Waiting For You

The Message

Alexandre Lavaure is my favorite actor. You don't know who he is now, but a week ago, you did.

I'll try to jog your memory. Alexandre Lavaure is a kind of Hollywood fairy tale. After securing supporting roles in a handful of blockbusters, he moved on to his own TV series. It was called "Strayaways" and ran from 1996 through 2001. "Strayaways" was a cultural juggernaut, singlehandedly catapulting TV from the film industry's cheap, derivative sibling to its creative and financial equal. In terms of production values and genre appeal, it was a sci-fi "Game of Thrones." No one expected it to be the biggest thing in the world. But it was, until Alexandre eclipsed it.

Alexandre himself developed an overwhelmingly huge and obsessive cult following. Think of the "Supernatural" fandom, but turned up to 11 or rather, 111. It was frightening. So frightening that the media dubbed it the most extensive mass obsession since Helen of Troy. The obsessive people – both men and women, by the way – often did crazy things. In fact, the things they did were crazy enough and frequent enough that at one point the situation got its own "20/20" special.

Alexandre's psycho following was, however, something of a splintered fandom (is that even the right word?). Some people just thought he was unbelievably good-looking (I myself never shared that sentiment; he was pretty, but not spectacularly so). Some people thought he was a CIA asset connected to the Oklahoma City bombings and Project Bluebird. Some people thought he was half-alien, others a dark magician, a few thought he was a vampire, still others the Messiah. One popular theory was that he was a "seed god," a divine, powerful, yet clueless entity that needed guidance to ascend and lead mankind into a new era.

Hopefully you get the picture. There was no rhyme or reason to these people. The only thing they all had in common was the sheer insanity on a scale no one's ever seen. That, more than his considerable talent, is what made Alexandre Lavaure a superstar. The non-obsessives took the cynical view that it was a PR move gone awry.

In any case, despite the would-be cult following, Alexandre married a model and quickly had a child.

The fans didn't like it, but fans never do, and what did it matter? He was on top of the world: He had a beautiful (sane) wife, adorable daughter, and he himself was one of the most famous stars in the world.

This is where the fairy tale turns to horror.

In the most notorious Hollywood murder since the Manson Family, a band of Alexandre's fanatics broke into his house while he was away on a film shoot. They tortured his wife and infant, then killed them.

The crime and trial dominated news cycles for years. Everyone knew Alexandre's face, and due to an unscrupulous leaker, everyone saw the crime scene photos, too. The media subjected everyone to the murderers' nonsense claims of transdimensional entity worship and reality rifts. The culprits' on-record justification for the double murder was that they needed to make a human sacrifice to escape the current timeline and catapult themselves into another one more suited to their desires and fantasies. One where they apparently all functioned as Alexandre's harem while he prepared to rule the universe.

After giving a victim impact statement at the sentencing, Alexandre Lavaure disappeared. It was the last anyone ever heard of him.

So... does any of this ring a bell? I only know he doesn't exist anymore because I'm moderator of a fan site. Even twelve years after his disappearance, his fan following was crazy strong and moderating took a couple hours a day (you would not believe the amount of photoshopped self-insert nudes I have to deal with on a daily basis. Or maybe you would? It's absolutely mind-boggling).

So, I logged in last Thursday morning to perform my mod duties. Or would have, if the website existed. It didn't. (Doesn't?)

I don't know. The crazy thing is, my computer has the website bookmarked as a favorite. If I start typing in the address, it autofills like it exists. But it doesn't. Apparently it never did.