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THE PASSION OF NEW EVE
First Draft Screenplay
280618-060519
Screenplay by GREG STEDMAN
THE PASSION OF NEW EVE
Music: Venus (1959) by Frankie Avalon
Front-on low view of tall and very narrow fissure entrance to cave in rocks, lit by a peachy dawn light which gives the scene a warm, soft unearthly feel. Rivulets of water wind through sand, through the straps of a half-buried translucent jelly sandal with fronds of seaweed growing off it, and around stones to combine at the mouth of the cave and disappear into its depths. Water drips from hanging plants in the rockface. The rhythmic booming sound of waves coming in and out filtered through the cave's acoustics is like an immense creature's sleeping breathing.
After a while of nothing happening but the trickle and drip of water we slowly drift towards the cave mouth. As we move in the focus doesn't keep up, so the scene gradually becomes more blurred as we approach the cave mouth. The song becomes more echoey and fades away at the same rate as the image blurs until the words fades completely to indistinct echo.
Unfussy credits over all this.
CUT TO BLACK
EXT. RUN DOWN GRANADA-STYLED CINEMA, SOUTH LONDON, JULY, ABOUT 1977
Shot of exterior of once-glamorous cinema through misty drizzle from across the road. Cars, a red London bus, a few solitary pedestrians hurry past across the cinema entrance.
INT. CINEMA
Fade in wide shot as camera floats slowly from back of large screening room towards the screen. Patrons are scattered around the edge seats, many more empty seats than filled. Cigarette smoke hangs in the air and men occasionally cough from the dark edges.
The screen image is blurry but it is apparent the screening is a black and white film (a hammy late 30s Hollywood Wuthering Heights type period melodrama). The soundtrack is distorted, hissy, music and voices both booming and muffled. The print is in such poor condition that the soundtrack pops and crackles constantly like heavy rain.
EVELYN sits in the centre, about a third of the way back from the screen. We see his longish wavy blond hair from the back. He is very intent on the screen. We hear the muffled sound of a nee-nor fire engine dopplering past outside.
As we get closer to him we begin to hear him breathing. There are also slightly laboured sounds of breathing in and out of nostrils and occasional wet mouth sounds from OC.
Cut to close up of Evelyn's young and somewhat feminine face, sketched in shifting light from the screen. He is absently eating a choc ice, peeling back the silvered paper wrapper with practiced skill.
The film music swells to a climactic crescendo, Evelyn's breathing becomes fast and shallow and his eyes roam the unseen screen. The rhythmic wet off-screen sounds become more insistent.
Evelyn gasps, shifts slightly in his chair as though in momentary discomfort, looks down as a YOUNG WOMAN's head rises up from between his legs.
YOUNG WOMAN (sobbing whisper)
Eve-lyn.
Her eye makeup has run from crying and her lipstick is smeared. Evelyn looks mildly irritated and surprised, distractedly glancing at the young woman as she gropes her way up from the littered floor to sit on the seat next to him. He mainly remains focussed on the drama unfolding on the screen. The young woman sniffs back tears as Evelyn watches the film. We hear Evelyn zipping up his trousers.
Evelyn lifts a flake of frozen chocolate from the opened out choc ice wrapper, eats it. He turns to look at his companion again, as though trying to recognise her or understand what she is doing there. He smiles briefly and mechanically. He crumples the wrapper and drops it on the floor. The film ends with shrill abruptness, the lights come up. Evelyn is already standing and reaching for his fog-damp tan Mackintosh.
INT. HEATHROW PAN-AM JFK CHECK-IN, NIGHT
Evelyn steps forward to the counter as a 60-SOMETHING TOURIST COUPLE (Duane Hanson 1970 style) move away. THE PAN-AM CHECK-IN COUNTER WOMAN is very lipglossy and eyeshadowy. She has extremely pale blue eyes. A small silver crucifix hangs from a chain around her neck.
Evelyn has a new brown leather suitcase and a battered black leather messenger bag. He deposits his suitcase and pushes his ticket and passport across the desk.
The check-in woman examines ticket and passport (name Evelyn Stalker), raises her eyebrows and looks up at Evelyn, preparing to ask an off-topic question.
EVELYN, smiling tightly
It’s pronounced EVE-lin.CHECK-IN WOMAN, professionally unperturbed
And would you like smoking or non-smoking for today’s flight sir?EVELYN
Non-smoking.
She completes the check in using a clattering computer terminal, produces boarding pass.
CHECK-IN WOMAN
Gate 2. Have a good flight with us today Mister Stalker.
INT. PAN-AM 747 PLANE, NIGHT
Plane is beginning takeoff. The cabin lights are dim.
Evelyn is seated beside a middle aged NEW JERSEY TEACHER. The teacher reaches into her handbag and pulls out a card printed on both sides with prayers and decorated with a Stars and Stripes border. She turns it to the takeoff side, angles it to read it in the dim light. She begins mouthing along with the words nervously as the plane gathers speed and noise. Evelyn watches with detached curiosity. The school teacher’s eyes flicker up to Evelyn’s and her face twitches fearfully like a rabbit.
NEW YORK CITY, DAY, SUMMER
A 40 YEAR OLD MAN screams and runs frantically down the middle of a rubbish-strewn canyon-like street. Cars and trucks shriek and swerve as he runs. Competing alarms wail nearby. The man clutches at the side of his neck, which is spurting great quantities of blood through his fingers. There are screams and shouts, people point and run for cover in alleys and doorways.
A round of gunshots from an unseen location rings out and the man crashes to the ground outside a shop selling tourist tat, hunting knives and ammunition. The yellow-filmed window displays grotesque plaster gnomes depicting various US Presidents up to and including Carter, wearing comical outfits (Carter is a peanut) and eating a variety of junk food. The window is also plastered with torn stickers of the vagina dentata ideogram.
Approaching sirens wail distantly. The man dies.
Evelyn is among the onlookers, having recently got out of a taxi. He wears yellow tinted aviator sunglasses and is dressed in the same clothes he was wearing at Heathrow, dishevelled and sweaty now. He holds his bags.
He walks along the street, checks a piece of paper from his pocket, jumps at the sound of blaring horns and turns to see an armoured National Guard vehicle ploughing through the street. He hastily enters the building to the crunch and whoosh sound of a bottle bomb smashing against the side of the armoured vehicle.
INT. EVELYN’S DINGY SIXTH FLOOR APARTMENT, EVENING
Evelyn sits by the window overlooking the street through a rusted fire escape. Several cars lie crumpled and smouldering in the street. Bass-heavy distorted 70s porno style music is playing from somewhere.
A SHOP WORKER across the street pulls down filthy shutters covered in spray tags and graffiti including Nazi imagery, guns, a mushroom cloud, a crucifix, clenched fists, and centrally a large vagina dentata ideogram. A poorly-executed cock and balls is overlaid, ejecting a dashed line from the head towards the opening.
Large black rats roam the street, tearing at piles of refuse bags. Several rats gather excitedly to pull out the corpse of a small dead dog wrapped in newspaper and string and attack it in a frenzy.
Evelyn looks haggard and sweaty.
A muffled boom comes from inside the apartment building, the ceiling above Evelyn jumps visibly and the windows rattle. While Evelyn dithers thick white smoke begins to waft slowly through an air duct in the wall. Evelyn rushes to the door, struggles with the assorted unfamiliar locks and bolts.
INT. APARTMENT BUILDING STAIRS, EVENING
Evelyn descends the stairs in a hurry. The porno music is louder here. A door is thrown open on a floor above with a wordless shout, the music becomes even louder and a man's coughing and gasping comes from the same unseen place above.
Evelyn stops and turns as BAROSLAV, a 60 year old Czech ex-soldier alchemist with bug eyes and a long drooping moustache, staggers down the stairs waving his hand - which is wrapped around a stubby .38 revolver - before his face. The white smoke follows him and begins to disperse in the stairwell.
BAROSLAV (raving)
Fuh-king-fuh-king!
Baroslav sits heavily on stairs, dispassionately pulls thin shards of glass out of his arm.
BAROSLAV (apparently to shards)
Fuck.
Baroslav places the revolver beside him and retrieves a pack of cigarettes and a lighter from one of the many pockets of his shabby military trousers, lights his cigarette. After a few moments he holds the pack out towards Evelyn. Until now it hasn't been apparent that he had even registered his presence.
BAROSLAV
Smoke.
Evelyn approaches cautiously for a cigarette. As he does Baroslav reaches over his lap stealthily with his other hand for his gun, aims it past Evelyn and fires. The noise is deafening. Evelyn turns to see a very large rat with a big hole in it twitching on the stair and several other rats scattering away.
BAROSLAV, matter of fact
Filth.
Baroslav returns the gun to the step and jiggles the packet at Evelyn with an encouraging nod.
INT. BAROSLAV’S ROOM, EVENING
Baroslav stands by a sagging wallpapering table set up with alchemical equipment. The room is in disarray, piled and papered with esoterica. A white bird is drowned in a large glass bottle. He is sweeping shattered glass into a corner with his boot. The window is open. A reel to reel plays wonky synth music loudly.
Evelyn sits on a stool. He holds a shot glass of vodka.
EVELYN (loudly over the music)
People told me. Warned me I suppose. I came anyway, to take up a teaching position at the University.
Baroslav snorts at the idea of university, or at Evelyn’s foolishness.
EVELYN
It’s under armed occupation by Black Power Maoist revolutionaries. They laughed and gave me a gunpoint lecture on British imperialism. Well they said English. I think they let me go because of my accent.BAROSLAV
Lucky for you wasn’t the Women.EVELYN
Women? Which women?BAROSLAV
No.
Evelyn looks confused. Baroslav waves him over to the window, points at the ideogram on the shutters across the road. Evelyn remains nonplussed.
BAROSLAV
The Women. Angry Women, OK. Cut balls off, you lucky.
Baroslav returns to his equipment shaking his head.
EVELYN
And what about you Baroslav?BAROSLAV
I alchemist. Was soldier. Now alchemist.EVELYN
An alchemist? Really?BAROSLAV
Soon I make you gold. You like gold? I make. We drink.
Baroslav picks up vodka bottle, clunks it against Evelyn’s glass and takes a large gulp from the bottle. Evelyn swallows his shot. Immediately Baroslav refills Evelyn’s glass to the brim.
BAROSLAV
I make. In bathtub. Is bad. I use wallpaper paste. Potato too expensive. Ah. We drink.
Evelyn looks towards the bathroom, through the unhinged door he can see what could be a DIY still.
EVELYN
What shall we drink to?
Just then a squawking police loudhailer emits a burst of hostile words. This is followed by gunfire.
BAROSLAV, reciting with Slavic cadence, fervent and joyous, eyes squeezed closed
Chaos! The fructifying chaos of anteriority. The state before the beginning of the beginning.EVELYN
The end of reason.BAROSLAV, bloodshot bulging eyes wide open now
Yes!
EXT. MANHATTAN, SUMMER, NIGHT
Evelyn wanders the night streets. Rapid cuts of hustlers, pimps, beggars, drunks, junkies, sex workers, so much noise. Frenzied dogs hurl themselves at chain link, trash fires, fist fights, fucking upright in alleys, muggings, gang rape, boarded up subway entrances, smoking buildings, music, dancing, disease, beauty, laughter, weeping, police beatings, helicopters, doomsday proselytising.
An unseen sniper shoots a man in the leg while he haunts a porno theater foyer.
Brownouts, blackouts, looting, tipped over burnt-out food trucks, hydrant-flooded intersections, screams, whoops, smashing windows. The river is clogged with broken things.
People stalk Evelyn at various times, only to break off when they discover they are being followed in turn by carefully inconspicuous Angry Women.
EXT. HARLEM, NIGHT
Evelyn looks up at the barricades being raised around Harlem’s south side. Serious watchful black children in oversized basketball tank tops sit on the barricades behind machine gun nests.
EXT. UNION SQUARE, NIGHT
A GAUNT WOMAN with white hair slicked down with dried blood on one side jogs out from a park square and crosses the street waving. She is dressed in a pink velour jogging suit, vomit crusted down the front. Evelyn stops.
GAUNT WOMAN, calm conspiratorial
He’s here. I seen him.EVELYN
Oh, yes?GAUNT WOMAN
Yeah. No. So I was out at the beach there trying to not step in all the dog shit it’s disgusting and then I look out at the sea and there’s these huge fucking excuse me glowing wheels turning in the sky right there in front of me. So I says to myself this is it Judgment he’s coming back on a goddamned bicycle I couldn’t see his legs or the pedals but that shows you how big this is now I gotta tell everyone good luck sweetie God bless.
She is already trotting away into the night before she finishes, looking for the next person to tell, flapping her hands.
EXT. LOWER EAST SIDE, PRE-DAWN
Evelyn is returning to his apartment building after walking the city streets all night. He is tired, almost sleepwalking. The city is in a rare moment of relative quiet, exhausted by the night’s upheavals.
A building across the street has been reduced to smoking rubble in the night. A few people with shopping trolleys wander silently over the ruins picking through the bricks and smashed stuff.
Out of nowhere (microsleeping as he walks) Evelyn finds an ANGRY WOMAN with long dark tightly curled and oiled hair standing right in front of him, her hand clenched around his balls. In her other hand she holds a straight razor, not especially threateningly but it makes the point. She is looking directly into Evelyn’s face with a quietly direct gaze. She wears jeans, leathers ripped off at the shoulder and an armband and a headband with the Angry Women ideogram printed on it. There is nobody else in sight, they could be the only two people in the city.
ANGRY WOMAN, emphatically, in Evelyn’s face
Eeeve.EVELYN
Ad-
The Angry Woman tightens her grip, wiggles the razor 'no', Evelyn grimaces and doesn’t complete the word. She releases him and walks away, folding the razor.
INT. EVELYN’S ROOM, DAY
Evelyn is lying on a mattress, not wearing much, his head propped up on an embroidered cushion patterned with Indian elephants. The portable TV sits on a chair, showing a black and white Tristessa film. She is playing a nun staked out in the desert to die. Ants crawl across her face. Evelyn dips into a large box of breakfast cereal as he watches. His eyelids are drooping.
Hammering on the door wakes him to a noisy commercial for orange juice. He hastily struggles into some clothes and goes to the door, looks through the spyhole, fumbles with the locks and cracks open the door. The skinny SUPERINTENDENT stands on the other side, fist raised about to pound on the door again.
EVELYN
Yes?SUPER
You Ev-er-lin?EVELYN, groggily
Um, yes.SUPER
Guy upstairs wanted you should have this.
The superintendent passes something small wrapped in a twist of newspaper to Evelyn through the gap in the door.
EVELYN
Who? Baroslav? What is it?SUPER
Polack upstairs. I don’t know what it is man and I don’t care.
Evelyn takes the package, confused and still not quite awake.
EVELYN
Czech. He's Czech.SUPER
Yeah? Well he's dead so whatever.EVELYN
Dead? How?SUPER
Usual way man. Punk kids jumped him out front of the store down the street, cut him up. Took all night to die, hospital says. So. I got to clear his junk now. You know someone wants a room?EVELYN
What? No I...
CUT to Evelyn sitting on the edge of the bed, looking blank. His passport, a pile of paper money and coins and the small package lie next to him on one side, a burning cigarette in a cheap Indian-style brass ashtray on the other.
He rouses himself. He picks up the package, untwists the newspaper. Something heavy falls out onto the floor and bounces under the bed. Evelyn hunts around under the bed, retrieves it in a tangle of hair and dust. He cleans it off, sees it is a small lumpy gold ingot, about the size of a cannellini bean. He turns it around in his fingers, weighs it in his palm.
Behind him through the window we see Baroslav's stuff (leather bound books, glassware, rubber tubing, notebooks, loose papers, tape reels, boots, black and white photographs, army clothes, the bottled white bird...) coming down from above, spinning and cascading past Evelyn's window in grotesque graceful slow motion. Slow crossfade.
INT. LEILAH’S ROOM, SUNSET, SUMMER
LEILAH, 17 years old, slim and dark skinned, straddles Evelyn on a narrow cot bed. She is naked except for a slipping fox fur coat and her skin shines in the slanting sunset light from the window. Baroslav’s gold ingot rhythmically twists and swings from a fine chain around her neck, winking the reflected sun.
The room is small, narrow and extremely messy. A cheap chiffonier with cracked mirror, overflowing chifforobe, lurid synthetic clothes, scattered high-heeled and platform shoes, sheer underwear, cosmetics, Chinese noodle cartons strewn everywhere. Furs pour out of over-filled drawers. An expensive hifi record player plays Al Green Explores Your Mind.
Both Leilah and Evelyn have hungry violent fixed expressions as they fuck. Evelyn’s hair has grown, he looks wilder and thinner than the last time we saw him. The bones of his skull are more pronounced.
This goes on for some time with no change but the music.
CUT TO
Leilah standing before the chiffonnier applying iridescent makeup to the hollows of her face in brilliant smears and daubs. It is darker now and a bare ceiling bulb illuminates the room and makes the metallic makeup shine.
Leilah still wears the fox fur. She is otherwise very scantily dressed except for shiny orange needle stiletto boots neatly crisscross-laced up her calves.
