Part 11 - Training Claudia, Act 1

EXT. NEW SPANISH TOWNHOUSE. (RUE ROYALE, NEW ORLEANS)
Servents are moving furnature into a townhouse.

Two husky movers bring in furniture through the back courtyard, past the fountain and the banana trees, up the back stairs and into ---
 

INT FLAT
Servents carrying furnature in the townhouse.

Striped wallpaper gives way to flowers in the bedrooms. Huge four-poster beds in the bedrooms, and large chests, as big as coffins standing against the wall. Everywhere there are candles and pretty Louis XVI furniture. Lestat gives instructions to the movers.

The Servents trying to figure out how to get the furnature up the sprial staircase.
 

A DIMLY LIT PARLOUR
Lestat and a dress maker standing around Claudia who is standing on a petit point chair as her dress if being measured.

We see Claudia draped in lace standing on a petit point chair as a DRESSMAKER measure out a garment.
Semstris: Mousier I need more light. I shall go blind if you do not bring me another lamp. Or let me see this child during the day.

Lestat and Louis talking to the side where the dress maker continues to measure Claudia's dress.

E: I'm afraid madam my days are sacrosent.

Lestat leaving the room where Claudia and the dressmaker are, with an upset look upon his face.

LV: A little child she was, but also a fierce killer, now capable of the ruthless presuit of blood With all a child's demanding. (Dress maker has pricked her hand. A spot of blood appears on her finger Claudia takes her hand.)

Claudia kissing/biting the Dressmaker's finger.

C: let me kiss it better. (Claudia brings the hand to her lips. The dressmaker abruptly pulls her finger away, in pain again.)
E: (Lestat walks through - sees the dressmaker lying dead at Claudia's feet, Claudia still on the chair in the half-finished dress.) Claudia,Claudia now who will we get to finish your dress. The practicality,( Lestat taps claudia's hand lightly in punishment.) remember never in the home.

INT. LOUIS' BEDROOM. NIGHT.
Claudia and Louis, sleeping in a coffin together, Claudia's fingers curling his hair.

Claudia and Louis asleep in each other's arms. *Note: My favorite Image

LV: She slept in my coffin at first, curling her little fingers around my hair, until the day came when she wanted one of her own.

INT. CLAUDIA'S BEDROOM. NIGHT.
A white child's coffin, near a window with light streaming in..The lid of the coffin is off, and Claudia is inside.

The child's coffin on the floor. The lid lifts. Claudia emerges, yawning, wanders through the flat into. - LOUIS' BEDROOM

Claudia tip toeing by the sunlight coming in through a window.

Where his coffin sits. She slides the lid off, and curls in beside him.

Claudia crawling into Louis's coffin..Louis closing the lid to the coffin, with Claudia and himself inside.

LV: But still when ever she awoke she would crawl into mine. They found out fast in those days, before she learned to play with them, to delay the moment till she had taken what she wanted.
 

EXT. SQUARE. NIGHT.
A well-dressed lady, walking through a square lit by gaslight. The lady hears a child's sobbing and stops, turns. Claudia, the picture of lost innocence, sitting on a bench and crying.

Large Lady: Ma chere petite fille, why are you crying child? Are you lost my love? (The woman, all solicitude, goes to Claudia. )
C: Mama.

Claudia laying her head against the woman's shoulder.

Large Lady: ah shush, hush now, don't cry, will find her. Ah monshere (The woman takes Claudia in her arms. Claudia nestles her head in her shoulder, her teeth near her neck.)

Lestat in a near by alley way watching Claudia from the shadows..Another view of Lestat watching Claudia from the shadows.

INT. PARLOUR. NIGHT.
Claudia tinkling with her child's hands on the piano, picking out a hesitant tune. A stern, stiff piano-teacher (male) beating time with a ruler as Claudia picks out scales on the piano. He raps her on the knuckles.

Claudia sitting at a piano, with a piano instructor..The piano instructor raises his baton as if to strike Claudia's hands for a wrong key.

Piano Teacher: Miser thumb girl, miser thumb Exact little diget.
(Claudia glares at him, then returns to playing, improving rapidly. )

INT. DOLL-SHOP. NIGHT.
Claudia peers into the glass windows of doll shop. An older fat doll maker sits working on a doll.

Piano music over. Mozart, now well played. Claudia staring at a glass case, inside of which are an array of eighteenth century dolls. An old doll-maker looks down on her.

A closer view of the doll maker and the beautiful doll his is working on.

Doll Maker: Their expensive my dear, maybe to expensive for a young girl like you.

Claudia looks at the doll maker, a look of pondering over her face.
(Claudia looks over at the Doll Maker with an evil gleam in her eye.)

EXT. STREET. NIGHT.
Claudia walking along, clutching the doll.

Claudia walking on the streets, a vampiric smile on her face. The doll the doll maker was working on in her arms.

INT. PARLOUR. NIGHT.
Claudia playing the piano seriously, the Piano teacher appears to be asleep.

Claudia playing the piano, now with remarkable dexterity. The piano-teacher sits mute beside her.)

Claudia continues to play the piano, the Piano Teacher has fallen onto the piano obviously dead.
(As she plays, he topples over and falls to the ground. We see the puncture-marks in his neck. Lestat, hearing the noise, comes in.

E: Claudia what have we told you.

Lestat has walked in and looks sternly down at Claudia.

C: (Claudia fakes distress) Never in the house.

Claudia looks so innocently up at Lestat. The piano teacher in the background, has blood on the collor of his shirt.

E: Give me some room. (Claudia moves over the Corpse falls off the stool, Lestat starts keeping time to Claudia's playing.)

LV: To me she was a child, but to Lestat a pupil An infent prodigy, with a lust for killing that match his own. Together they finished off whole families.

(Family Scene)
Claudia is sitting at a piano playing, in the background a family sits, Lestat sits with them, watching with a grin.

E: Wonderful, wonderful. Now try something on a more somber note.

Outside during the day, several coffins are loaded into carriages.

LV: Time can past quickly for mortals when their happy. With us it was the same, the years flew by like minutes. the city around us grew. Sail boats gave way to steam ships. discorging an endlass menu of magnificiant strangers, A new world had sprung up around us, And we where all american's now.

EXT. RUE ROYALE. NIGHT (1800'S)
The vampiric trio walking in the waterfront district in New Orleans.

Street lamps are oil at this period. Houses are now tall two-story Spanish style. Streets are flagstone. Passing carriages are black. Claudia, Louis and Lestat, dressed in the same clothes walking through a racuous carnival with sideshows. Crowd milling around, sailors, whores, children, thieves, freed slaves, Indians.

E: Ah. What I wouldn't give for a drop of good old fashioned creole blood.
L: Yankies are not your taste?
E: Their democratic flavor doesn't suit my palate, Louie.

The trio stop in an alley to watch something in a near by building.

Creole: (Singing)

A woman is standing up washing her body off, the window is open slightly and she doesn't know she is being watched.

E: Now that is pure creole, trust Claudie to have found her. What, don't you want her?

Lestat grinning as he stands in the alley.

C: I want to be her. Can I louie? Be like her one day.

Lestat looking serious.

E: Oh, Mon Dieu! More melancoly nonsense, I swear you grow more like Louie every day. Soon you'll be eating rats.

The trio standing in the alley, in black & white.

C: Rats? When did you eat rat's Louie?

A close up of Louis, in black & white. *Note: Nice image.

L: It was a long long time ago, before you where born (Slirp) And I don't recomend them.