EXT BOULEVARD DES CAPUCHINES - THEATRE DES VAMPIRES - NIGHT
Louis formally dressed with Claudia in rich attire on his arm. They pass people buying tickets for the theatre and go inside.
L: Now Rember what I told you, They will have differnt powers, they will read your thoughts if you let them. He's the one, that's the vampire.
Warily, they show their invitations to the mortal ticket taker at the door. He glances away indifferently.
INT THEATRE BOX. NIGHT.
Claudia and Louis look at the crowd as the lights go down.
Stage: curtain rises.
An elaborate painted set of an Italianate castle. Death standing before it, the traditional image of the Grim Reaper, complete with magnificent scythe.
Santiago (S): Two lovers wonder down their violet way, who's passionate embraces each to each, comense no meditations on decay, until they find themselves within my reach...hahaha
L: Vampires who pretend to be humans, pretending to be vampires.
C: How avant garde.
A version of the Poe story unfolds before them. All of the participants are vampires. All beautiful gleaming white, aged 20 or 30.
S: A monk who soul with heaven duth commune, and spends his day in pious contemplation, finds he will meet his maker all to soon, for all his prays he gets no amuneration. The lesson endith here, and it is this each one of you my clamy hands must touch, each one must bend his forehead to my kiss,.
S: But hark me think a mortal duth aproach. What have we here, what beauty by my side, A rose in bloom a shricking violet, perhapes she has mind to be my bride, perhapes my leason has not ended yet.
A spotlight uncovers a mortal woman suddenly forced out upon the stage.
The audience laughts uneasily, then stops as the Mortal Woman comes into the footlights. She is too beautiful, too confused. Santiago, as Death, advances on her. She backs away, terrified, then sees the other vampires, in a phalanx, advancing from behind, in a half-circle.
Girl (G): I don't want to die.
She looks around in panic. Santiago swoons, arms over his breast as if he is hopelessly in love.
S: but death we are and death we have always been.
The Mortal Woman steps to the footlights.
G: Someone help me, please! What have I done?
S: We all die,
Santiago gestures to the audience.
G: But if we all die.
Santiago approaches her and tears the drawstring out of her peasant blouse. It opens completely and starts to slip. She tries to catch it, but gently stops her wrists. The blouse falls, exposing her young breasts.
S: Death is no respecter of age, it can come any time, any place. Just as this flesh is pink now, so it will turn grey and wrinkle with age.
G: Let me leave, I don't care.
S: Then why should you care if you die now. (She shakes her head, confused.) and Suppose death had a heart to love and to realease you, to whom would he turn this passion, would you chose a person from the crowd there. A person to suffer as you suffer.
A young girl cries out in jest.
Audience Member: Oh yes, Monsuire Pete. Take me, I adore you.
Audience roars with laughter.
S: Oh you wait your turn. Do you know what it means to love death, to become our bride.
The Mortal Woman shakes her head in panic.
MORTAL WOMAN looks up on the verge of hysteria or fainting. But then her eyes mist over. She is being entranced.
FROM HER POV we realise she is looking past Santiago at the divinely beautiful Armand, who has just stepped out of the wings. Armand has entranced her. He passes Santiago. Santiago stiffens, but yields the stage.
.
ARMAND takes her by the nakes shoulders.
Other Vampires: (Hiss)
Armand gestures to the others who slowly, gracefully close in.
He pulls the drawstring from her skirt and it falls revealing her nakedness. But she is spellbound.
A: (Raise arms) No pain. No pain. (Remove Skirt)
Armand embraces her, drinks, her naked body stark against her black clothes, then he passes her to the other vampires one by one.
.
CLOSE ON LOUIS who battles desire and hunger with anger.
L: Monstrous.
ON STAGE
The naked Mortal Woman lies dead on the floor. The vampires seem to vanish one by one. As the curtain draws across, the Audience loudly applauds what they presume are theatrical tricks.
.
ANOTHER ANGLE
The audience, milling towards the exits. They talk in vacuous terms about the beauty of the show, the symbolism of it, the daring of it as they leave.
INT. FOOT OF STAIRWAY.
Armand leading, Louis and Claudia following. Fine wooden coffins
line the walls. Candles burn in sconces, casting alternate shawdows and
pools of light. Armand walks through, gesturing Louis and Claudia to follow
him. As they walk through, vampire man and women appear out of the shadows
like wraiths, startling them, drifting around them.
A: We live beneath, let me show you.
L: Monsters.
A: yes, but very beautiful. (Toss of cloak) Welcome to my home,
(Gesture Young boy comes forward, lift hand) Try him.
(Louis glances at Armand, who smiles. Louis sees the puncture marks on the boy's neck. Louis is utterly confused. Can't resist. Drinks his blood. The boy gasps. Louis, suddenly ashamed draws away.)
INT. MEDIEVAL ROOM.
Medieval chairs, table, an old coffin, a bed in one corner, a blazing
fire. A medieval painting of Satan, being banished from heaven, above the
fire. Armand places the boy on the bed, settling him so he sleeps.
A: Two vampires from the new world, come to guide us into the new era.
As all we love slowy rots and fades away. (He glances at Louis, then
at Claudia, who averts her eyes.)
L: Are you the leader of this, this group
A: If there were a leader, I would be the one. (Claudia stares at
him constantly, guarded.)
L: so you have the answers
A: so you have questions.
L: what are we?
A: nothing, if not vampires.
L: Who made us what we are.
A: surely you know the one who made you.
L: Yes but the one who made him, the source, of all this evil.
A: (He smiles at Louis. A smile of infinite compassion.) I understand,
I saw you in the theater. Your suffering, your sypthy for that girl, you
die when you kill, you feel you deserve to die, and you still do nothing,
does that make you evil, or sense you comprehiend what you call goodness
does that make you good.
L: then there is nothing.
A: Perhapes but perhapes, (He passes
his finger through the candle flame.) this is the only real evil left.
L: Then god does not exist.
A: I know nothing of god or the devil.
I have never seen a vision nor learned a secret that will damn or save
my soul, and as far as I know, after 4 hundred years I am the oldest living
vampire in the world. (He stares at them, his face angelic, hypnotic,
young. His eyes hold them both in a trance.)
L: then it's as I have alwayed fear.
A: You fear to much, so much you make me fear. (He stares from Claudia
to Louis. He seems to be reading their souls.) The one who made you
should have told you this. The one who left the old world for the new.
L: The one who made us knew nothing, nor did he care.
A: knew?
C: (Claudia appears suddenly to Louis' shoulder, interrupting.)
Come beloved, its time we where on our way, I'm hungry and the city awaits.
(She stares hard at Armand. Armand looks from her to Louis. Armand seems
genuinely regretful. But Claudia pulls Louis out.)
INT. DARKENED CORRIDORS AND THEATRE. NIGHT.
Louis and Claudia feel their way through darkened corridors, trying to find their way out.
LV: The place was empty as we left, silent as the grave,and as we blunder
threw it again came the thought, I have wronged Lestat, I have hated him
for the wrong reasons.
Suddenly a light comes on. They see they are in the empty theatre.
Santiago stands on the stage, under a candle.
S: How did you wrong him? (Louis is stunned.) You said a name.
L: Yes a name I don't care to repeat.
S: There is but one crime among us vampires here,(He looks at Claudia.)
the crime that means death to any vampire, Kill your own kind.
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