We see her mostly from behind and in the cracked mirror reflection, in which we also see Evelyn sprawled on the bed lazily smoking a large spliff. Sluggish blue smoke leaks from his mouth.
Leilah rubs her bangled wrists, twists before the mirror and pushes the coat to one side to examine her rear.
LEILAH
Why do you beat me? Why do you tie me to my bed?EVELYN
Because you are bad.LEILAH
Why am I bad?EVELYN
It’s not really a question of why darling. You don’t laugh anymore. There used to be bells in your laugh.LEILAH (sadly)
You have beat them out of me.EVELYN
That’s true.LEILAH
You are a pig.EVELYN
And you Leilah are a whore.
Leilah turns angrily.
LEILAH
Not true!EVELYN
No? Perhaps.
They glare at each other. Leilah lets the coat part a little and paints her nipples with leaf green lipstick, eyes locked in challenge on Evelyn. She ripples snake-like slightly from her hips and shoulders as she paints herself.
Evelyn gasps, wide-eyed and immobilised with lust before her.
LEILAH
Serpent.
In a sudden flurry she twists the music volume up, lifts a small chain mail bag, drops keys into it, lightly kisses Evelyn on his forehead, leaving a green lipstick mark there. He makes a greedy lunge for her but she evades him easily, laughs lightly (with bells) and slams the door. Rats squeal. We hear her heels clattering down stairs.
Evelyn pulls a blanket around his shoulders as he scrambles across the room, stumbles cursing on a piss filled chamber pot and slippery clothes on the floor (the record skips). He yanks up the window, leans out and watches until he sees Leilah dance away down the street, dodging men, rats and burning trash as though the dance will protect her from all evil.
EVELYN (shout)
Whore!
He throws the chamber pot out of the window, the remaining piss arcing out before it.
Leilah waves her long nails in his direction without turning as she rounds a corner.
INT. LEILAH’S ROOM, NIGHT, LATE SUMMER
Evelyn is bored. He picks up a Harold Robbins paperback, opens it at random, puts it down. He prowls around the room, opens drawers and doors, sniffs in used food cartons, coughs, scratches his arse.
He picks up what turns out to be crotchless black satin panties, pushes his finger through the red fluffy feather-rimmed opening from the inside, wiggles it. An idea occurs. He puts on the panties, pulls his cock out through the opening and stands appraising himself in front of the mirror. Initially with detached amusement but gradually he becomes more engrossed.
He sits at the chiffonier, picks up and wraps a silk lined chinchilla stole around his bare shoulders, applies makeup to his face poorly, suddenly gets annoyed and smears it with his hands.
CUT TO
Evelyn sprawls across the unmade bed, one hand behind his head, still wearing the crotchless panties and lipstick smeared across his mouth, and listens to the music and raucous sounds of the city at night coming from the open window.
CUT TO
Evelyn sits smoking on a stool by the window, elbows propped against the sill as he holds up big army surplus binoculars so he can watch a TV in an apparently bare and empty room across the street. The TV shows a top of the news montage sequence. Tanks moving through New York streets, ransacked supermarket shelves, helicopter footage of vast plumes of smoke rising from the Milwaukee skyline, mass marches broken up by baton-wielding soldiers, B-52s flying at high altitude in formation, a White House press briefing erupting into thrown chairs and fist fighting, news anchors blinking and reciting like automatons.
Evelyn becomes more interested when the news show moves on to the top story, shows a map of California split in two with CALIFORNIA TO SECEDE? title. Fortified border in the desert, barbed wire, Ronald Reagan in American Conservative Union mode wearing battle fatigues giving a speech, more paramilitaries and military vehicles patrolling long desert roads.
Evelyn looks at his watch, makes a mental calculation.
INT. PENN STATION AMTRAK CONCOURSE, NIGHT
The concourse is mostly empty aside from homeless people shuffling and huddled around the edges for the night, surrounded by plastic bags full of junk, shopping trolleys likewise. Scowling security guards swing night sticks idly looking for a reason to use them.
A mustard yellow Ford Pinto sits on a revolving plinth on the concourse floor, its doors open and all lights flashing. There is litter everywhere. Occasional public address announcements are unintelligible, sometimes just the sounds of blowing across a microphone and thin dub reggae.
Evelyn feeds coins into a part-vandalised bubble canopied pay phone, dials for operator.
EVELYN
Reverse charge international. United Kingdom. Three two three seven five one nine four oh. Yes. Evelyn Stalker. Yes I will.
Evelyn waits, looks around and sees a guard in shadow watching him closely.
In the course of the phone call a fight breaks out on the other side of the concourse between homeless people as a group tries to steal the bags of a sleeper who wakes suddenly. A bag tears open in the struggle and spills rags, newspaper, food wrappers and filthy teddy bears. The guards descend with pepper spray and night sticks and lash out at the group indiscriminately until they scatter howling, leaving the split bag. Evelyn watches all this. He realises that the guard who had been watching him hasn’t joined the others. The guard is still watching him intently. Evelyn's speech shows he is uneasy at this. Then the guard leans out slightly into the light, produces and opens a straight razor and angles it back and forth so the blade flashes a kind of greeting to him. The guard is an Angry Woman. At that moment the fight reaches its peak, Evelyn looks away from the Angry Woman and when he looks again a moment later she has gone (‘someone’).
EVELYN
Mother? Yes it’s Evelyn. No no everything is fine. What? No I haven’t. Oh busy. Well you shouldn’t believe everything in the news mother. I don’t know. No now look I need some more money can you arrange it? Um five hundred should do. Yes I know, I’m at a train station. No TRAIN station. Yes I will now I -. What? Traveller’s cheques? No I bloody don’t. Is he? Well you can’t expect -. Are they? Mother I must go now someone - oh - someone wants the phone. No. I will. Good. Goodbye mother.
Evelyn hangs up, anxiously looking around for the Angry Woman.
INT. LEILAH’S ROOM, MORNING, AUTUMN
Leilah is sobbing and vomiting into the tiny basin. Evelyn watches from the bed with a look of distaste and annoyance.
EVELYN
What are you going to do? Leilah? Is it even mine?
Leilah turns her face to glare at him then spits. Evelyn sighs and looks at the ceiling.
EVELYN
How old are you anyway? 17? Jesus I could go to prison! It’s your bloody fault not mine.LEILAH (whisper)
I know someone.EVELYN
A doctor?
Leilah shakes her head weakly, sobs again.
EVELYN
You can sell your furs.
Leilah erupts in screaming fury. She tears clothes, smashes bottles and records, throws them out of the window. She snatches up huge fabric scissors and lunges for the furs, Evelyn catches her wrist to stop her. Leilah spins round hissing at him brandishing the scissors, her arm sweeping cosmetics and empty glasses to the floor. Evelyn releases her wrist. Leilah crushes a wine glass under her platform boot heels, scrapes the glass shards from the floor and stuffs them into her mouth then glares at Evelyn with mouth glittering and whispers at him around the shards, cutting her mouth in the process.
LEILAH (whisper)
You must marry me.EVELYN
Don’t be ridiculous. You must have an abortion.LEILAH (high-pitched keening)
You must marry me!EVELYN
No.
Leilah tries and party succeeds to swallow the broken glass, then chokes and vomits glass and blood.
LEILAH
I curse you! I curse you!EVELYN
Good!
INT. EVELYN’S ROOM, DAY, AUTUMN
A rattle of keys and the door is scraped open, pushing a dead rat to the wall. Evelyn enters and looks around, sniffs. He is wearing a full-length brown suede coat and looks furtive and sallow.
The room has the look of several months of disuse. The Indian rug is soggy and squelches as Evelyn walks across it. Muffled creaking and grunting sounds of fucking come from above.
Evelyn sits on the bed, takes out a letter from his coat pocket, tears open the envelope and pulls out a cheque. There is another sheet of paper in the envelope, a handwritten letter on thin airmail paper. He isn’t interested in that, doesn’t bother removing it. He folds and pockets the cheque, leaves the envelope on the bed, puts his keys on top of the envelope and walks out.
INT. LEILAH’S ROOM, DAY, AUTUMN
Evelyn stands in the middle of the room. His eyes wander around the room. It looks like a tornado has hit it. Leilah is not there. The furs and the stereo have gone.
At the sound of metallic crunching sounds from the street Evelyn reaches into his coat pocket, pulls out an assortment of crumpled paper money and coins and dumps them on the chiffonier, collects his suitcase as he turns and hurriedly leaves.
EXT. OUTSIDE LEILAH’S BUILDING, DAY, AUTUMN
Evelyn emerges onto the street. The sky is clear and the sun is low, casting long hard shadows. He sees Leilah exiting a cab and approaching slowly down the street, her shadow stretching out towards him. Her clothes are awry, she is hunched and shuffling, her head bowed to the ground. She cradles her belly. Evelyn looks momentarily conflicted, then puts his head down and hurries away in the opposite direction. He rounds a corner, approaches a parked used brown VW Rabbit. The boarded up shopfront next to him has a large Angry Woman ideogram spraypainted on it in bright magenta.
Evelyn puts his suitcase down next to the car and is simultaneously attacked from behind by six teenage boys who punch and kick him to the ground, empty his pockets of loose money, wallet and passport. They are about to strip the clothes off him when a tank thunders past the intersection. The boys grab his suitcase and run.
Evelyn lies motionless for some time then crawls around slowly in the gutter, groaning and dry heaving. He pulls himself towards the car, opens the unlocked driver side door, drags himself into the seat and pulls the door shut.
After some time of ragged breathing he reaches under the waist of his jeans and right round to his balls, tugs several times. There is a long tearing sound and he retrieves a roll of dollar bills wrapped in clear plastic and surgical tape. He throws the roll in the glovebox. He looks and prods at his battered puffy face in the rearview mirror, moans, then sees the boys returning in the reflection. He starts the car in a hurry and bunny hops it away, a thrown chunk of brick cracks against the back window as the car picks up speed.
INT. EVELYN’S CAR, DUSK, NEW JERSEY
Evelyn is driving away from New York City along the New Jersey Turnpike. Through the cracked rear window we see the city, the skyline confused with smoke, fires, broken towers.
The road away from the city is busy and traffic crawls forward slowly. Vehicles of all sorts, many laden and strapped with possessions. The occupants are mostly stony faced, hostile looking. On the other side there are only burned out cars and abandoned roadblocks.
Evelyn is impatient to be away. He has the car‘s AM radio on. He irritably twists it through the frequencies, flitting past a local news bulletin itemising National Guard enforced curfews and an internment program from the Mayor’s office, pirate broadcasts of Marxist proclamations from the Harlem occupiers, staticky snatches of Gil Scott-Heron, martial music and apocalyptic Christian sermonising, before settling on a Hispanic woman’s voice calmly reading a Surrealist Lorca poem in Spanish, overlaid with morse-like beeping and swooping interference and faint washes of disco.
CUT TO
INT. EVELYN’S CAR, MORNING, SOUTH PENNSYLVANIA
Evelyn is trying to smooth a crumpled map of the United States on the passenger seat. He is driving at speed, wearing yellow tinted aviator sunglasses. His cuts have scabbed over and his bruises are ripening.
The landscape outside is flat and unvarying to the horizon. There are no other cars on the road. It was freezing overnight, frost glitters off the road and occasional trees in the bright slanting sunlight. He passes thin horses standing by the road, a massing of crows squabbling in a field of abandoned rotting squashes.
The radio plays plaintive country music.
Evelyn gives up with the map, focuses ahead at the straight road. He is beginning to understand how big the United States is.
CUT TO
INT. EVELYN’S CAR, AFTERNOON, MISSOURI
Evelyn pulls the car into a one pump gas station. A sign indicates that the price of gas has been increasing several fold over a matter of days. Another sign reads CASH ONLY. An OLD MAN with rheumy eyes is at that moment rewriting the numbers and they have doubled again. There is an antiquated side-by-side shotgun leaning against one side of the old man’s stool, a large flabby sleeping dog on the other. Flies buzz around the dog.
Evelyn waits in his car and watches as the old man dabs at his eyes with a dirty handkerchief and squints at him for a while, decides he doesn’t need the gun or the dog. He slowly rises from the stool, hobbles over and fills the car without a word as though he’s in a slightly confusing waking dream. The old man passes an oily rag over the windscreen while the gas pumps, making the glass much more smeared than it was before.
When the process is complete he mumbles the cost apologetically and Evelyn winds down the window to hand him a wad of notes. The old man slowly looks down at the money with a bemused expression as though he doesn’t know what he is looking at, then takes the notes and painstakingly counts through them with his thumb and lick.
EVELYN
Do you have cigarettes?
This breaks the old man’s concentration, his watery gaze shows he has lost count. He doesn’t seem all that concerned.
OLD MAN
Say what sonny?EVELYN
Cigare- actually it doesn’t matter.
The old man blinks to clear his eyes and looks at Evelyn more closely, takes in the car, his long hair, sunglasses, bruises.
OLD MAN
Come out from the city?EVELYN
Oh. Yes. I’m escaping to California.OLD MAN
Uh-huh. Been hearing crazy tales. They true?EVELYN
Every word I’m afraid.OLD MAN
Huh.
The old man nods sadly, keeps on slowly counting the money.
CUT TO
INT. EVELYN’S CAR, DEEP NIGHT, NEBRASKA/KANSAS
The world is reduced to a blur of unlit road ahead illuminated by the headlights as the car rushes into the night. The unvarying sound of the engine fills the car, which is doing a steady 65mph.
We hear Evelyn’s voice as he sings Take Me Home, Country Road under his breath. He doesn’t really know the words, hums most of the tune. Eventually he substitutes the words ‘why the hell/is this damned/country so/fucking big’.
The eyes of a great horned owl perched on a fence post light up as the car passes.
The car rushes on, a tiny point of movement, noise and light swallowed in a vast inky blackness. There is a sense of mountains on the horizon.
EVELYN (O.S.)
Bet you've never even been to West Virginia.
EXT. DESERT, UTAH, MORNING
Evelyn is trudging up a loose scree slope away from his car. The door is open. He is surrounded by wind-carved red sandstone spires. He looks worried, thirsty.
He reaches a plateau, out of breath, shades his eyes and looks around at the spires and canyons stretching before him.
A sharp crack echoes off the rocks. Evelyn flinches, slips and hits the ground, slithers down the slope a way.
No sound for a while but Evelyn’s laboured breathing, then a rattle of automatic gunfire from somewhere fairly close and the huge roar of a large dilapidated helicopter taking off higher up the slope, wobbling and thudding away erratically.
Time passes, Evelyn stays low on the ground trying to regain his composure.
Eventually he raises his head from the ground and looks up just in time to see a slim androgynous FIGURE in black synthetic leather standing in front of him. The figure’s head is completely enclosed by an elongated smooth black highly polished visor, reflecting Evelyn and the desert. The figure has a magenta armband with an ideogram of a black broken arrow.
The figure swings the skeletal metal butt of a Sterling submachine gun hard against the side of Evelyn’s head. He shrieks, raises his hands. A second strike knocks Evelyn unconscious.
EXT. DESERT, UTAH, EARLY AFTERNOON
Evelyn is jogging and tripping feebly along behind an electric sand sled. His hands are tied in front of him with blue nylon rope, the other end of which is secured to the back of the sled. The sled is driven by the black clad figure. They are heading through a region of gently undulating sand. Evelyn snivels and moans. He is sweat soaked, sunburnt, sand-blasted and his wrists are chafed raw around the rope.
EVELYN
Please! Please! I need to rest. I need water.
The driver doesn’t turn but brings the sled to a stop. After a few steps Evelyn drops to the ground. The figure approaches with a child’s magenta paper parasol, the sub-machine gun across the figure’s back on a strap.
The figure opens the parasol and plants it in the sand beside Evelyn. He shuffles over and huddles under the small amount of shade it provides.
The figure pulls up the visor to reveal the lower part of her face. It looks like a woman. The figure drinks clear blue liquid from a milky plastic flask, throws it towards Evelyn. It is nearly empty, Evelyn grasps it with difficulty with his tied hands and drinks what hasn’t spilled.
EVELYN
Please. Where are you taking me?FIGURE
Beulah.
The figure’s voice is muffled by the visor and distorted by some kind of electronic device but it sounds like an American woman.
EVELYN
Beulah? Is that a town? A person? Who are you? What, why is this happening to me?
Evelyn breaks down and cries the last few words piteously.
The figure looks down at him impassively for a moment then walks back to the sled, mounts it, starts the motor and moves off. Evelyn scrambles to his feet, manages to grab the parasol‘s cream-coloured handle by his fingertips and hold it over his bowed head before he stumbles after the sled again.
EXT. DESERT, ENTRANCE TO BEULAH, EVENING
The sled slithers to a stop before a large granite sculpture of an erect human penis and scrotum towering from the sand. The sculpture is broken half way along its length and the broken upper piece lies partly buried, the glans exposed and pointing towards them.
A vulture is perched on the broken upright section, watching warily but not prepared to move off yet.
The black clad figure dismounts before the sculpture and raises a fist towards it as Evelyn comes staggering past. He is unaware that they have stopped. He is still clutching the parasol over his face.
