Alec Morrison was born with a face that could launch a thousand campaigns. From the moment he hit puberty at fourteen, everything changed. The awkward kid with braces transformed into something extraordinary, almost overnight. His jawline sharpened, his cheekbones became pronounced, and those piercing blue eyes that his mother always said were "too pretty for a boy" suddenly became his greatest asset.
By sixteen, Alec had been scouted at a local mall. "You, kid! You ever think about modeling?" the agent had asked, handing him a business card with gold embossing. Alec's mother had been skeptical, but he'd known instantly—this was his ticket out.
By seventeen, he was walking runways in Milan. By twenty-one, his face was plastered across billboards in Times Square, advertising everything from cologne to luxury watches. He remembered standing beneath his own fifty-foot image, a beautiful woman on each arm, thinking, "I've made it. I'm untouchable." 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'd hear people whisper at exclusive clubs. "Oh my god, he's even more gorgeous in person."
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 rope parted automatically at his arrival.
Money flowed like water. Six-figure contracts were the norm. He was the face of three major brands simultaneously, pulling in close to two million a year at his peak. Life was intoxicating, and Alec drank deeply from its cup. Perhaps too deeply.
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, sliding a small mirror across the table. "You want to keep up with the Italians, don't you? They party till dawn."
"Just this once", Alec had told himself. "I can handle it."
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 would say, scribbling another prescription. "This should help."
"I'm not an addict", he'd think, swallowing four pills at once. "I'm just managing my lifestyle."
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 the wear. Fine lines appeared around his eyes. His skin lost that youthful glow, developing a grayish pallor that no amount of makeup could fully hide. His cheeks, once sculpted, began to sag ever so slightly.
The bookings slowed. Agencies started going with "fresh faces"—code for younger models who hadn't burned 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 dripping with false sympathy. "It's not personal, you understand."
*Not personal?* He stared at his reflection in the mirror that night, seeing what they saw—a fading star. "This is my face. This IS personal."
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'd 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 on consignment sites.
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'd 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 dive bars.
"You're good for it, right pretty boy?" Vic had asked, gold teeth glinting in the dim light. "Because if you're not... well, we got ways of getting our money back. Organ market's booming these days."
Alec had nodded, his hands shaking. "I'll figure it out. I always do."
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 had 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", he 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 it.
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!"
"What? I don't—" The blade plunged into his stomach, cutting off his thoughts. Then his chest. Then his side. Seventeen times the knife found its mark, painting the sidewalk red.
"Wrong person!" the attacker screamed, finally pushing Alec's hair aside to see his face. "Shit! You're not—you're not her!"
But it was too late. The man ran, footsteps echoing into the distance.
Alec lay there, his throat slit and gurgling, blood pooling beneath him. "So this is it. This is how I die. Mistaken for someone else. How fitting." His final thoughts weren't of his glory days or the people he'd 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."
"Please... just one more chance..."
The world faded to black, and Alec Morrison died on a dirty street corner, alone, broke, and full of nothing but pain and bitter regret.