This is a Crack fic and intended to be funny. There isn't anything super graphic but there is lots of foul language.
The news hit Twitter first. A friend of a friend of a friend heard it directly from the underpaid and overworked personal assistant of the Diva herself. The leaky woman laid it bare to her measly thirty nine followers, thinking that her slip was as inconsequential as every other tweet she posted with less than twenty views, never to garner more than a single like. But algorithms and dumb luck landed it in front of the eyes of someone who was the friend of a friend of someone at TMZ. It spread like wildfire after that, as gossip-thirsty paparazzi and celebrity focused reporters dug into the rumor and began their own cutthroat investigations. It required very little digging, as it turns out, since the divorce record was not sealed and made public access.
The model, turned pop star, turned actress had been dating the star baseball player, Rob "Da Chase" de Chagny, for half a decade. Their relationship seemed stable enough, though there had been one or two occasions when Rob had been seen leaving a nightclub with a woman which the Diva shrugged off in interviews with a flash of her megawatt smile and a hearty laugh—as if the thought of other women was a ludicrous as the suggestion that she wouldn't win another Grammy this year. Although, perhaps not so ludicrous since she did not win the Grammy, losing instead to the upcoming artist , Megg , who released their debut album just that summer, featuring the title single "Step Aside"—a title that was pointed out on social media to be quite fitting, given the circumstances. Memes of the terse expression on Christine Daae's face the moment they announced Megg's victory for the coveted award went viral, with captions saying "When you forget to eat fiber for a whole year" and "Me 5 mins before the weed hits", populated tweets and discord servers like a hilarious disease.
But now the engagement between the diva and the shortstop had come to an end, and while they portrayed an air of amicability before the paparazzi all hugs and smiles as they confirmed the news,with her four million dollar engagement ring noticeably missing, rumors still took firm root. Rob "Da Chase" had recently retired from playing, and while he had recently acquired the Minnesota Hat Men, the word on the street among those in the sports biz was that his net worth was on the precipice of dropping—at least enough that, sources close to her claim, the "My Love Don't Cost A Thing" singer simply would not tolerate.
Coincidentally, at the same time on the other side of hellscape that is Los Angeles—a city littered with smoke shops and broken promises—another celebrity was being released from rehab for the third time that year. The cameras of an unscrupulous, money-hungry paparazzi clicked shots of an inglorious emergence of the unfashionably thin man as he exited the clinic's sliding doors. When he set foot on California's sun-soaked sidewalks, he was assaulted by the flash of the camera and the merciless daylight which both exposed and violated. His uncommon yellow eyes narrowed and shot a look of crippling contempt to the man with the camera, suggesting he was scowling, but it would be impossible to know since the famous musician wore his signature black mask.
Not that the world had not had their fill of what hid behind the hard matte black material of the mask. Images were only a quick Google search away. The first images of Erik Afflak to leak and circulate the public like a virus came from the one and only Christine Daae only shortly after their breakup twenty years prior. Her 'little mistake' as she later called it occurred on Instagram and she had included the caption 'I'm not missing your HORROR face.' The photo was up a total of twenty minutes, but it was long enough for the world to grab screenshots and share with captions expressing their confusion and disbelief. Speculation abounded.
Nobody could believe that was truly Erik Afflak's face. The mask was just a gimmick, right? It had to be similar to Ghost and Slipknot, or like Devo's hats or the Insane Clown Posse's makeup. It was true, the world had no clue who the guy was. He was as mysterious as Banksy–theories of his origin and true identity abounded. Up until that fateful instagram post, nobody knew what the man looked like. But that? Impossible. It had to be a Halloween filter, though no such filter could be traced. Was it really convincing prosthetics? Photoshop? A mask beneath a mask?
The media frenzy was out of control, paparazzi and reporters swarmed Afflak every time he stepped foot from the sanctuary of his Santa Monica home like meat-hungry piranhas. He swatted away every prying question with a mute shake of his head, but the wrathful fire in his eyes could burn through steel. Did he have an explanation for the peculiar candid portrait the diva had briefly shared? His stony silence lasted weeks, and sightings of him became more infrequent.