There is a soft grinding sound as the base of the sculpture folds back, revealing an entrance and a smooth dimly lit concrete slope curving down, into which a cascade of sand pours. The vulture flaps away without enthusiasm.
The figure remounts and drives the sled down the slope. This catches Evelyn unawares, he is yanked off his feet and dragged down the slope on his front. He is too far gone to make a sound or attempt to regain his feet but he does hold onto the parasol.
APPROACH THE ENTRANCE, FADE TO BLACK
BLACK
FUTURE EVE (V.O.)
Descend lower, descend the diminishing spirals of being that restore us to our source. Descend lower; while the world, in time, goes forward and so presents us with the illusion of motion, though all our lives we move through the curvilinear galleries of the brain towards the core of the labyrinth within us.
As Eve speaks the blackness very slowly takes on a rosy illuminated tint as though by a capillary action, spreading from the edges inwards. A low frequency rumble like wildfire or the distant echoing of waves heard from a cave matches the increase in brightness until by the end of the speech the screen is completely suffused with brilliant pulsating magenta and the sound is a heavy continuous crashing. To this a chaotic clashing of cymbals and gongs starts up suddenly. Female voices yelp and howl along with the instruments. Principal among the howls is the word ‘Mother’.
SMASH CUT
LIGHT SINGLE STRIKE OF A SMALL GONG
MOTHER’S AUDIENCE ROOM, BEULAH
Slightly elevated close up of Evelyn's face as the gong note fades. He is clean, his skin is healthy, he is shaved, his blond hair is washed and brushed and neatly parted for the first time. His eyes are clear but glassy. His face is lit by a reddish glow as though by a heat lamp. He looks up at something above him in shock and amazement, transfixed and finding it hard to take in what he is seeing. Indecipherable muffled voices murmur the Mother incantations as though from a great distance (Ineradicable vent of being, oracular mouth, absolute beginning without which negation is impossible etc.)
EVELYN
Where is the garden of Eden?MOTHER (O.S.)
The garden in which Adam was born lies between my thighs. Because I can give life, I can accomplish miracles.
CUT TO
MOTHER's face close up from Evelyn POV. She is smiling beatifically.
Slow pull back to reveal Mother's head and shoulders, showing her Assyrian style ringleted false beard. Mother is an immense purple-black skinned woman, hugely powerful, like a fertility goddess made flesh. Her face looks unreal, the lines and planes of her features sculpted in an archaic way, like a bust from the ancient Near East carved from flesh and bone. Her hair is woven in a cone structure rising from her head and set in a kind of hard resin. Her neck and shoulders are massive, bull-like but more fleshy than muscular. When she speaks her voice rumbles with deep sympathetic humanity and rich sonorities.
MOTHER
To be a man is not a given condition but a continuous effort.
Pull back further to reveal Mother’s torso and then her whole body seated on a bare desert pine chair resting on a sandy floor. She is entirely naked. She has six breasts, three sets of two, on her belly, none of which look like they are her own. Her massive arms rest easily along the chair arms. Her feet are planted on the sand. We see now that behind her is a wall made of something like sprayed coarse-chopped fibreglass tinted a lightly glowing pinky cream colour. The area directly behind the chair brightens to a more intensely coloured, hot cherry red disk.
Evelyn stands before Mother, dwarfed even through he is standing and she is seated. He is wearing a loose white shift, somewhere between a tunic and a hospital gown.
We see, from behind now, that a woman in similar white tunic is kneeling in front of Evelyn and has apparently been mechanically sucking Evelyn's cock for some time. As Evelyn prepares to ejaculate still transfixed under Mother’s gaze the woman produces a test tube and collects Evelyn's sperm. He hardly appears to be aware of any of this. The woman quietly moves away with the stoppered tube. Evelyn notices the movement, looks down and around at his surroundings in evident confusion, as though a spell has been broken.
MOTHER
You’ve abused women, Evelyn, with that delicate instrument that should have been used for nothing but pleasure. You made a weapon of it. I’ve no quarrel with you just because you’re a man. I think your pretty little virility is just darling, such a delight. But are you sure you get the best use of it in the shape you are?
At this Evelyn looks back at Mother, fumbles self-consciously with the open front of his tunic. Mother‘s eyes smile indulgently at this. He tries to speak, finds he can't. He looks feverish and distracted.
MOTHER
Don’t you know you’re lost in the world?
At this Evelyn sways then slowly buckles, swooning.
The clanging instruments and incantations start again as Mother reaches forwards to catch Evelyn easily before he falls. In one hand she holds a long thin curving blade of obsidian. She scoops Evelyn’s limp body to her without effort, their respective positions resembling Michaelangelo's Pietà.
From Evelyn's POV Mother's many-breasted torso comes forward as she presses his face to her chest and everything goes black.
MOTHER (O.S.)
Don’t be afraid.
Above the clanging noise we hear Evelyn cry out and then Mother bays like a huge forest animal. The women’s voices now chant in unison.
WOMEN
Eve! Eve! Eve! Eve! Eve! Eeeeeeve!
CUT TO
EVELYN'S UNCONSCIOUS MIND, BEULAH
Bobbing and floating slowly and without direction in a grotto of glittering blue crystals, light and prismatic shimmering. Something clinical about it, as though looking up at brilliant white lights through out-of-focus tear-filled eyes. Pinging, tinkling sounds all around.
Echoing disembodied voices murmur and present as flickers and shifts in the colour of the rainbow prisms as we move deeper into the grotto, which is now stretching out to look more like a tunnel.
MOTHER (O.S.)
Think of the endless prairies I’m going to carve inside you, little Evelyn.
We move through the tunnel now, which dips, meanders, banks, sharply twists and becomes darker until almost all light is gone and the faint glimmering crystal reflections stream past in the dark like a faint star field.
The star field cracks, splinters and explodes away in spinning slow motion mirror fragments. Behind it is a bank of 70s TV monitors bolted into a steel array which stands on a sandy floor in a humid, steam-wreathed space. Thick bundles of cable that look like arteries and pulse rhythmically loop away from the monitors and disappear under the sand. The monitors are flashing through images of renaissance Annunciation and Mother and Child paintings. The coloured light smears through the steamy air around the edges of the monitor array.
Some screens split a single image across several screens, others rapidly flash or scroll through sequences of images, others slowly rotoscope and zoom in on features of single paintings until the image is a highly magnified abstract daub of paint, others show X-rays of paintings, spectroscopic images, microfilm, white on black outlines overlaid with Golden Spiral and Golden Ratio geometry, microscopic analyses of the layers of paint in cross section. Details of hands, eyes, feet, breasts, lips, flowers, angels, animals, all the sacred iconography...
Accompanying this is a soundtrack composed of babies contentedly gurgling, female voices murmuring in baby talk. There is also a constant buzzing sound under it, perhaps from all the TVs, and syncopated clicks as microswitches are tripped in rapid patterns.
One of the screens now shows the black clad figure standing in a white room. The figure stands unmoving for a long while, her visor-obscured face taking over more of the monitors as the peripheral ones continue to cycle through the painting slideshows.
FIGURE (voice altered by visor)
Now that she has castrated you Mother is going to excavate the fructifying female space inside you. Then as soon as you’re ready she’s going to impregnate you with your own sperm.EVELYN (V.O.)
That’s impossible.FIGURE
Not here.EVELYN (V.O.)
What did I do to deserve this?
The figure pulls away their visor to reveal the face of SOPHIA, the woman who had collected Evelyn’s sperm at the ceremony and her captor from the desert.
SOPHIA
You have been honoured Evelyn. Is it such a bad thing to become like me?
CUT TO
Film footage of a female cat nursing a litter of mewling blind newborn kittens while lying on a brightly lit milky lightbox surface. Floating closer and closer. The sounds of the kittens snuffling and suckling and mother purring get more detailed and louder as the view settles on the mother cat’s face, eyes barely open.
DISSOLVE TO
Very slowed down grainy clips of Tristessa’s face in close up from various black and white films. Tristessa is generally in tears or despair and suffering in this montage.
EVELYN (V.O. whisper)
Tristessa! Our Lady of Infinite Sorrows! Please, help me...
Tristessa looks to camera with depthless yearning and sadness. When she speaks her voice crackles and hisses like old film.
TRISTESSA
I will tell you of female circumcision, of foot binding, of chaining and immolation and mutilation, the endless tortures of womanhood. I will tell you of the multitude of horrors and debasements your old sex perpetrates on your new one, while you moan and cry in a voice that grows softer and more musical. I will tell you what it is to become a woman.EVELYN (V.O.)
But it hurts Tristessa.TRISTESSA
Through pain you will find your way to me.EVELYN
Will it end? Will I heal?
Tristessa tilts her head like a pietà Mary. The classic Hollywood studio portrait lights that define and caress the planes of her face turn off one by one and she dissolves/moves away to BLACK.
EVELYN
Tristessa? Come back. I’m... I’m lost.
Sounds of lapping waves on sand in the dark. A Latin orchestral arrangement of A Foggy Day in London Town plays barely audibly on the breeze.
A full moon emerges from behind fast moving clouds to light a view of a long straight stretch of sandy beach, leading down to a calm sea. From somewhere O.S. behind we hear something quite large moving or being dragged closer through dune grass.
We hear the small gong struck once lightly. The undergrowth noises and music stop suddenly. There is now a little yellow plastic boat bobbing around in the low surf and the moon is in a slightly different position.
After a few seconds the gong sounds again and the boat is now beached on the wet sand just out of reach of the foam. Again the moon has moved fractionally.
Rhythmic sighing water on sand.
The gong sounds a third time.
CUT TO
EVE'S CELL, BEULAH
Eve stands naked before a rectangular wall-mounted plastic film mirror as the gong note fades. She has a small rolled up piece of gauze taped to the fold of her inner arm. Sophia stands slightly behind and to the side, also scrutinising Eve's reflection with a clinician’s eye while she zips up a syringe in its case. She pockets several small vials of blood.
EVE
What have you done?SOPHIA
We have remade you.EVE
But who am I?SOPHIA
You are Eve.
Eve prods and pulls at her eyelids, lips, cheeks, feels her throat, her breasts, her hips, her bottom, her legs. She looks at her hands, her feet, she lifts her long blonde hair and lets it fall. She cautiously explores her vagina with her fingertips and looks very surprised by the sensation.
SOPHIA
Mother has made you perfect in every detail Eve. Nothing has been denied you. You are the reason we are here. You have become New Eve and your child will rejuvenate the world. Let me show you.
BEULAH
Sophia leads Eve, now dressed in shorts and a canary yellow t-shirt and see-through plastic sandals, through the winding artifically lit umbilical passages of the Beulah hive. They pass through medical laboratories, a plastic surgery clinic where Eve glimpses enlarged transparencies of Evelyn’s face throughout his surgical transformation on wall-mounted lightboxes, a synthetic food production facility, spartan rows of dormatories, a room lined with sunbeds, a meditation space with a domed ceiling lit by strange dark blue light...
EVE
I was in a crystal cave.SOPHIA
The drugs. You saw things. You talked.
...a circular lecture theatre, a comms room, a cafeteria, water recycling works, hydroponic enclosures, a gym, a martial arts training area, a treasury, a sand sled workshop and finally a well-stocked armoury.
In each area women with the same committed, higher-educated air as Sophia are at work or resting and stop briefly to greet Eve with a mixture of courtesy and amusement.
There are no books, no personal items, no animals or plants (except in the hydroponic enclosure), no comforts.
EVE
Where is Mother?SOPHIA
Oh. Everywhere.
A synthesised chime rings.
SOPHIA
Small arms training. Would you like to watch?
DESERT TRAINING GROUND ABOVE BEULAH, MIDNIGHT
MUSIC: SQUAREPUSHERS FOR VOCAL QUINTET, AMANDA FEERY
Eve watches as Beulah soldiers in soundless slow motion rehearse battles with automatic pisols, sub-machine guns, knives, fists, explosive devices. They attack each other in teams, throw themselves at assault courses made from thorn bushes, all lit by a wide ring of red ground flares on the sand and yellow illumination flares shot into the vast starry desert sky. Due to the flare light, slow motion and the singing, which starts a few seconds after scene begins, this all comes across as a dreamlike celebration, like an uncanny dance in spite of the violence.
The flashes of muzzle fire and mortar rounds hitting rusty vehicles (Evelyn’s brown Rabbit is among them, already riddled with bullet holes) and sandbag dummies light up the desert in staccato bursts, illuminating the soldiers’ ecstatic faces and shining in their eyes. The injuries sustained by the soldiers are real, there is no quarter expected or given. Eve winces as a soldier with thorn-torn skin and a stab wound limps past her, fixes her with a fierce stare and spits blood.
EVE
This is madness Sophia.SOPHIA
We are Mother's daughters Eve.
Eve looks away in distress, sees Mother in huge silhouette like a Minotaur watching on from a rise in the sand, backlit by ground flares and bright drifting smoke. Mother turns her head to look towards Eve as flare smoke obscures her.
EVE
I- I would like to go in now, I'm tired.
DISSOLVE TO
EVE’S CELL, BEULAH
Eve sits over the side of her Zed Bed, head in hands. The artificial light is hard and bright, buzzing harshly. She rocks a bit, twitchy and frustrated. She sits up, holds her lower back and massages her kidneys.
She stands abruptly, prowls stiffly in front of the featureless door breathing hard through her nose.
She slaps a flat red button on an intercom unit built into the wall near the door, leans in towards the grille and waits impatiently.
INTERCOM VOICE (strong French accent)
Yes?EVE
I feel bad.
Pause. Eve looks towards the surveillance camera dome mounted on the ceiling.
INTERCOM VOICE
Oh dear.EVE
What the fuck is that supposed to mean, oh dear?INTERCOM VOICE
Do you-EVE
Where’s Sophia?INTERCOM VOICE
Sister Sophia is en sortie on the surface.
Eve sarcastically mimes these words, paces around in frustration, returns to the intercom.
EVE
I want a bath.INTERCOM VOICE
You know we don’t-EVE
A shower then.
CUT TO
SHOWER ROOM, BEULAH
Eve is standing under a hissing shower head, head bowed, her hair flattened down in strips obscuring her face.
We see down towards the white tiles and Eve’s feet, a drain between them, the water swirling and disappearing.
A drop of blood drips down her inner leg and blots onto the white tiles as a pinkish tendril between Eve’s feet, then another, then thicker blood drops that don’t get diluted so readily. Eve exclaims in surprise, pushes the hair away from her face, tries to find a wound on her foot or leg. She gets some menstrual blood on her fingers, then looks around and begins to shout.
EVE
Shit. Help! I’m... I’m bleeding!
She bangs repeatedly on the wall, continues to shout for attention.
EVE
Hey! Someone! I'm fucking bleeding! What have you done to my insides you lunatic bitches! I’m dying!
Terror overwhelms her and she cries the last few words. She slips in the bloody water, nearly falls.
O.S. sound of several sets of booted footsteps approaching quickly on hard tile.
CUT TO
EVE’S CELL, BEULAH
Eve sits on the bed cross-legged, morose. Her eyes are puffy. The light is dimmer now. Her hair is still damp. She is dressed, her hair leaves dark wet spots on the shoulders of her t-shirt.
Sophia stands by the bed wearing her black surface suit, which is dusty. Her hair is awry and sweaty from wearing the visor. Her submachine gun is strapped to her side.
Sophia hands Eve two brightly coloured cellulose capsules and a beaker of the bluish water.
EVE
What are these?SOPHIA
Painkillers, mostly.
Eve swallows the capsules with the water, returns the beaker to Sophia, who stands, turns preparing to leave.
EVE
Will I be happy now I am a woman?
Sophia laughs, as though surprised.
SOPHIA
Oh no! Of course not. Not until we all live in a happy world.
Eve barks a hollow laugh, sniffs, blows out a long ragged exhalation.
EVE
I'm not ready for motherhood Sophia.SOPHIA
You will be. Fourteen days. There are more pads in the drawer. Try to sleep now.
Eve nods unhappily, lies back on the bed as Sophia leaves.
She stares up at the ceiling.
She turns onto her front, head sideways, and pushes the drug capsules she palmed into a small tear in the lining of the mattress.
She lies still, eyes open.
DISSOLVE TO
DESERT TRAINING GROUND ABOVE BEULAH, MIDNIGHT
Eve struggles across the dark sand, dressed in a Beulah black surface suit and holding a submachine gun at the ready. Below the sound of Eve’s harsh breathing and the thud and rattle of her footsteps and gear we hear battle sounds around her - sharp gunfire from several places, thump of a rocket propelled grenade launcher, shouting, illumination flares sizzling and popping in the black sky. We don’t know what this situation is, there is no context and it's all very close-focused on Eve. Is Eve a fugitive? Is Beulah under attack?
Several steps ahead of her, a running Beulah soldier throws herself down along a ridge topped with thorn bushes. There are already several other figures along the ridge, tucked behind the bushes, weapons pointing forward.
The solider turns and waves Eve urgently to hurry up and stay low.
Eve hits the ground heavily next to the soldier.
SOLDIER
Too slow.EVE
I hate sand.SOLDIER
Target practice. Ready?EVE
No.
The soldier pops up above the line of bushes and fires several shots in quick succession, then ducks down.
