It was my turn to say hi. Meeting the Weeknd doesn’t come cheap, but I had gone all in. VIP package, backstage meet and greet, and I had everything ready. The Sharpie, the Starboy vinyl, the spiel. I’d been running it in my head one last time as the blonde girl in front of me had her time with him—Hi Abel, you were awesome to-night! I’m Jessica, I’m a huge fan, I’ve been following you since Kiss Land and I adore all of your work—and then suddenly, right in front of me, there he was!

“Hi Abel, you were awesome to-night!” I began. This is when it happened.

The Weeknd’s smile dissolved into a grimace, and he began to cough. A painful, wet cough it was, and he barely caught his breath before he froze in shock. Beads of sweat were forming all over his skin, his palm tree dreadlocks fraying in the electric summer heat.

“Are you okay?” I asked, setting my vinyl and Sharpie down.

His body had become deathly rigid and tense, seized by full-body spasms. A guttural sound was emerging through his clenched teeth, a rumbling unmusical urrrggghhh, as he squeezed his fists together in a violent toilet-king pose.

Should I have touched the Weeknd? I wasn’t sure, but now other people in the room, fans and handlers alike, were rushing toward him, so I reached out to hold his sweaty hand in mine. “We’re getting you help,” I assured him.

Then I felt something give way.

“The Weeknd is moulting!” cried the blonde girl next to me.

And moulting he was! All over the Weeknd’s body, skin was flaking as he shivered, disassembling in the shifting light. It began from the top, a layer of face shedding, and worked its way down, the skin flowering radially outward as it fell away in clumps around his shoulders. “Ewwww,” another girl near me noted as layers of epidermis unravelled around his torso like a cling wrap that lost its ability to cling.

Cries of “The Weeknd is moulting!” rippled through the room. “The Weeknd is moulting!” Some hitherto concealed cell phones had now been taken out of their purses and jacket pockets and were recording the scene. I was too frozen in shock to notice that the hand I held was no longer his hand but merely its outermost membrane.

Finally a handler came upon us. “Everybody back off!” she screamed. “Give him some room!” She pushed me away, the Weeknd’s skin still hanging from my hand like a limp flaky glove.

“We have a code five-niner-seven, send medical immediately,” she spoke into her device. “Yes, three days ahead of schedule.” Other fans were rushing forward to snatch up regions of shedded skin from the floor and stuff them in their purses. “What the fuck?” she bellowed. “EVERYBODY OUT!”

No sooner did I see a few big and burly armed bodyguards pushing through the fray, dragging people forcefully out of the room, than did one of them knock me aside, sending the Weeknd’s hand-skin flying. He shot me the death glare, and I backed away slowly, finding my way to the exit under his watchful gaze. As I glanced back through the door, the Weeknd was now collapsed against the knees of the handler, breathing heavily as she administered her first-response procedure. His new skin-layer glinted blue in the soft lights, discoloured like an oil spill by rivulets and pools of sweat.

I never did get my vinyl back, nor the Sharpie for that matter.