Something peculiar was happening on the internet, however. A large following of his fans started posting thirsty comments proclaiming their undying love and devotion for the star. Tumblr accounts were created and countless pieces of fanart of Erik Afflak with the face resembling death went viral in feeds, reblogged hundreds of times. He became the erotic focus in fanfiction. A picture of him glaring into the camera, his eyes burning with vitriol, circulated with the caption "I want him to eat my soul and my pussy", received thousands of likes on Twitter. From there, the cult-like following only grew.
Somehow, the unusual face had increased his appeal exponentially.
The public starved for answers and even casual fans found themselves caught up in the fray. The buzz around the mystery of him grew to a fever pitch. His stardom burned brighter than any star had ever dreamed, not since those glory days of Hollywood when scandal and fame danced like familiar lovers, when 'All publicity is good publicity' held true. It carried on this way for months, until there came the sweltering summer day when Erik Afflak and his accompanying band stepped out before a sold out show at the Hollywood Bowl, and in one fateful move, he ripped the mask from his unbelievable face and tossed it into the crowd.
Three people were hospitalized for injuries sustained after the entire pit lurched forward for the coveted thing while Afflak cackled above with glee at the sight of it.
After that show, fans who had the privilege of meeting the star themselves, many having the experience of spending the entire night in his presence, took to social media or gushed to friends in discord servers about the authenticity of the face. 'It's like looking into the face of God himself', one very exuberant fan wrote on Twitter, accompanied by a selfie she took with the legend himself.
Erik Afflak whiplashed from a man of secrecy to a man out of control with the freedoms of his long-awaited liberation. Women, and the occasional man, went through the revolving door that was his bed, but he wasn't above taking them in other venues too—parked cars and bathrooms seemed to work just as well for his impromptu romps. He partied daily, at clubs, on yachts, with string bikini clad girls on tropical beaches. It all went to his head, causing him to post boomerang selfies on his instagram while he was driving. It was quite obvious he was now enamored with own unconventional visage–perhaps unconventional is too generous, because the dude has a really fucked up face. Some would say his behavior was far too self indulgent and indicative of a delusional vanity reserved for douchebags and serial killers, but his fans, die hard as they were, ate the bullshit up.
Then the spiral came. He was found roaming the streets of London for a month in the same pair of designer track pants. His appearance grew more and more disheveled as the days passed. Rumors of his subsequent drug use emerged, often presented as false concern by scandalphiliac tabloids. But soon rumors became fact, but it was hard to distinguish where fact and lore intersected. The list of drugs became increasingly absurd. He was on cocaine and booze. No, it's designer psychotropics. Nope, it's a whale tranquilizers and probably some weird drug derived from a blue bellied frog and made by an uncontacted tribe in South America.
He was still the ugliest-hottest man to his fans, but he became the train wreck everyone loved to watch.
Once he had started his descent into the madness of chemical mood alteration, his tour was canceled, his projects went on hold, the people who were found dangling on his arm became far more dubious and, for God knows what reason, he became besties with Mark McGrath from Sugar Ray. The two were said to 'jam' with one another on a near weekly basis. The reader should keep in mind here that this was 2004 and while Sugar Ray was hitting the charts only a few years prior, they had declined in favor having just released an album to a lukewarm reception. In layman's terms, hanging out with Mark McGrath–who was surprisingly more douchey than Erik Afflak–was decidedly not a good look.