SOLDIER
Now you.
Eve starts to rise, falls clutching her knee and cries out.
EVE
Aaah! Twisted it!SOLDIER
Report to the infirmary. Don't ask for help getting there, you won't get any.
Eve slithers and limps back down the slope and hobbles away towards the lit ramp leading down into Beulah. She keeps her head down as she goes but catches sight of Sophia knife-fighting with great skill. Eve watches Sophia as she walks away with a look which could be a kind of love, or at least admiration, as well as a kind of sadness.
CUT TO
RAMP ENTRANCE TO BEULAH, MIDNIGHT
Eve limps down the well-lit sandy ramp cautiously and apparently in pain. There doesn’t seem to be anyone around. The boom of an explosion from the training ground echoes against the concrete walls. She walks deeper into the complex a little way. Satisfied there is nobody nearby she turns and walks back up the ramp. Her apparent limp and grimace have suddenly gone.
She ducks into a small diagonally aligned bay just before the entrance. Two sand sleds are parked in the bay. She looks them over briefly, cracks at the side of one with her booted foot until she smashes some leads loose, mounts the other sled and starts it up. She nudges it slowly and quietly out of the bay and up the slope, stops momentarily at the entrance and pats the penis sculpture absently as she looks around. She then speeds away in the opposite direction to the noise and light of the training area, kicking up a plume of sand as she heads into the dark desert.
WIPE TO
DESERT, NIGHT, HEADING WEST
We are looking forwards in the direction of travel, the lamp on the front of the sand sled smears a weak yellow beam into the darkness, picking out grains of sand and occasional insects whipping past as the sled speeds away from Beulah.
Eve turns her head as a volley of illumination flares goes up behind her. They are quite distant now, a long moonlit dune separates Eve from Beulah. The pops come a second or two later.
FUTURE EVE (V.O.)
I am a blank sheet of paper, an unhatched egg. I have not yet become a woman, although I possess a woman's shape. Not a woman, no. Not yet. Eve remains willfully in the state of innocence that precedes the fall.
She faces forward again, keeps going. She looks exhilarated.
CUT TO
DESERT, EARLY MORNING
Eve is being attacked by a squat pale muscular short-haired dog. A bull terrier cross or similar, with taut testicles. Eve had been asleep beside a wind-carved outcropping of red rock rising from the sand - there are several others nearby - now the dog is all over her, teeth bared and snapping at her arms and face. She flails around in the blue pre-dawn light, making strangled sounds of panic, torn between defending and attacking. She tries to get to the submachine gun around her chest. When the dog gets its teeth around her throat she closes her eyes and goes still. The dog growls and drools. We see now that it only has one eye.
A sharp O.S. whistle, the dog reluctantly releases Eve and lopes away, licking its muzzle, instantly replaced by a group of five shrieking jibbering feral looking young women in filthy ragged dresses who grab Eve and drag her along the ground by her legs, arms, clothes and hair.
Eve kicks, bites and struggles but she is slapped, kicked, scratched and gripped and can’t escape. The women drag her past the sand sled. We hear the cough and roar of a helicopter spinning to life nearby, see the dog leap into the front seat as Eve is bundled bleeding and yelling silently into the thunderously noisy cargo bay area of the helicopter by the women. The cargo area is bare except for filthy animal pelts and cushions. The women whoop and scream as they hold Eve down and tear off her machine gun sling, and the helicopter lifts off from the sand without grace. We see now as they yell in apparent triumph that none of the women has their top front teeth. They are all thrown around as the helicopter shakily banks and heads west. Someone manages to slam the cargo bay door shut.
CUT TO
ZERO'S RANCH, MORNING
The helicopter slams down outside a dilapidated ranch house in a vacant desert settlement. There are ruined barns and outbuildings nearby. Sows waddle away from the helicopter and barge their way into the outbuildings.
Before the rotors have stopped spinning the pilot clatters out of the helicopter, wrenches open the cargo bay door and glares inside. This is the first time we have had a clear view of ZERO. He looks wild and gaunt, grey haired and tall, has a dirty black eye patch and an artificial leg ending in a scarred steel ball. He grabs for the submachine gun and Eve, who scrabbles away but the babbling women shove and kick her forwards across the floor until Zero can reach her. He screams, pulls her out of the helicopter into the dust with the gun in the other hand, drags her towards the ranch house, throws her down, tears down her lower clothes. Waving the gun around and screaming incoherently into her face with spit flying from his mouth, he drops onto Eve and rapes her. The women crowd around whooping, leaping and barking, although wary of the gun. The dog bays and jumps around in a confused passion.
Zero arches upwards, aims the sub machine gun at the sky and presses down on the trigger as he ejaculates (the women duck) but the gun doesn't fire. Zero furiously struggles to his feet using the gun as a lever and stomps up steps into the ranch house without a backward glance, the dog bounding along excitedly after him.
The house door slams shut with Zero and the dog inside. Eve shudders in the dirt as the deafeningly distorted sound of the end of Wagner's Tannhauser overture - accompanied by Zero screaming and smashing things - comes from the house.
CUT TO
WOMEN’S OUTBUILDING, MORNING
Eve limps into a dark filthy space supported by TINY and EMMELINE. As she enters, a huge sow squeals in the dark, runs towards them across the floorboards and rugs and barges past them out through the doorway. MARIJANE, SADIE and BETTY LOUELLA come in after the pig has clattered out. The Wagner music continues to thunder through the wall.
Eve is helped to sit on a pallet bed which is caked in pig shit and the women stand around her. We get a better look at each of the women’s faces. They all have the same bowl haircut. They range in age from about 20 (Marijane) to 13 (Betty Louella). Tiny is less than 5 feet tall. Emmeline looks somewhat vacant. Betty Louella has a habit of pushing the tip of her tongue out through the gummy gap where her front teeth had been. They are all barefoot and show bruised bite marks on their skin, some fresher than others. The mad capering has stopped now Zero isn’t watching. They look at Eve with various degrees of curiosity, Marijane seems the most potentially hostile.
Eve is in shock. She is blank. Tiny pours a cup of water from a pitcher and offers it to Eve with a sweet smile that displays her missing front teeth.
Eve looks at the cup as though coming back from a great distance, then focuses and looks up at the women’s faces. Slowly her face assembles into a scream and Betty Louella claps her small dirty hands over Eve’s mouth to smother the sound. The women are wide-eyed and shush Eve nervously, throwing worried glances at the door. Tiny and Sadie pile on to stifle Eve’s screams as Marijane watches angrily with arms folded.
MARIJANE
Best shut your noise less you want Zero in here laying his whip across your back.
Marijane’s gaze drops slightly. She looks surprised and annoyed about what she has seen.
MARIJANE
Sweet baby Jesus she’s a fucking virgin.
Betty Louella lets out a high-pitched screech of a laugh which Marijane shuts down with a scowl.
Eve, no longer screaming, looks between her legs and sees some blood has smeared across her inner thighs.
MARIJANE
So what’s the story? You look kinda like a biker chick with the leathers and all. Sure as hell ain’t never heard of no virgin biker chick though. God damn it Emmeline stop your gawping and get her a rag to clean herself up.
Emmeline meekly does as she is told, finds a scrap of cloth and dunks it in the pitcher of water, squeezes it and hands it to Eve. Eve takes the cloth but looks lost at the women crowding around her.
MARIJANE
OK fine we’ll do introductions first.EVE
Where am I?MARIJANE
Oh, it talks. You belong to Zero now and that’s all you need to know. I’m Marijane, that’s Sadie, Emmeline, Betty Louella and that there is Tiny. The others are off getting food.EVE
Your teeth-EMMELINE
Betty Louella bit Zero when she was blowing him so he took us to a dentist.EVE
Are you captives?MARIJANE
Captives? Nah honey we’re wives.
Marijane and the others hold up their hands to show their gold band rings with pride.
MARIJANE
One wife for every day of the week.BETTY LOUELLA
Zero gives of his seed to each in turn so we might be healthy and strong. Women are fashioned of a more primtive soul stubstance so we require-MARIJANE
Yeah Betty Lou that's real cute but we’d still have teeth if you hadn’t nipped his sacred member so you can just shut up now. So, what’s your name?EVE
I... Eve.SADIE
You talk kinda funny Eve.EVE
I’m from Canada.MARIJANE
Not anymore you ain’t.BETTY LOUELLA
Hey Eve could be a new bride! She’s already been anointed.EMMELINE
Well shit how would that work? There’s already seven of us. No room at the inn.SADIE
And are you doubting Zero’s capacity or his wisdom Emmeline?EMMELINE
Nu-uh! I was just doing the math Sadie, is all.SADIE
Don't hurt yourself.EMMELINE
Huh? I just don’t want to fade away like a flower that don’t get no sunshine nor water neither. Do you?
This thought obviously gets to all the women, who shift uncomfortably and look at Eve in a sidelong predatory way, apart from Tiny who appraises the situation quickly and realises what is coming.
BETTY LOUELLA
She is kinda pretty though.TINY
But she ain’t really so pretty close up.MARIJANE
I guess she won’t be pretty at all after-
Marijane grabs a pink rose decorated ceramic plate from a shelf, cracks it across her knee and advances on Eve with sharp plate shards in either hand.
The other women leap up and join Marijane in a chaotic noisy attack on Eve. Marijane scratches Eve’s face with the plate edges a couple of times, the others use teeth and nails to tear at her and spit on her face and body. Eve is pinned and unable to struggle but the attack is too disorganised and feral to do serious damage.
The door is thrown open and Zero stomps in screaming and whipping indiscriminately with a huge bullwhip. The women retreat as the whip snaps around them, Marijane last. She grabs Eve’s hair as she backs away from the snapping whip and tears a hank of hair from Eve’s scalp.
Eve is shocked to see Zero again, flinches away from him. Zero looks lasciviously at her for a moment, apparently excited by her distress and abused condition. He pulls her to her feet, practically licking his lips.
Emmeline rushes forwards on her hands and knees when she realises what is happening and tries to grab Zero around the legs, pleading and whimpering. Zero thumps Emmeline’s face with the butt of the whip, splitting her lower lip. She refuses to release Zero’s legs. Zero stumbles, kicks and raises the whip again, Emmeline cries out in anguish and backs away.
Zero drags Eve out of the door, through the brilliant desert sunlight. For a moment Eve looks like she might make a run for it but doesn’t. Zero pushes her up the porch steps into his dark house. From the outside we see the screen door creakily swing shut in the dusty wind.
CUT TO
ZERO’S RANCH HOUSE, DAY
Zero prods Eve into a study area. He hangs the whip on a couple of nails protruding from the bare board wall over a large wooden desk. A variety of guns also hangs from nails in the same wall, including Eve’s sub machine gun.
Zero slumps into a heavy leather and wood office chair which creaks expensively as he turns it to face Eve. He picks up a fairly new looking bolt action hunting rifle which had been propped up against the desk and gestures with it for Eve to sit on the rug at his feet. Eve does so, her eyes fixed on the mouth of the rifle barrel.
Zero pours himself a whiskey from a bottle next to a small plaster bust of Nietzsche on the messy desk. He does this looking at Eve, keeping the rifle more or less trained on her as he does so. He gestures for her to remove her clothes. Eve doesn’t understand initially, Zero repeats the action more angrily with a guttural bark and, understanding now, she undresses as Zero sips whiskey.
He whistles sharply through his stained teeth and shouts.
ZERO
Cain!
After a moment the dog CAIN pads into the room.
Cain stretches and yawns then walks over to Eve and begins to sniff her. Eve flinches as the dog buries its nose between her legs, Zero releases the safety catch and Eve stops moving. The dog continues its sniffing all around Eve’s body, particularly folds and hollows, then unhurriedly walks away out of shot. Zero appears to be satisfied, props the rifle back against the desk. He sips, let’s the whiskey roll around his mouth before swallowing.
Eve looks away and sees a large black and white poster of Tristessa nailed to a wall of the study. Tristessa is wearing a bloody night dress. The poster has the words TRISTESSA and PUBLIC ENEMY NUMBER 1 scrawled across it in red and Tristessa’s face is slashed with hunting knives stuck through the poster into the wall.
Zero notes Eve’s attention, pulls a knife from a sheath on his belt and throws it at the poster. It spins and hits the poster between Tristessa’s eyes, the hilt vibrating. Zero stares at it.
ZERO
The lousiest lady in the world. She magicked the genius out of my jissom, that evil bitch, while I was watching one of her damned movies. She’s a dyke. A sluice of nothingness. You a dyke?
Eve shakes her head.
ZERO
Good. Come here.
Zero unzips his fly and pulls out his penis. He yanks Eve’s head into his groin and fucks her mouth with brief violence, staring unblinking at the poster of Tristessa until he ejaculates, his face a rictus of anger and fear. He pushes her away roughly, zips his penis away, pulls opens a drawer in the desk and takes out a plain gold band like the rings Marijane and the others had showed Eve earlier. Eve manages not to be sick with difficulty. Zero lazily throws the ring towards Eve.
ZERO
Gratulations. You are now the eighth wife of Zero the poet. You’re prettier than any of them. You can have me all Sunday night. Consider the sacred fluid imparted by my member as the balm of Gilead. I won’t be able to print out any new Zeros until that Witch, that Bitch, that Dyke is dead. But not long now baby. Not long.
Zero is now in a kind of torpor. He looks wasted and unwell. His eyes have almost rolled back. Eve looks at him with disgust, then at the rifle, but hears the dog growling behind her and stays still. Gritty wind rattles the windows.
Slowly and as quietly as possible Eve stands and moves towards the door, accompanied by the low rumbling growl of the dog O.S. As she pushes against the screen door Zero, who hasn’t moved, speaks.
ZERO
Send Emmeline in on your way out.
Eve nods despondently, still facing the door, and leaves. We see her blurrily through the dirt blocked screen door mesh.
CUT TO
OUTSIDE ZERO’S COMPOUND, EVENING
Slow motion close up of a bashed up metal pail balanced on a stack of cinder blocks. The pail is piled full of shorn long blonde hair. Crunching shears-like sound and a woman’s hand comes into shot and drops more hair in. A pause, shear sound again then another handful.
Grinding sound of a match being struck, we see flickering illumination of the sparks reflected in the metal and glinting off the hair. The long match spins into the pail and gutters among the shrivelling hair until a long squirt of lighter fuel causes the hair to be engulfed in a slow orange fireball. The fire quickly burns down, smoke rises from the charred remains.
DISSOLVE TO
SALOON BAR, SPRING, DAY
The bar's roof is largely eaten away and outer walls have gaping holes in them, exposing the inner skeleton of the building. Everything inside is a mess. Sand has drifted and banked up against walls. The bar top lists at an angle and the mirrored panelling is corroded and sand abraded. Three decayed stuffed pronghorn heads hang askew above the bar. An upright piano in a corner is cracked open and gutted, disgorging keys and tangles of wire. The inner balcony on the floor above the bar has mostly collapsed. Fire has blackened up one wall in a long wide lick.
Zero is strutting, gesticulating and roaring from the bartop. The silver boombox is at one end of the bar, not on.
Zero wears a stuffed boar's head and he has a visible erection behind his jeans. He is acting out his vision of the imminent end of civilisation, his hunting down and destruction of Tristessa and triumphant entrance to the ruins of Los Angeles, all through grandiose amateurishly performed physical poetry.
Eve and the other women are seated on rows of wooden chairs on splintered bare wooden boards scattered with chunks of rotted roof shingles. The chairs have the remains of gold paint on them, and are arranged facing the bartop and mirror.
The women watch and whoop with blank and moderately stoned and pinked eyed enthusiasm, apart from Eve who looks stoned and slightly incredulous. Eve's hair is cut in the same bowl and straight fringe style as the others and she wears an antique floral print dress which is less filthy and ragged than the others.
FUTURE EVE (V.O.)
By the time the winter was over, the cities would all have broken open like boils. Then they would live off their own produce until the riots were over. During this season of civil war, Zero would at last find Tristessa's hiding place and her rape and murder would restore his virility. Then they would descend on Los Angeles and take exactly what they pleased from the freezer cabinets without paying a dime, and they would live in a penthouse in the abandoned city and watch colour teevee all day and repopulate the continent, now suddenly empty of all but the tribe of Zero.He had sung and danced his predictions from the bartop for them so often they were sure by now that it must all be true.
V.O. INTERCUT WITH various scenes of domestic life throughout the winter. Food runs to the bins outside the supermarket in town where Eve tries to read bits of news from the scraps of newspaper in the bins (domestic politics, California secession, war drums with China), tending the goats, chickens and pigs, women coming and going from Zero’s house, Eve staring at the poster of Tristessa through tear-filled eyes as she undergoes Zero’s rapes, dandling piglets in baby clothes and milk feeding them from bottles, helicopter rides over snow-capped mountains, washing clothes as the vicious sows get in the way and bite and barge, Zero catching a goat that is chewing up the vegetable patch and angrily (theatrically) slitting its throat in front of the women. Time passing in weird misery.
