someone screamed. Alec turned, his hair obscuring his vision. A man lunged at him with a knife, shouting something incoherent.
"You cheating bitch! I told you what would happen!" The man barked.
"What? I don't…!" Alec couldn't complete his train of thought before the blade plunged into his stomach, then his chest, then his side. Seventeen times the knife found its mark, painting the sidewalk red in his blood.
"Wrong person!" the attacker screamed, finally pushing Alec's hair aside to see his face.
"Shit! You're not…. you're not her!" The attacker barked like he was more angry at Alec than himself.
But it was too late. The man ran, footsteps echoing into the distance.
Alec lay there, his throat slit and blood splurting out of it, the pavement was painted in crimson blood.
"So this is it. This is how I die. Mistaken for someone else. How fittin…" Alec's final thoughts weren't of his glory days or the people he loved. They were of regret.
"If only I could do it all again. If only I'd made different choices. If only... if only I'd been someone else. Anyone else," Alec had tears in his eyes as these thoughts flooded his fading consciousness.
"Please... just one more chance…" Alec begged but had no idea who he was even talking to.
The world faded and his eyes closed never to reopen, and Alec Morrison died on a dirty street corner, alone, broke, and full of nothing but pain and bitter regret.