He had finally hit his biggest low, when a very lucky amateur paparazzi stumbled upon the star in a random Starbucks men's room in New Jersey. A bloodshot and bleary-eyed Erik Afflak, having forgotten to lock the door, was trying to put a dollar bill into a non existent money slot in the urinal, having mistaken it for a vending machine, while repeatedly moaning "take my money, you fuck, I really want that bag of Doritos". The thirteen year old intruder took a moment to process the bizarre scene, before recognizing his luck and snapping a fairly decent, if not a bit grainy, photo on his Nokia flip phone. The income the kid scored from a photo of Afflak smashing a dollar into a porcelain bathroom fixture would have set him for life if wisely invested, but teenage boys rarely consider the long-term future, so it's likely he made the wrong call.
After the fateful photo was released–which thankfully had not been subjected to the same brutal overuse we see today with meme-worthy photos, rehabilitation centers managed to obtain Afflaks contact information through dubious methods and assaulted him with promises of recovery. Paparazzi became more vicious and competitive, camping out in bushes outside his home or stalking him down city streets. One even went so far as hoping into the backyard of his Santa Monica home to take photos through his windows, which luckily resulted in nothing but some high quality shots of a sheer curtain fabric.
Once he finally sought help, it was impossible to attend Narcotics Anonymous. Reporters posed as addicts and sat in meetings he attended, covertly recording him when he shared and selling the quotes to ethically bankrupt magazines. Cameras would wait for him when he exited the churches or cafes in which they were held, assaulting his masked face with the bright flashes as he exited. He stopped exposing his face at this time, hiding behind the specially designed plastic covering to obscure his features. Only his eyes spoke for his expressions, and those eyes were always filled with bitterness.
He yo-yoed in and out of recovery, until he had the chance meeting with Nadir Khan at an awards show. The musician and the Detective Daroga lead actor hit it off immediately and were soon seen out in public, displaying their affection for all to see. The diva was asked for her opinion on the matter and calmly brushed off all the questions with a plug for her upcoming album, but it was impossible to miss the envy in the way she held her brow.
Detective Daroga, a popular show about an amateur entomologist with an unnaturally precise sense of smell that can literally sniff out crime, ran for seven seasons. Khan had a number of roles in a few high budget action films as well, including the popular Quick & Angry franchise, which was soon to release its fifteenth installment to the delight of fans and the dismay of high brow hollywood types who did not even think the first flick should have even been made.
On paper, the Afflak/Khan relationship seemed like a bad idea in the making, but the two insisted they evened out one another's personalities. It was certainly working for Erik, at least. Once the first same sex couples in America were married in Massachusetts, the pair flew to the state to exchange their own vows.
Things seemed wonderful for years. More than a decade. It seemed like a miracle for someone like Erik to be so tamed. Nadir Khan had effectively domesticated the rockstar.
Then the subject of children was discussed, according to sources close to the couple, and it all fell apart. Afflak was seen engaging in his old behaviors, rarely spending time at home with his husband. There was infidelity and drugs, but Afflak released the greatest album of his career at that time. Angry, dark, and full of bitter regret, it birthed a new subculture of goth-emo-metal hybrid fashion styles into the world. The world had just gone through the hell of the Covid pandemic and Americans had just survived the Trump administration, so they gobbled up the album with greedy, depressed glee. It felt like the anthem for the past few years. Even dancehalls, newly open to the public with pandemic restrictions lifted, pumped it through their speakers in the form of dance mixes.
Erik had a fleeting relationship with Allie Sorrelli, but it ended months after he and the Forks Out actress went to her home country of Brazil to meet her family. At this same time, the Daae/Chagny engagement, having been postponed twice "due to Covid" comes to its unexpected end.
This brings us full circle to the beginning of this story, when Erik, leaving rehab for the third time that year, received an unexpected call from a sweetheart of long ago. Nobody knows what happened on that phone call, but it led to photos of Afflak going to and from Christine Daae's L.A. mansion.
At this point the reader is probably asking themselves, "WTF?" Why would Christine Daae end one tumultuous relationship to hop into another with a man who is so covered in red flags that he could put every matador in the world out of business? It certainly beats me, but I suppose this is the sort of story that has to play out to its undeniably predictable bitter end.
I guess we best buckle up, because this is going to get rocky.