Zero presses the play button on the boombox and cranks the volume up to the maximum, Wagner's Love Duet from Tristan und Isolde crashes out deafeningly and on queue the women leap from their chairs, tear off their dresses to reveal that each is wearing tacky strip club items beneath. Nipple tassles, day-glo mesh stockings, tinselled panties, and so on. They hastily put on wigs and heels which had been hidden beneath the chairs. They then pick up the chairs and smash them to pieces on the floor and against the walls. They scream and flail and dance with apparent sexual abandonment.
APPLE PIE gets hit with a chair across the back of her head by Sadie in a swinging arc and goes down hard, at best unconscious. Nobody does anything about it. Eve tries to follow along with the others - she is a very bad dancer - while avoiding injury and Zero’s manic attention.
Zero watches on through one ragged eye hole, breathing hard and necking whiskey from a bottle through the mouth of the boar head. He gestures obscenely and roars out wordless instructions from the bartop over the music. He then leaps down clumsily, cuffs the women aside, appears to be moving in on Eve but instead grabs Sadie by the hair of the top of her head and drags her out of the saloon through a hole in the wall. Sadie throws a fierce look of triumph at the others as she is yanked through the hole.
Gradually the rioting subsides and the women seem lost and aimless. Tiny climbs up on the bartop and stops the music abruptly. Marijane sits on an unbroken stool, leans forward on her elbows and taps absently at the end of the nipple tassle, making it swing.
Eventually Apple Pie groans and groggily hauls herself up off the floor, tries to look around with a dazed panicked expression then vomits in a crouch. Nobody makes eye contact.
APPLE PIE
But it was my turn tonight. It was my turn.MARIJANE
Apple Pie ain’t getting her cream whipped tonight.
The others whoop, slap the floor and holler, without much conviction. They are tired.
APPLE PIE
Like... like hell I ain’t.
Marijane shrugs. Apple Pie wipes her mouth, struggles to her feet, sways, then stumbles off towards the hole in the wall.
The clear sky behind Apple Pie goes suddenly white and bright, flickers, turning her momentarily to a silhouette. Apple Pie stands at the hole, holding onto the ragged sides, turns to look back into the saloon with a confused expression as the brightness fades. A booming sound washes over them and the building shudders, grit rattles down from the roof. Screams.
Tiny, still sitting on the bar, spins the radio dial on the boom box. Sound of static.
DISSOLVE TO
WOMEN’S OUTBUILDING, NIGHT
Sounds of sleeping in the dark. Also the distant crump of bombs or heavy artillery, making the sky flicker slightly.
Eve wakes suddenly, her eyes springing open. She is alert and still, barely lit by moonlight which shines in her eyes. She listens, trying to manage her breathing down from whatever panicked her into waking up.
After a while Cain barks once happily somewhere outside, the porch door slaps shut. A pig grunts irritably. Footsteps characteristic of Zero’s limping gait moving across the gritty sand.
Eve raises her head, looks around. Not much to see but it seems like everyone else is still sleeping. She rises as quietly as she can and walks across the creaky bare boards to a smeared cracked window with a view of the ranch house, just in time to see Zero move away out of view, a flashlight beam swinging before him.
Nothing happens for a while. Eve cranes around the window frame, tries cleaning it a bit with her hand but can’t see anything new. There are a couple of muffled metallic thumps from the direction Zero went.
The screen door bangs open and Apple Pie dashes out naked. Eve backs away from the window instinctively, then slowly comes forwards again.
Apple Pie stops for a moment in the porch looking around in the dark then sees something in the direction Zero went and runs that way.
APPLE PIE
Zero? Zero!
The helicopter starts up, loud detonations in the night. Everybody wakes up suddenly (pigs, goats, chiceksn all calling in panic) as the rotors spin up to speed, there is a rush to the door and out into the night. Eve follows to see the helicopter weaving drunkenly into the air and thud off into the dark.
The others catch up with Apple Pie and watch the helicopter disappear in the distance.
APPLE PIE
Said he’d found her.
CUT TO
INT. ZERO’S STUDY, NIGHT
Eve, Marijane, Sadie and Apple Pie come in with a lantern and look around the study with some trepidation, as if Zero might still be there. Apple Pie is wrapped in a Stars and Stripes blanket now. She doesn’t look well, one of her eyes is very bloodshot.
Marijane puts the lantern down on the desk.
The assorted stuff on the desk has been pushed to the edges, a large paper survey map is spread across it. The map has been crumpled, smoothed, scored and scribbled over with red wax crayon lines, circles, x marks and words BITCH WHORE SLUT WITCH DYKE etc. An awl punched through the map and embedded in the desk top beneath is circled with several red crayon rings and arrows.
A pile of fragile crumbling Hollywood fan magazines from the late 40s lies on the desk. Sadie picks up the top one, which has the cover turned back. There is a big photograph of Tristessa reproduced on it, with QUEEN OF THE DESERT title and a few paragraphs of text. The magazine beneath also has a photo of Tristessa on the cover.
APPLE PIE
He stayed up the whole night. Drinking and smoking, walking up to the window with the explosions and reading those damn things. Never came to bed, just drank and read and looked at the damn map. Lordy I feel weak already.SADIE
Yeah well that’s most likely where I slugged you with the chair. Tough little bitch ain’t you Apple. Hey listen to this.
Sadie angles the magazine towards the light and reads aloud with difficulty and sardonically.
SADIE
Her favorite drink is Russian tea and her favorite food is black raspberry ice-cream. What the fuck even is that? Chayk-kah-kavs-I can't say that. Says she has a ’hideaway retreat’ in west Arizona, just her and a deaf and dumb butler is that some kind of servant? All she has let be known (let be known) is she is living in a desert palace, and has taken up sculpture in glass. Sculpture! In glass! Jesus!
Eve approaches the torn and punctured poster and looks at it closely as Sadie reads. She looks with a kind of longing and sadness at Tristessa's face, her own expression coming to almost mirror Tristessa's.
Marijane notices. She walks over, looks at Eve intently, then at the poster, then back. She reaches out and repeatedly taps the knife blade sticking out of Tristessa's forehead so it vibrates. Eve doesn't know where to look.
Sadie smirks, starts slowly tearing out strips from the magazine and letting them fall to the ground.
Apple Pie is sitting now hunched over and holding her head and moaning quietly to herself. She looks like she is losing consciousness.
MARIJANE
Got the hots for her huh pretty girl? It’d be real bad for you if Zero found out. You be sure and show him you get off on it when the time comes.EVE
Is that sisterly advice Marijane?
Marijane leans in, places her hand against the side of Eve's face and strokes it, as though admiring the contours of a marble bust. She lightly follows a thin white scar from the plate attack with her fingertip and brings her lips so close to Eve's face that it's almost like a kiss. Eve quivers with suppressed anger, her hands clenched.
MARIJANE (quiet)
What do you think he’ll do to her when he finds her? I mean I wonder how he’ll do it. I guess she'll be all old now, it'll be real easy to take her apart. Something to think about, huh?
Marijane lightly pats Eve’s cheek. Eve jerks her face away.
EVE
Bitch.MARIJANE
Ah-ah. Mind your temper little darling. That why Zero's been tying your wrists lately?
Sadie laughs drily, drops the remaining pages of the magazine fluttering to the ground. She hawks up extravagantly and spits fatly on the heap of paper through the gap in her teeth. She stamps forward on her front foot as she spits, the bang makes the lantern light gutter on the desk. Apple Pie leaps up out of her chair with a yelp as though she has been electro-shocked. Her bloodshot eye is a bit worse and there is blood trickling from one of her nostrils.
CUT TO
KITCHEN, ZERO’S COMPOUND, AFTERNOON
Eve, Tiny and Emmeline are cutting vegetables and dropping them into a big pot of boiling water for soup. Tiny is sitting on a three legged stool, the others are standing.
Emmeline is singing snatches of Just a Little Lovin’ off key to herself but she can’t remember a lot of the words. This is irritating Tiny.
The potatoes are slimy on the outside and riddled with writhing maggots inside, Eve tries to cut away the bad parts with an old bent paring knife but the deeper she cuts the more rot and disease she finds. Flies buzz around them as they work.
TINY
Fucksake Emmeline don’t sing it if you don’t know it!EMMELINE
Well how am I gonna learn it if I don’t sing it?TINY
Sometimes I actually feel sorry for you.
Emmeline doesn’t get the subtlety but knows she is being stupid or accused. She works sadly and quietly for a few moments then forgets, brightens and starts humming again. She scrapes rotten scraps and peelings into a bucket, opens a door to the yard licking her fingers. Sounds of slops being poured and pigs grunting hungrily. Emmeline laughs and shouts then sounds angry as the pigs hustle her and push her over. More distantly, at the edge of hearing, the helicopter rotor chop echoes off the hills.
EVE
Tiny what did you do, before?TINY
Hooker. Like the rest of us. Not you though. Hookers can dance, you can’t. How come?EVE
It... I was different.TINY
There’s different kinds of different. But you, you’re like... With you around it’s like it’s the rest of us are the different ones. Like you ain’t been long out of the box, still got the factory smell on you.
Eve seems to be weighing something up, opens her mouth to speak. Emmeline bursts in excitedly, covered in slime and muck.
EMMELINE
He’s back!
The helicopter noise suddenly gets much louder as it lands in the yard outside and the animals panic noisily. Zero clambers out, Cain is with him. Eve, Tiny and Emmeline look at each other with breath held.
Zero shoulders the door open, Cain leaping crazily around his feet. Zero is in his own ecstasy, flailing and slavering. He lunges for some water, drinks then splashes what remains into his face. He really wants to explain something but like an overstimulated child he’s too agitated to get it out. He's almost bursting, the veins in his neck and temples standing out. The women in the kitchen back away to the walls.
Cain can’t take the excitement and starts gnawing and tugging madly on Zero’s metal leg. Zero kicks out with a yell and Cain goes flying, bashes against the cupboard doors with a yelp.
Zero unholsters his revolver, clasps it in both hands and moves it round in an arc pointing at Tiny, Emmeline and Eve to punctuate each statement (order: Tiny, Emmeline, Eve), then raises his arms so the gun is pointing directly overhead.
ZERO
IT GLITTERED. I SAW IT. THE WITCHES’ LAIR.
Zero pulls the trigger and keeps firing into the ceiling until the chamber is empty. Plaster, wood chips and dust rain down and bright beams of sunlight shine through the holes. Zero, covered in dust, looks deliriously pleased with himself.
DISSOLVE TO
EXT. TRISTESSA’S HOUSE GROUNDS, NIGHT
Montage of views around the grounds of Tristessa’s house in crisp desert moonlight. It is cold, late summer.
Looking up at well-watered dark tree canopy, eucalypts and desert pine, leaves whispering softly in a faint occasional wind. Also the sound of a light steady trickle of water like a stream emptying into a pool.
Looking down into the pool. The water is greenish, weedy and deep. Vague smooth polished bulbous shapes are barely visible in the depths. A vintage champagne bottle clunks repeatedly against the edge in the slow ripples. A distorted reflection of the glass house.
Low wandering along the cracked and weed infested concrete poolside. Upturned chairs and ragged parasols, broken cocktail glasses, smashed sunglasses from the 50s, empty champagne bottles, drifts of seed fluff. The bases of glass sculptures balanced on the ground, some cracked and crumbled from their weight.
The pool high diving board steps. Freshly swept sand over the concrete here, and blobs, rivulets and splashes of glass of various sizes all around. A broom, a series of large zinc buckets with heatproof handles, some empty, some filled with sand, all shiny with glass. A well-used bright red portable furnace on cinder blocks, door closed, with plumbed in gas canisters arranges behind it. The furnace is still ticking and thumping as the metal casing cools down.
The rungs of the high dive ladder are festooned with long icicle-like drips of glass. The ladder is encased in uneven layers of cracked glass. We look up the long ladder into darkness and the silhouette of the board high above. The edge of the board are fringed with long drips of glass that glitter in the moonlight.
The dull thunder of helicopter rotor becomes hearable, the glass icicles begin to lightly shiver and clink against each other. The vibration and noise increase gradually, we see the glass drips from the ladder rings start shivering as well. It’s still not loud and we can’t see the helicopter or lights.
Suddenly the noise becomes very loud as the helicopter sweeps over the pool, a search light on the front brilliantly illuminating the scene. The blare of Wagner (a woman’s voice singing) is just discernable over the thudding helicopter blades.
Some of the glass icicles break off and smash on the concrete floor.
In the brightness we see the whole area around the pool is littered with glass creatures of varying shapes and sizes. Dozens of them. Some standing, others reclining, many broken. We also get a better view of the glass house, built up in disc layers of decreasing diameter like a crystal wedding cake.
As the helicopter swings around and loses height the down draught makes the leaves flail and the torn cloth of old rusted deckchairs flaps and snaps around. Then glass sculptures start collapsing, shearing and smashing.
The helicopter plunges suddenly and lands heavily, causing the landing gear to crumple. The helicopter tips backwards and the rear rotor tears itself apart in a shower of glass, metal, concrete and sparks. We hear screams, the helicopter rights itself a bit but it clearly isn’t going anywhere again.
The main rotor shuts down in a gout of black smoke, Zero clambers out with Cain barking happily at his heels. Zero is raving and cursing. He carries a sawn-off shotgun in some kind of custom thigh holster as well as his usual assortment of knives. He has an ammunition belt over his shoulder stuffed with red shotgun shells.
The women come piling out jibbering and excited. Eve is among them, trying to fit in. Zero marches off around the pool and towards the house. He passes a large upright sculpture that is still standing. It looks kind of humanoid. He pivots on his metal peg and rocks the statue with his boot sole. It takes a couple of goes to topple it over. It screeches as the glass scrapes across the concrete, falls with a solid thud. Zero sneers, places his foot on its torso, brings the shotgun up to its head and pulls the trigger. The head explodes. The women whoop and scream wordlessly, run around pushing over other standing sculptures positioned around the wrecked deckchairs, round tables and loungers. Sadie snatches up a pair of sunglasses with smoked glass lenses, one crazed with cracks. She puts them on.
Zero is puffed up, a grim smile on his face as he walks towards the house, stands in front of a glass door flush with the curved glass outer wall. The inside of the house is dark. Zero cups his eyes and presses his face against the glass, tries to peer in. He takes out a long flashlight from a pocket, flicks it on and sweeps it around. Mostly reflections, glittering dust motes and spider webs. The beam doesn’t extend far, as though the darkness inside is thick like a black fog. Zero’s excited mouth breathing mists up the glass.
MARIJANE
Look!
Marijane is pointing to the left. Somewhere deep within the dark building a seven armed candelabrum flickers and moves slightly this way and that. They all gawp at it as it appears to hover and bob.
Zero lets out a long strange groan, either in anticipation or terror. He slaps slowly on the glass, making a rhythmic thump. The women line up against the glass and copy him. The candle flames respond, dashing deeper into the building and climbing up diagonally until they disappear somewhere above.
Eve notices a discontinuity in the apparently unbroken curved glass wall, crouches down to look at it. She reaches out and gently feels a vertical seam in the glass with her fingertips, traces down until her hand stops beside an intricate lock mechanism contained within the glass wall and made completely of glass. She runs her hand over it, finds the key hole and dips a fingertip into it. She pulls her hand away with a hiss, sucks her sliced fingertip.
Zero roughly pushes her aside, raises his shotgun and Eve cries out NO and covers her ears as he fires. The lock explodes in glass splinters. The shattered and cracked door is now open.
Zero and the women pour in with echoing howls, Eve running after them on crunching glass into the dark interior.
INT. TRISTESSA’S HOUSE, ENTRANCE ROOM, GROUND LEVEL, NIGHT
As they enter the dark entrance room the hushed atmosphere subdues everyone. They stop running, look around in a kind of reverent and slightly fearful wonder at the glass walls, low chrome and glass furniture, crystal vases full of ancient flowers turning to dust, piles of movie magazines also dissolving to dust.
Zero uses his flashlight, which is the only illumination apart from the faint moonlight. Spiderwebs festoon the corners. The floor is pale polished marble, several polar bear skins complete with gaping heads. The ceiling is glass, so rooms above can be dimly seen, the underside of more bear skins and furniture.
Zero and the women seem to feel that they shouldn’t touch anything, and the things they do touch quietly collapse in on themselves anyway. They are jumpy. Even Cain is subdued.
Marijane is the first to break the spell. She huffs and rolls her eyes as Betty Louella yips and recoils from some peony blossoms that slump into dust when she reaches nervously to touch them.
Marijane climbs up onto a round topped glass table, takes hold of a long vase in one hand, grunts and stamps so everyone turns to see her, squats with her dress lifted up with the hem between her teeth, and after a moment of effort pisses on the tabletop. She looks pleased with herself, stands upright on the table and hurls the vase across the room with a scream. It crunches and shatters against a wall.
The others look for approval from Zero. He realises his position, howls up at the ceiling, and the spell of the place now broken the other women take this as a signal to smash everything they can in the room. Marijane watches Eve suspiciously as she comes down from the table. Eve stares back at Marijane, some kind of confrontation building between them as Marijane’s power has been asserted. Then as Marijane begins walking towards Eve with another vase held like a club in her hand there is a deep grinding sound and the entire house jolts and starts to turn slowly on its axis, throwing everyone off balance and into a noisy panic. Marijane slips, Eve backs away towards the spiral staircase at the pivot point of the house.
ZERO
Witchcraft!
Zero, shotgun in hand, pelts messily through long deserted rooms towards the central glass spiral staircase, which is the only part of the house not turning. He passes Eve, shoves her out of the way in his panicked flight. The other women hang on to furniture and the walls or fall to the floor sobbing and screaming out Zero’s name in the dark. Only Cain seems to be enjoying himself, bounding after Zero and crashing hard but carelessly into shifting objects.
INT. TRISTESSA’S HOUSE, STAIRS, NIGHT
Zero stands on the stairs looking up and down uncertainly. He hears a scraping sound below and stomps and clangs down the spiral stairs, which are steel stepped below ground level. Cain wriggles past and pelts down. Eve follows behind Zero.
ZERO
That's it Cain! Sick her boy! Sick her!
At the bottom of the stairs a heavy steel door is set in the wall. It is slightly ajar. Cain is sniffing suspiciously at the gap and whining, looking back up the stairs, hopping about impatiently. The lower floor doesn’t turn with the rest of the house.
As Zero dithers uncertainly by the door a thin scratchy shellac recording of I’ve Got You Under My Skin sung by Al Bowlly sounds from concealed speakers. The echoey quality of the sound suggests that the song is playing from many speakers throughout the glass house.
Zero yanks the door open and enters a dimly lit room shotgun barrel first. Before Eve can follow him in there is a snap of a handgun firing followed almost immediately by a loud shotgun blast which briefly lights up the room. Eve enters cautiously to see Zero still pointing the shotgun at a very old Asian man seated behind a complicated analog control panel lit by a desk lamp in a small room. The room also contains an old 16mm film projector pointing through a small window into an adjoining sunken screening room and racks of silver 16mm film cans. The man is white haired and wears pale yellow silk pyjamas. There is a huge wound in his chest and blood splatters over the wall behind him. He is nearly but not quite dead. He holds a small engraved pearl-handled Baby Browning Renaissance pistol loosely in his skeletal hand, resting on the panel. His toothless mouth is agape and gasping very slightly and almost silently.
The dying man moves his lips with barely visible twitches, the fingertips of one hand walking feebly across the control panel. Apparently finding what he is looking for, he pushes a large red switch and the house shudders in response. There is a sense that the mechanical effort has increased. It is impossible to tell if the man is dead now but he doesn’t move or blink again.
Zero looks around at the shuddering ceiling and walls fearfully then down at the control panel in confusion, flips the red switch back and forth, starts prodding buttons, twisting dials and pushing levers at random trying to stop the music or the house grinding around. Nothing he does seems to make any difference. He slaps and punches the panel in mounting frustration and eventually somehow manages to turn on the lights all around the house. The music keeps playing.
Zero jeers at the man unconvincingly, pumps a cartridge into the shotgun (Eve covers her ears) and shoots the control panel. Sparks and smoke rise from the ruined components, but the house continues to rotate and the song keeps playing.
While Eve stares at the man and his tiny gun Zero looks briefly through a small window into the dimly lit screening room, raps his knuckles lightly against the glass, then looks around a door into a small neat windowless room with a bare bulb hanging from the ceiling, an old metal bed whose bedclothes have been pushed aside, a chair with black clothes draped on the back and an alarm clock and glass of water with dentures in it on the seat, and a dark walnut tallboy with one door open. He grunts without interest and leaves.
Eve considers taking the gun from the dead man now being enveloped in billows of white electrical smoke like a stage magician at the end of his act, decides against prising the gun from his fingers and follows Zero and Cain out of the room.
INT. TRISTESSA’S HOUSE, SECOND FLOOR CIRCULAR GALLERY, NIGHT
Eve peers down at Tristessa’s face in wonder and sadness. Tristessa is lying within a hollow in a lump of rippled glass similar to the sculptures around the pool, shaped into an open bier. She is waxy and pale, her long white hair is artfully arranged about her face and shoulders, her eyes are closed. A large cream satin bible embroidered with a vivid bleeding red heart pierced by an encircling crown of thorns is clasped in her hands over her chest.
At the head of the bed a glass candelabrum shaped like an upturned hand holds five long pale lit candles. Tristessa is dressed in a flowing silk robe.
From the beginning of scene we hear the thumping sounds of heavy objects being tipped over, thrown and smashed. The speakers are now playing a syrupy orchestral recording of Goodnight, Sweetheart which has got stuck and keeps skipping back every 10 seconds.
As Eve looks closer at Tristessa’s peaceful and motionless face there is a particularly loud crash. Eve turns to see Zero and some of the women have worked together to tip over other biers in the room, snapping off limbs of the bodies that spill out and throwing them around. The bodies are finely made life size wax replicas of tragic Hollywood film actors of the 30s to 60s, dressed in defining outfits.
Cain is chasing after and worrying the decapitated head of Jean Harlow, his teeth gauging through the pale wax and tearing chunks out which he spits away along with tangles of platinum blonde hair. Zero swings one of James Dean’s legs around above his head making noises like a car squealing and racing. He makes a fiery explosion sound as he brings the leg down hard on the glass floor, smashing it to pieces.
Eve returns her attention to Tristessa, again spellbound by her face. She reaches a faltering hand out towards the pale face, fingertips outstretched to stroke down the cheek. When she touches the face we see the skin of Tristessa’s cheek move. Eve pulls back her hand and lets out a small involuntary cry of happy surprise then quickly chokes it off and stiffens.
Cain stops behind her and tosses the now disfigured Harlow head away, lopes over to the raised bier with an air of stupid but suspicious malice. The dog climbs up onto the bier and snarls at Eve as she attempts to shield the body from his attention. Eve shrinks back and Cain raises himself on his hind legs to get his head into the glass coffin. He sniffs greedily, particularly at Tristessa’s groin, then raises his head and barks furiously.
Zero walks over with difficulty against the rotating of the house, shotgun raised. Eve is panicky. When Zero sees it is Tristessa lying in this coffin he recoils, then realises his fear is on show and exclaims loudly to the room in a display of vulgar bravado.
ZERO
Well shee-it!
He uses the end of the shotgun barrel to snag the silk gown hem and begins to raise it. In a sudden flurry of movement Tristessa launches the bible at Zero while simultaneously leaping with great athleticism out of the coffin. The spine of the bible hits Zero hard between the eyes, throwing him screaming backwards and down onto his knees in pain. He shoots blindly and blows a hole in the dark glass ceiling above him as Tristessa grabs the candelabrum and flees in a silent ghostly whirl of pale flowing silk and flames. She bounds up the spiral stairs in the middle of the room before anyone else can begin to react.
Zero is roaring, staggering to his feet with a stunned look in his eye and blood running thickly from his smashed nose. Marijane and Sadie rush to help him up, which he angrily lunges away. Things aren’t going the way he wanted, he feels humiliated. He blinks, trying to regain focus and glares towards the black round hole at the top of the stairs where Tristessa is exiting.
Zero turns and grabs Eve’s arm, pulls her in front of him. With the mouth of his shotgun against her back and his free hand gripped around the back of her neck they move as quickly as possible across the spinning floor towards the stairs.
EXT. TRISTESSA’S HOUSE, TOP FLOOR BALCONY TERRACE, NIGHT
Eve’s head emerges from the round hole in the terrace floor into the cold night air, swiftly followed by Zero’s. The circular terrace, like the central staircase, does not rotate. Eve and Zero step onto the glass floor. Tristessa is in front of them, pressed against the railings with the lit candelabrum in one hand and the other clutching the rail. She is looking out and down at the ground far below as if searching for an escape which obviously isn’t there. Her robe undulates and shivers in the night wind like a deep sea creature in the desert moonlight. She looks like what she is, a perfectly lit classic movie star in stylish and stagey distress.
As Zero’s steel peg rings on the glass floor Tristessa turns, raises her long fingers to her open mouth and flings the candelabrum out into the dark. The candle flames gutter and blow out then we hear the distant crack as it smashes. Tristessa’s long flowing white hair ruffles in the breeze dramatically.
Eve is soaking all this up despite the situation with the face of a longtime worshipper.
When Zero sees Tristessa’s vulnerable situation his confidence returns, he pushes Eve away to one side and advances on her with relish. He takes out the long torch, flicks it on, grabs handfuls of robe from around Tristessa’s neck and shines the torch full in her face with sadistic satisfaction, batting away her hands when she tries to shield her eyes.
Close up of Tristessa’s face white in the torch beam, her plucked brows and lips drawn in a 30s style, her eyes enormous and shining, the pupils strangely fully dilated despite the light so no iris shows. Her eyes roam around in constant flight, never settling or focusing.
Like a Noh actor Tristessa’s face assembles very slowly into an expression of agony and finally she screams into Zero’s face. Zero seems to feed off the terror before him and yells back at her. Eve watches on with tears filling her eyes.
Zero releases Tristessa with a shove. She sags against the railings. He backs up a few steps to stand beside Eve, the torch beam focused on Tristessa’s face. He pulls out his bullwhip, thrusts the torch at Eve with a gesture to tell her to maintain the beam. He threatens to strike Tristessa with the heavy butt of the whip, laughing and cursing her loudly as she flinches dramatically each time.
ZERO
Whore! Dyke! Slut! Bitch!
Tristessa’s body contorts in anticipation each time.
The torch beam wavers and shivers as Eve tries to control herself. Tears fill her eyes as Zero unwinds the whip, takes a few steps back and raises it cackling with blazing eyes, preparing to lash Tristessa. He slices his arm diagonally down, making the whip arc fast towards her.
CUT TO
INT. TRISTESSA’S HOUSE, SECOND FLOOR CIRCULAR GALLERY, NIGHT
The whip tip snaps across Tristessa’s chest. She is tied wrist and ankle with scraps of torn fabric to one of her upright glass sculptures in the circular gallery. The women are gathered around Zero in a semicircle, baying and yipping. They are wearing outlandish assortments of looted and mutilated clothes and their faces are daubed with mad splashes of cosmetic colour.
Tristessa’s dress is shredded and bloody now, but her face appears to be mostly unscathed. There is something of the saintly martyr or Joan of Arc about this.
The last lash tears a rent through Tristessa’s robe, revealing a blue glittering at her groin. Zero lurches forwards, grabs at the torn chiffon and tears it away, revealing Tristessa’s pale thin torso and a sapphire sequinned g-string.
ZERO
Ah!
Zero hurls the whip aside, pulls a knife from his belt and advances on Tristessa, whose head is slumped down to one side on her chest, slightly Christlike.
ZERO (close to Tristessa’s face, in a low murmur) I am the avenging phallic fire. I have come to fecundate your sterility.
He hooks the knife tip under the side of the g-string, twists and pulls so the string parts with a sandy crunching sound. We can’t see what Zero can see as he is standing between us and Tristessa. He stumbles backwards, dropping the knife, gurgling, transfixed on Tristessa’s groin. As he backs away he stumbles on his whip, trips and falls backwards. Sprawled in the glass floor he reaches out with a trembling hand then draws the arm back to half cover his eyes. Through his fingers he stares at Tristessa as the sun begins to rise from the horizon (spinning slowly with the building).
Now we see Tristessa, head raised and looking with a blank wide-eyed calm at Zero and the collected people in the room. Her neatly shaved mons pubis shows a small penis and scrotum, her immobile body and face animated by the moving light of the sun, in backlit silhouette then side lit with deep shadow then lit orange and round and round by the rising sun.
EVE (whisper)
Tristessa.
Marijane sneers at Eve, approaches Zero and whispers through a cupped hand into Zero’s ear. Her eyes are fixed on Eve as she whispers. Zero finally breaks his gaze on Tristessa and slowly turns to look at Eve too. He has a stricken, deflated expression, in contrast to Marijane’s fierce cold triumphant face.
Eve takes a step backwards but is held by Sadie. Marijane shakes her head no as Zero tries slowly to get to his feet. He is shaken, almost broken. Marijane seems to be the pack leader now.
MARIJANE
Uh-uh no turns out I got plans for you after all. Sadie bag her. Tiny get over here you got work to do.
From Eve’s POV we see it go dark as something is forced over her head.
MARIJANE
Jesus Christ will someone get him up and put him a damn chair.
Scuffling noises, voices chatter wordlessly, Eve shouts and is punched so she sounds winded and wheezes, breathing with difficulty. We also hear Tristessa weakly moaning and protesting. This goes on in darkness, with the sound of Eve’s breathing loud inside the bag, for about 90 seconds. Then things quieten down.
MARIJANE
Nooooow. Do you, Tristessa de St Ange, take that filthy fucking whore there as your whatever. No not Tiny she’s just getting you warmed up. Her. HER! Is that a yes? Good boy.
Marijane’s voice gets closer.
MARIJANE
Do you, Eve whoever the fuck you are take this dyke faggot fucking freak of nature as your husband from this day forward? Bitch I can’t hear you. Louder!EVE
I do.
Huge laughter.
MARIJANE
Mother FUCK I love me a wedding! Bring her over.
Eve is jostled. There are sounds of tearing fabric and laughter all around. We hear Eve shuffling and tripping as she is pushed and pulled.
MARIJANE
Tiny stop enjoying yourself that’s good enough. You all ready?
The women bay and thump the floor. Cain yips and barks along.
MARIJANE
By the power invested in me I hereby name you man and wife! You may kiss the motherfucking bride.
The bag is whipped from Eve’s head as she is tipped over on top of Tristessa, who has been trussed on her back on the glass bier. Eve has been dressed in dapper 1930s black tie (dress shirt, bow tie, top hat, black tails and the dress trousers have been ripped down to her shins). Her ankles and wrists are tied. Tristessa is wearing something like an improvised gauzy wedding dress.
As the women laugh and leap and whoop and seated Zero looks on unmoving with a stunned vacant expression, we see from Eve and Tristessa’s expressions (they are face to face) that Tristessa has penetrated Eve in the act of Eve falling and has probably instantly ejaculated with some mixture of humiliation and pleasure.
MARIJANE
Jesus Lord! I’d say that’s consumated. Now what say we give these lovebirds a little privacy. Let’s get stoned and trash this place, the spinning makes me sick.
Marijane whistles as she walks towards the stairs. Cain’s ears go up (he has been licking his balls), he stands and turns his head to look briefly at impassive Zero then trots along with Marijane, looking up at her.
SADIE
What about him?MARIJANE
What about him?
The others dither uncertainly for a moment then follow Marijane down the stairs.
Zero is left in the chair, legs out, alone facing Tristessa and Eve on the bier. The sounds of smashing glass, barking and violent merriment recede gradually deeper into the house.
CUT TO
INT. TRISTESSA’S HOUSE, SECOND FLOOR CIRCULAR GALLERY, DAWN
TRISTESSA
What is your name child?EVE
Eve.TRISTESSA
Ah! Of course. Enchanting creature. I do hope I didn’t hurt you.EVE
No you... you didn’t.
Deep in the house we see the record mechanism stutter, drop a platter as a new one falls into place. Smoke winds lazily around it. Under the sounds of the mechanism and the crackling of the record as the stylus drops onto its spinning surface we hear the roaring sound of fire. The music begins, a violin drenched rendition of Bird in a Gilded Cage.
As the song begins we see scenes from around the house. The dead man in the control room, still seated behind the panel. The room and man are in flames. The screening room where the women are shooting up drugs using antique syringes, laughing and throwing bottles around as a black and white film plays backwards at double speed. An exterior shot from the pool side of the whole house spinning in the dawn desert light. The water of the pool shivers menacingly from the vibrations of the spinning mechanism.
Zero’s peg leg twitches and scrapes across the floor. He is still seated watching the bier and now as the singing begins some animation crosses his face. Eve turns her head sideways and sees Zero begin to rise from his chair. He looks hungrily at the knife on the floor between him and the bier. Then he sees Eve looking at him and he leers at her.
TRISTESSA
Eve my dear I think it is time for us to leave this house. I never thought I would again.
Zero rises slowly to his feet. The floor and gradually the whole house is starting to vibrate in a way it hasn’t before. Millions of pieces of glass whine and tinkle quietly.
TRISTESSA
Do you hear it? The house you see. It knows.
Eve watches as Zero slowly approaches the knife and the bier. She tries to rock and twist on top of Tristessa but is unable to free herself.
EVE
Tristessa I’m afraid.
Tristessa nods, dramatically closing her large eyes against tears which gather in them, although it isn’t clear that she understands what Eve means.
TRISTESSA
Don’t be scared my dear. We will be free of this place at last. We shall run away together.
Eve rolls her eyes.
Zero woozily shuffles forwards and bends to pick up his knife. He tests the edge on his thumb and advances, mouth open in a leer with his tongue out.
ZERO
Bitches.
Eve struggles again, tries to wriggle out of her bonds, but she is blocked by the glass sides of the bier. Tristessa begins singing along to the song, revelling in the tragedy of the lyrics.
The vibration in the house is increasing. Zero slips and crashes noisily to the floor, and Tristessa turns to look at him with an annoyed frown as he picks himself up, angrier now.
ZERO
BITCHES! I AM THE PHALLIC... The... phallic...TRISTESSA
It’s that vulgar little man again. What does he want now?EVE
He wants to kill us!TRISTESSA
Kill us? Oh no. I can’t think why I ever found him amusing. Shall we escape Eve my dear?EVE
?!?
Tristessa feels around in the bier, locates a button set in the glass and presses it. The bier smoothly descends into the floor and down through the building in a glass-walled shaft, showing the empty rooms as they glide down. Above them Zero lurches forwards, howling as the hole in the floor seals over with a sliding glass panel. He beats on the thick glass with the haft on his knife and presses his face against the glass as his figure diminishes. Eve twists her head around.
EVE
I wish I had killed him.TRISTESSA
My dear, you still can.
They pass by the floor which houses the mechanism for turning the house as they descend deeper. The room is filled with smoke.
INT. TRISTESSA’S HOUSE, GARAGE
The bier comes to a gentle stop in a large underground concrete workshop garage. To one side by a closed carport door a large car shape is covered in a white tarp. As the bier rests in a recessed hole cut in the floor it is possible for Eve to wriggle backwards off the bier and stand. She sits and looks at Tristessa for a moment, then gets to work and manages to get her hands under her legs and facing the front. She finds a circular saw mounted on a workbench drawer and uses the blade to tear through the cloth binding her wrists. She then uses a craft knife to cut through the bindings around her ankles. She helps Tristessa upright and uses the knife to free her likewise.
Tristessa gestures to a shielded button set in the rough concrete wall.
EVE
What is it for?TRISTESSA
I already told you.
Tristessa gently but firmly steers Eve over to the wall. She unclips a clear plastic shield and lifts it to reveal the button.
Eve uses the flat of her palm to force in the large red button. The lights dim momentarily and the mechanical grinding sound from above becomes louder and an alarm siren begins to sound.
TRISTESSA
Good. One should always prepare for one's exits.EVE
Your... friend is dead.TRISTESSA
Yes. He would only have allowed you to reach me after surrending his life. A dear man. I’m sure I shall be quite lost without him.
EXT. TRISTESSA’S HOUSE, DRIVE, DAWN
An off-white 50s Bentley drophead coupé slowly rolls away from the house on smooth sandy concrete in the early morning light. Eve is driving, with Tristessa in the front passenger seat. Tristessa has found a floaty scarf from somewhere and has wound it around her neck and head, and wears a pair of large sunglasses. She looks the part. The car eases to a stop as it passes the pool and the wrecked helicopter. Eve turns to look at the house. The speed of its rotation has increased dramatically and the noise it makes is a kind of groan rising to a shriek. The siren blares out.
The windows burst in showers of glass and bodies are flung outwards like rag dolls by the centrifugal force of the rotation. The last body to be ejected is Zero's. From the angles of his limbs and head it is clear he is already dead. It arcs round high in the air and splashes down into the pool, where it disappears immediately. Tristessa watches all this with a rapt expression and a jewelled hand on Eve’s forearm.
Cain comes running out from the house dizzy and bleeding. He gets his bearings then begins to run in the direction of the car with fangs bared. The entire building pitches over, its spine broken, and crashes to the ground in a symphony of rending steel and shattering glass. Cain disappears under it. Silence and stillness. Eve begins to cry, her hands clasped tight to the wheel.
EVE (VO)
The quick time of this continent would subdue the wreck of this house and turn it into a ruin with the air of pre-history about it. Who could have lived here? What giants built it?
Tristessa turns to Eve, taking off the sunglasses with a faltering hand. She has a dazed expression as though she has just woken up.
TRISTESSA
I have forgotten your name and where you come from.EVE
My name is Eve. I was born in Beulah.
Tristessa looks steadily at Eve for a long moment. It isn’t clear that she understands Eve’s words or the situation she finds herself in. The car engine murmurs gently.
TRISTESSA
I... I bore a daughter once. But she was eaten by rats. She would have been... You must understand even if I have forgotten everything, that I understand everything. I can read tears you see. They map our destiny as they flow down the face. I let my glass flow in the same way. I consult the augury and make my own memorials.
Eve nods in an OK why not way, her crying becoming a half-laugh. She puffs out her cheeks and exhales, collecting herself.
Tristessa reaches out her forefinger and traces the tears from Eve’s eye to the corner of her lips. Eve closes her eyes. Tristessa leans in and kisses Eve’s mouth. Eve turns towards Tristessa, slips the scarf from her head and strokes and runs her hands through Tristessa’s thick wavy white hair as they kiss.
SLOW CROSSFADE TO
INT. TRISTESSA’S CAR, DESERT ROAD, MORNING
Eve is driving at a leisurely speed on a long straight empty single track road through desert scrubland. Tall cacti cast long shadows across the land and road. The passenger seat is empty, there is no sign of Tristessa. Eve looks fairly relaxed and focused on the road in front of her. There is nothing on the road as far as the horizon.
Eve turns to look at the back seats. Tristessa is there, curled up asleep with a travel blanket over her. She looks peaceful, or perhaps dead.
Later, at night. Eve wakes suddenly in the front passenger seat as Tristessa slams the brakes and the car squeals, slides and snakes along the road. In the headlights we see jeeps on either side of the road move in a coordinated action to block it as more military vehicles close in and pour around from behind. Noise, darkness, light, confusion.
Uniformed, armed figures leap down from the vehicles and run in hard booted steps to the now stationary car. There are muffled barked orders in a breaking adolescent male voice, a sense of discipline. The jeep headlights are positioned to pour light into the car from every angle, Tristessa and Eve are blinded and frozen by it, their breathing is fast and panicked. They have found each other’s hand. The armed figures take up positions in a cordon around the car.
NCO
Please exit the vehicle with your hands raised.
Eve and Tristessa do not move except to look around them into the brilliantly lit night and at one another.
A gloved hand holding an automatic handgun taps on the window. Eve jumps. Eve lets go of Tristessa's hand, opens her door and slowly gets out of the car. She is spun around against the side of the car and swiftly handcuffed behind her back. This allows her to see over the roof as Tristessa slowly exits the car, waves away the advances of the soldiers, who are basically silhouettes but even so it is apparent as she straightens that they are generally quite a bit shorter than Tristessa.
Tristessa composes herself, using her presence to temporarily awe the soldiers. She shields her eyes against the glare and begins to laugh. It is a strange laugh, musical but also deeper and more mannish than we have heard her before. It unsettles the soldiers, who bristle and shift. Tristessa speaks through her laughter.
TRISTESSA
But they’re... They’re children. Just little... boys.
She laughs harder now. The light shifts and we see that she is right. The soldiers are all blank faced, smartly dressed, scrubbed and polished boys of no more than 15.
The NCO (he has a different cap) steps forwards and cracks Tristessa on the head with a baton then swings at her with the baton so her knees buckle. She stops laughing but doesn’t quite drop to her knees, draws herself up again with imperious confidence then lets out a silent wheezing which could be suppressed laughter or a kind of dry crying.
EVE
For God’s sake Tristessa do what they want!
Some of the soldiers gasp and someone whispers a schoolboy ‘blasphemy’.
TRISTESSA
Oh no no my darling. I find that there are limits.
The NCO and Tristessa face off each other. A sly look comes into Tristessa's face.
TRISTESSA
I could make a man of you little boy.
Tristessa suddenly lunges forwards, clasps his head in both hands and kisses him hard on the mouth then releases him.
The NCO staggers back, unholsters his gun quickly and shoots Tristessa through her throat. Eve cries out and blood splashes across her face as Tristessa crumples down the side of the car.
NCO (voice high, hurried and breaking)
Dig a trench and roll that in. Put the other one in a truck.
He double times away into the darkness beyond the ring of vehicles as he shouts out the orders and the last words are followed by the sounds of spitting and retching.
EVE
Tristessa!
From where Tristessa fell there are unseen gurgling sucking noises.
EVE
She isn’t dead! She isn’t-
Someone throws a heavy blanket over Eve and she is dragged screaming to the back of a desert camouflage half track truck with a double military cross style crucifix insignia on the side. She is pushed in. Her handcuffs are chained to a ring on the floor. The tailgate is slammed up and the boy soldiers’ boots crunch away across the sand and gravel. Eve is left alone in the dark, crying and rocking. Distantly we hear the boys singing a hymn in high voices as they work to make camp.
CUT TO BLACK
INT. COLONEL’S TENT, DESERT, MORNING
Eve is ushered into a large tent by two boy soldiers bearing rifles. She is wearing a zipped up black mechanic worksuit and polished brown army boots. Her hands are cuffed behind her back. She has cried to exhaustion and now seems flat and empty.
A cloth-wrapped field radio is tuned to an ecstatic New Testament station, a man's voice reciting with barely contained passions from the gospel of Matthew, currently the Olivet Discourse/Little Apocalypse.
Eve is directed to stand before a small old fashioned school style wooden desk, behind which is a simple wooden chair with a starched khaki military style denim shirt draped over its back. On the desk rests a bible and a cooling tin plate of crispy bacon, scrambled eggs from powder and hash browns. Beside the plate is a small bottle of Coca Cola and a bottle opener. Eve looks at the food hungrily. There is a small neatly made cot bed at the side of the tent. Behind the desk a clear plastic window shows a warped view outside.
BOY SOLDIER 1
Wait here.
The soldiers leave the tent.
Eve stands and waits. Through the window we see the soldiers, about a hundred white teenaged boys, are lined up in rows and exercising in unison in their undershorts and vests. Leading and exorting them from the front is a similar figure who appears to be bare from the waist up, although he is wearing trousers. He has something dark across his back, but through the wobbly plastic it isn’t clear what.
A soldier approaches this figure, salutes and on invitation leans in and says something in his ear. The figure nods and dismisses the soldier, calls the NCO forward to continue leading the exercise session and walks towards the tent. He disappears from view through the window. Eve keeps looking forwards but her eyes and body language show that she is aware this person will soon enter the tent from behind her back.
The Colonel enters the tent flanked by the two guards, who now station themselves on either side of the entrance flap. He passes Eve without showing that he has noticed her on his way to the desk and stands before the window for a few moments with one hand gripping the skinny wrist of the other behind his back, watching the exercises continue. This allows Eve to see the vivid and finely worked colour tattoo of Goya’s The Last Supper spread across his skinny back, and also the Mickey Mouse watch he wears. He too is a child, perhaps no more than 12. He nods, turns and lifts the shirt off the chair and puts his arms through it. Before he has fastened the buttons across his chest we see that he wears a black iron crucifix around his neck and a small gold medallion hangs from each pierced nipple. One reads GOD, the other AMERICA.
He stands dressed now and looks at Eve.
THE COLONEL
I am told your name is Eve. You may call me the Colonel. You should know that I have returned to bring not peace but a sword.EVE
Mad children.THE COLONEL
We are Children of God, Eve. Ours is a holy crusade against Blacks, Mexis, Tree Huggers, Reds, Militant Lesbians, Rampant Gays and all Unamerican Forces. With His guidance and protection we will restore law and order to the godless state of California.EVE
You murdered my husband.
The Colonel sighs, sits at the desk, pops the cap off the bottle and drinks, picks up a fork and prods at his food.
COLONEL
An abomination. Is it not written that he that is not with us is against us?EVE
And me?COLONEL
You have been freed. Go I say, and sin no more.
The Colonel gestures and one of the guards comes forwards and uses a key to unlock and remove Eve’s handcuffs. The other keeps his rifle trained on her. Eve doesn't move. Then after a moment she is wracked by quiet tired sobs of grief.
COLONEL
Don't cry please. Would you like a tissue? Some uh... some chocolate?
Eve cries out in a long despairing moan.
EVE
Cowards. Murderers. Kill me too.
The Colonel drops his fork into his untouched plate in exasperation and embarrassment.
COLONEL
I can't... Could you... Just get her out of here now.
The guards salute, uneasily hold Eve’s arms and walk her out of the tent. She allows this without a struggle. We see the Colonel looking in the direction of the tent entrance, straight to camera.
He blinks and presses the heels of his hands against his eyelids, then takes a deep breath and begins to eat his breakfast. Meanwhile through the window behind him we see Eve, limp and crying, being led past the exercising boy soldiers, who falter to a stop. After a silence they all start laughing, some throw handfuls of gravel and small stones at Eve. The NCO shouts and they resume their exercises.
CUT TO
INT. JEEP, DESERT, NIGHT
Eve sits impassive in the passenger seat of an open jeep driven over bumpy desert terrain by an impassive boy soldier. The jeep is in a convoy of vehicles heading towards encircling mountains approaching against the stars.
Eve looks at the side of the driver’s boyish face, then turns to look behind her. There is another equally blank soldier in the back, behind a large side-mounted machine gun. Eve looks past him with longing at the direction they have come.
A big bump, Eve turns to the front again. As she turns she half sees a figure riding something quiet, dark, like a motorbike but not, sliding smooth and fast in an arc across the sand at the periphery of the convoy. It drifts away into darkness almost as soon as she has seen it.
She looks into the speeding night for a moment, then turns and looks to the other side. Nothing.
She holds onto a wide handle mounted on the dash in front of her with both hands, braces herself, drops her head and closes her eyes.
EVE (whisper)
Mother.
The sky overhead explodes in brilliant white light...
DRIVER
Fire from heaven!
...and is followed by a massive concussive blast which shakes the jeep.
Eve keeps her eyes screwed closed. The jeep veers off at a sudden angle as the driver loses control of the wheel, then it clips a rock, rears and twists into the air. The occupants are flung around as darkness closes in again, then from all around comes the rattle of small arms fire in the dark. The jeep runs into a sand bank and jerks suddenly to a stop although the engine is still running. We hear crunches and thuds and nearly continuous gunfire, and the high pitched shout screams of the boy soldiers.
A salvo of phosphorus illuminating flares streaks up and bursts in the night sky. In their drifting light we see the jeep's windshield is smashed, the driver's head is twisted and jammed against the steering wheel, blood streams from his face onto the floor, his crucifix necklace dangles between his knees. The rear passenger is no longer there, neither is Eve.
From a distance away Eve staggers shakily to her feet on a dune. Her face is cut and she is shaken. She limps and slithers back to the jeep, assesses the situation, climbs back in the passenger seat, braces her upper body (she grimaces, she has twisted a wrist) and pushes the driver out of the jeep with her feet. She moves across into the driver seat and after feeling around in the faint light for the gear stick manages to reverse the jeep out of the ditch. The wheels spin then find purchase on the loose grit and the jeep leaps backwards.
A large half track truck is hit by a rocket propelled grenade and bursts into a fireball as Eve races off, twisting the wheel to face away from the mountains back the way they came. There she stops and sees the boy's army attempting to organise a defence against Mother's warriors on their agile sand sleds.
Eve swings the jeep around again and races away towards the mountains, gradually leaving the battle behind her. Eventually she bounces across a paved road which appears to lead through a valley between the mountains, and steers to join it. From the direction of the mountains volleys of missiles arc overhead at enormous speed and noise and bombard the desert from where she came, making the ground shake and the sky light up as they explode.
EVE
OK. OK.
CROSSFADE TO
INT. JEEP, DESERTED TOWN, DAY
Eve drives slowly towards a small town’s looted main street. She draws to a stop with the engine running to look and listen. High above and far away a small Cessna type plane slowly recedes, its engine barely audible in the stillness.
Eve moves the jeep forwards. She looks down at the fuel gauge, the needle of which shows the tank is nearly empty.
Store windows are smashed, some are burned out, litter and debris drift around. The road is cratered in places and poles are broken, power and telephone cables down. There is nobody in sight. Behind the streets we see citrus trees in blossom in the hills all around. It is very quiet. Eve passes a car with its trunk open, a group of suitcases on the road next to it. No people.
Eve pulls the jeep into a gas station. A child’s bike leans against the white yard fence and a large yellow rose bush in bloom spreads across a trellised shingle side wall of the station. She finds a pump, tries it and finds it works, fits the nozzle in the jeep and stretches and yawns while it fills.
A shotgun shot sprays a red fire bucket near to Eve. With a yell she ducks behind the jeep and peers around, sees a man in the gas station upper floor window weaving woozily with the gun pointing lazily out. After a while he turns his back to the window and stands facing into the room. From Eve’s point of view it is difficult to see what he is doing, she isn’t sure what to do. The petrol pump dings repeatedly.
As Eve moves up from her crouch slightly to reach round for the pump nozzle. The back of the man’s skull bursts outwards with the sound of a gunshot and he slowly tumbles backwards out of the window, the shotgun still held in his hands and aimed at what is left of his head. His body hits the ground. Petrol starts pouring from the overflowing jeep fuel tank and Eve hurries to stop it.
CUT TO
INT. GAS STATION UPPER FLOOR, DESERTED TOWN, DAY
Eve is standing in a kitchen. At the table laid out with a basic breakfast things are the bodies of a girl and a boy, both around 7 years old, wearing pyjamas, both shot in the back. They each hold a stem with a yellow rose.
On a worktop near the open window are an empty bourbon bottle and an open bottle of sleeping pills. A plastic garden chair is pushed up against the wall by the window, with an open cardboard pack of shotgun cartridges on the seat. Light wind blows through the window and ruffles some paper on the worktop. Eve shifts the bourbon bottle and picks up a purple spirit duplicated news sheet titled 'Free State of California' claiming victories over the Independent Republic of California. Around the text are smudged photos of mobile missile launchers in action, a soldier giving a thumbs up gesture from an armoured personnel carrier, a map of territory held across California, and handy home survival tips. The words FREEDOM and DEMOCRACY are printed in large block caps, along with something that might be a drawing of an eagle gripping a lightning bolt in its talons.
Eve briefly leans out of the window to look down, then returns the sheet to the worktop and places the liquor bottle back on top.
EVE
Well here’s your chaos Baroslav.
At the back of the kitchen a large unlit tropical fish tank contains the dark shapes of lifeless fish with long tattered fins floating in a murky green soup.
Eve ducks her head and shoulders around a door at the end of a short corridor. The room within is in near darkness, there is a suggestion of closed curtains. We hear a sudden buzzing rise up, she backs away in a hurry exhaling hard, some large black flies follow her and then weave lazy back around the door into the room. She heads for the front door.
EVE (mutter)
OK that’s enough.
CUT TO
EXT. OUT OF TOWN SHOPPING CENTRE, DAY
Eve is driving on a highway which approaches an interchange with a smaller curving slip road through fields. The slip road leads off towards a kitsch Pueblo style retail/leisure park and parking lot some way off in the field. She looks between the highway and the slip road, makes up her mind and steers towards the retail park.
As she drives towards a large tiled plaster archway with the word RELAXARAMA in metallic mosaic across the apex, the entire front of the building before her blows out and collapses from simultaneously detonated explosive charges. A band of armed men covered in dust charge out shouting from the now exposed building and are rapidly picked off by unseen snipers. They fall among the rubble, dying and dead.
Eve spins the Jeep’s wheels as she drives off at speed but the road in front of her vanishes in debris and smoke as a mine explodes. She wrenches the jeep to the side of the road as bullets start whining around her. She jumps out of the jeep and runs towards a nearby large smashed window of a supermarket, and rolls through it as more bullets hit the wall around the window. She picks herself up from the floor littered with crushed glass but stays low as she scuttles past looted shelves and dangling EVERYTHING MUST GO signs deeper into the gloomy, powerless supermarket.
From behind open freezer units swimming in melted ice cream and slicks of dead flies she watches through the window as the battle rages in the plaza outside.
A man in army fatigues and a blond buzz cut hurls himself through the window in a hail of bullets, reloads his handgun while lying under the window. He hasn't seen Eve. He pulls a grenade from a pocket, arms it, leaps to his feet preparing to throw the grenade and rejoin the fray outside. A heavy machine gun rattles as soon as he rises and the man is riddled with bullets where he stands. The grenade drops from his hand and rolls deeper into the supermarket as he falls backwards. Eve turns and runs for the double swing doors to the storage area at the back. Before she gets there the grenade explodes, part of the ceiling collapses and Eve is struck on the back of head by a projectile pineapple.
CUT TO
EXT. OUT OF TOWN SHOPPING CENTRE, EVENING
Eve wakes. She is in a makeshift infirmary in a sports supply shop, lying on a bloody surfboard. Her face and hands are dusty and peppered with small cuts. Beside her a woman with the manner of a nurse facing away from her is injecting a moaning young man whose leg has been amputated by an explosion. The woman wears a canary yellow armband with the vagina dentata and broken arrow symbols printed side by side.
The man's moans subside, the woman brushes her hand across his forehead and turns in Eve’s direction. Eve reacts with surprise to the woman’s face. It is Leilah, or someone who looks very much like her. The woman looks at her with a cool, not unfriendly expression.
LILITH
Hello Eve. I am Lilith. I hear you got knocked out by a pineapple. How are you feeling?
Eve lets her head drop back, she looks up at the ceiling.
EVE
Oh fine. Fine.
CUT TO
EXT. ROOF OF OUT OF TOWN SHOPPING CENTRE, EVENING
Lilith and then Eve emerge up a ladder leading to a hole in the roof. There is a sandbagged heavy machine gun nest on the roof. A teenage girl and boy smoke and peer through binoculars from the nest. They look like they might be twins.
Lilith and Eve sit on the flat roof. Eve’s wounds have been cleaned and dressed, and she generally looks tidied up a bit. She wears a lightweight canvas military jacket over her mechanic worksuit, and New Balance sneakers in place of the brown army boots. Lilith points towards the orange horizon.
LILITH
Los Angeles. Burning.
From somewhere unseen below comes the sound of a firing squad and then falling bodies. Eve shudders, perhaps remembering Tristessa's execution. Lilith reads Eve’s face. She takes a hip flask from a pocket, unscrews the top and passes it to Eve.
LILITH
I’m sorry.EVE
He was... I loved him.
Lilith nods. Eve passes the flask back and she drinks.
I’ll tell you something. Years ago, before I was born, he went to my mother. She was working in an off-the-books kind of surgical clinic in LA. You can guess what he wanted. He offered her a fortune to 'match his function to his form'.
EVE
And?LILITH
She wouldn't do it.EVE
Why not?LILITH
I don't know. Maybe because she thought he didn't really want her to.EVE
And what about me? Did I really want this?LILITH
You Eve, or you Evelyn?
Eve appears surprised by the latter name. She looks thoughtfully into the distance and drinks from the flask. Lilith raises her eyebrows and tilts her head in a ‘well there’s your answer’ kind of way.
A field telephone rings from the machine gun nest. The girl lifts it, listens, then indicates that the call is for Lilith. Lilith walks over, takes the receiver and listens, looking at Eve. As she leans over a thin chain hangs forward from her throat, on the end of which the lump of alchemical gold swings and winks in the sun. She absently touches it on her open palm as if weighing it.
After a few seconds of listening to the phone Lilith speaks a couple of words and returns the receiver to the girl, tucks the necklace away and returns to Eve.
LILITH
I've got to take you on a trip. No no, not to Beulah this time. Beulah is finished anyway. Mother has... Well. You'll see.
On the distant horizon the glow in the sky over Los Angeles flickers continuously in the dusk as it a bombardment begins. A low rumble like distant thunder. From the plaza below comes the sound of quiet voices, heavy things being carried and car doors clunking shut, engines starting up. The girl affirms something into a squawking walkie talkie.
The boy lifts an acoustic guitar onto his lap, tests its tuning and begins to play gently and sing in Spanish. He glances at Eve as he plays. The girl looks at him for a moment, shakes her head slightly with a sigh and a wry sisterly expression and resumes her watch.
GIRL
Los hombres.
A small convoy of appropriated estate wagons, a militarised milk delivery van and Eve's jeep eases away from the compound along the side road towards the highway. The girl waves farewell to the convoy as they honk their horns.
LILITH
You must be hungry.
CUT TO
EXT. COAST ROAD, MORNING
A rose gold Lincoln Continental Town Coupe winds along a cliff top coastal road in the early morning.
The ocean edge is crowded with the bobbing broken pieces of bombed out sea front homes and marina detritus. Pastel painted mobile home panels, chunks of white painted fencing, burned decking planks, buoys and floats, lengths of rope, sun loungers, trellises with the remains of gardenia flowers, macrame plant holders, broken palm trees, wide-brimmed sun hats, upturned cars, fridges, cork-soled platform sandals, rubber cartoon action figures and a pink plastic life-size make-up and hair head, a basketball hoop, slicks of bright holiday clothes, beer cans, parasols, tyres, fishing gear, the upturned hull of a small motorboat, a dead golden retriever swollen with gas, and so on. Miles of it washing along the coast and collecting against breakwaters in huge mats of junk.
Large white seabirds glide and squabble over all this, the only signs of life.
Eve looks out through the passenger side window as Lilith drives. A stubby machine pistol and extra clips rattle gently in a mesh bag attached to the driver’s side door.
A huge fibreglass dog’s head in a chef’s hat slowly turns in the sea junk to show its grinning face and wink. Not far away a similarly oversized fibreglass glove holding a half-eaten hotdog bobs around.
Lilith glances across, laughs drily.
LILITH
Oh yes, a terrible devastation.
Eve looks at Lilith’s face, her eyes flicker to the gun, then she looks back at the winding road again.
CUT TO
EXT. ROAD VERGE BY COVE, MORNING
The car drifts to a stop over shingle at the verge of a down-sloping dirt track. The headlamp covers fold down. A small secluded shingle and pebble cove lies down a slope in front of the car. Steep rocks edge the back of the cove.
LILITH
We’re here.
She opens her door and climbs out, grabbing a bag from the back seat. After a moment’s hesitation Eve opens her door. Lilith begins to push the driver door shut.
Eve indicates the machine pistol with an inclination of her head.
EVE
Aren’t you taking that?LILITH
Why? Think I’ll need it?
Eve looks at the gun again then shrugs. Lilith smiles and shakes her head.
LILITH
Come and see.
Lilith leads Eve towards a high thin crack in the dark, water-slick fern colonised rock. Fresh water leaks and trickles from all over the rock face. The water collects into numerous quick rivulets leading between the shingle and stones towards the sea.
Lilith reaches into the cloth bag slung across her shoulder and pulls out a large squarish plastic torch. She tests it briefly and satisfied holds it out to Eve.
Eve turns to look behind her at the flat calm water and high whitish sky.
EVE
It’s not how I pictured it.LILITH
What?
Eve doesn’t answer.
Lilith rattles the torch to get Eve’s attention. Eve takes it. They look at each other. Lilith turns and makes her way back along the beach towards the car, stops after a couple of steps.
LILITH
Oh. Yeah.
Lilith returns, fiddling with the clasp of the chain on which the gold ingot is suspended. She puts it around Eve's neck, kisses her cheek lightly and walks away again.
Eve sets off over pebbles towards the crack, feeling the ingot with the tips of her fingers. Her sneakers are quickly soaked. She climbs up into the mouth of the split, the torch lighting not much within, and shuffling crabways she disappears into the darkness.
We wait outside.
FADE TO BLACK
EVE (V.O.)
I am inching my way towards the beginning and the end of time. The destination of all journeys is their beginning.
We hear the high-pitched sound of water dripping and trickling steadily into a larger body of water like a pool, echoing in a large quiet cave-like space. We also hear Eve inching and scraping her way along the narrow passage, the sounds of which fade away as she moves further into the rock.
The trickling sound gradually grows in volume and low frequency rumble as though the stream is approaching an underground waterfall, and then subtly the sound changes into the whoosh and thump of a huge slow heartbeat.
EVE (echoey, far away)
Mother?
Heartbeat continues slowly in the dark.
HEADLAND, EVENING, FINE MISTY RAIN
An old woman sits on a wicker chair painted chipped pink on a promontory on a grassy rise facing the ocean. The sky is a gradient of dark pinkish brown, the sun has dropped below the horizon out to sea. From somewhere indistinct and distant comes the haphazard pop of gunfire, which continues occasionally throughout the scene.
The woman's mist-spangled hair is elaborately coiffed rising up in swirls, set, and dyed canary yellow. Small satin bows in USA flag motifs are clipped into her hair. She has thick smeary makeup on her face: bright red lipstick, rouge, white powder running from the mist, and shimmering oily blue eye grease in the sunken hollows of her eye sockets. Her eyeballs are white with cataracts. The skin of her body is leathery, sagging and heavily tanned. The wrinkles of her skin are dark with sooty dirt. She wears a dirty two-piece red and white polka dot bathing costume, and a fur stole rests across her shoulders. A pink oiled paper parasol is open over her head.
A small garden table next to her chair has a glass tumbler full of clear liquid, a mostly empty bottle of vodka, plate of unfinished beans in sauce and a fork and damp piles of cigarette ash in it, a pack of Sobranie Black Russian cocktail cigarettes and a chunky faceted crystal table lighter which looks like a grenade or perfume bottle. A large kit bag is propped upright on the ground to her other side.
The old woman is singing 'Everything is peaches down in Georgia' in a loud cracked Ethel Merman musical style. She stops suddenly to reach for the tumbler, downs its contents, smacks her lips and burps, feels for the vodka bottle and refills the glass, shakes the almost empty bottle near her ear and lobs it over the rise edge. It lands in shingle by the waterline, where other empty vodka bottles are either partly buried in the shingle or bobbing around in the low surf.
She reaches for an unopened bottle from the top of the kit bag - we see her very long carmine painted nails and soil-dirty hands - and places it where the other bottle had been while picking up the song where she left off. She sings it to the end with gusto.
She sits still and peacefully, sagging forearms resting along the arms of the chair. Gulls glide past low to the gently lapping water. She scratches her scalp with a long nail through the solid mass of her hair and sighs. She reaches for the cigarettes and lighter, lights the cigarette from the long flame and peacefully smokes the whole cigarette, blowing smoke through her nostrils and tapping the ash onto the plate.
The old woman stubs the gold cigarette filter out, leans forwards and achily pushes herself out of the chair with some huffing. She drops her fur stole on the chair back, stamps her sparkly silver tap shoes a few times then stumps over to a nearby mass of juniper bushes. She approaches the bushes humming the song she had just been singing, then mostly disappears from view behind them, her face still just visible through the top twigs. She has her back to the ocean. She tilts forwards and crouches a few degrees.
Not far behind the old woman we can now see Eve is crouching frozen on the beach below, watching the old woman's back (and backside) while holding up one end of a small tethered yellow plastic boat. Eve’s expression is a mixture of surprise and ugh. A folding knife is poised in her hand with which she had been sawing at the boat rope.
We hear the old woman straining and then the sound of pissing. Eve raises her eyes and shifts her foot slightly in the shingle to avoid the approaching trickle of frothy yellow urine coursing down the slope. There is a lot. The old woman shows no sign of knowing anyone is around, finishes with a satisfied grunt, shivers, pulls her bathing costume knickers back up and re-emerges from the bushes. She finds her way back to the chair and resumes her previous position, relieved to be sitting again. She cracks open the new bottle's twist cap...
OLD WOMAN
You gonna steal my boat?
... and pours herself another big drink.
After a pause we hear then see Eve reluctantly crunch across the shingle and climb up to the ledge, looking shifty. The knife is still in her hand.
OLD WOMAN
What have we here? Come closer now. What’s your name?EVE
Eve.OLD WOMAN
Ava?EVE
It's Eve. Only Eve.
The old woman nods seriously as though this means something to her. Eve shuffles, unsure about what to do next. A synchronised artillery burst explodes in a roar along the coast. The ground bucks violently, the air lights up briefly casting long shadows, then darkness closes in again. Eve drops to the ground covering her head, the old woman doesn’t react at all.
(From this point on there are no more pops of gunfire).
Small pieces of wet ash patter down around them and against the parasol. The old woman lays her hand over her glass with a moue of vague irritation and a frown aimed at the sky. Eve gets up, closes the knife and pockets it. She brushes the ash out of her hair.
OLD WOMAN
Why are you taking my little boat away Eve? When I had drunk my last bottle I was going to take a dump over by the juniper bush there, to say goodbye to the world, and then I’d planned to climb into my little boat and sail away. It’s not really a boat you see Eve. It’s my coffin.EVE
I’m sorry.
The old woman waves away Eve’s apology casually.
OLD WOMAN
Come here. Come to mama, young Eve.
Eve approaches the chair and kneels down before the old woman. Eve’s hair has grown out from the chopped Zero-period cut and she is wearing different clothes. She looks clean and healthy but anxious.
The old woman reaches out both hands, finds Eve’s face and explores it in detail with her fingers, humming quietly as she does so. Her hands move down, feel the necklace and ingot, then she cups Eve’s breasts and strokes her belly, at which point her hands stop moving and she stops humming. She looks down at Eve’s body intently with her unseeing eyes. Satisfied she pats Eve’s arm and settles back into her chair and thinks, her long nails clacking against the wicker arm.
OLD WOMAN
Give me your necklace and you can take my boat.
Eve unfastens the necklace clasp and puts it into the old woman’s hand. The old woman licks and mumbles the ingot in her mouth. She holds the necklace in her raised upturned palm, wraps and squeezes her fingers tight around it so her fist vibrates with the effort. She raises her head as though looking at the sky. She looks very serious and overcome with joy and her white eyes widen. A golden light escapes from between her fingers and grows to bathe them both in an egg of diffuse glittering brightness which makes everything outside it seem much darker than it already is. When she speaks the words come out in halting, clipped words through a kind of rictus smile as she strains to express and stay in control of the great passion.
OLD WOMAN
Where can they go, poor things, flotsam of time? They are on the beach of elsewhere.
Eve doesn't respond but seems to understand. The old woman lowers her head to look at Eve as though seeing her now, although still in a kind of trance.
OLD WOMAN
The vengeance of the sex is love Eve. Do you see? Love.
Eve looks at her face and hand through the golden haze.
After a few moments the old woman’s fixed expression gradually softens, she loosens her fingers and the gold light retracts and dissipates. She sinks back in the chair, breathing quietly but quickly until she has recovered from the exertion of whatever just happened. She pours the necklace into her swimsuit top.
Search light beams from somewhere out to sea sweep over the beach for a while then blink off.
OLD WOMAN
A pleasure to meet you Eve. Go on now. Commit yourself and your little passenger to the sea.
Eve rises, looks around her and walks away towards the water’s edge and disappears from view.
The old woman pulls the necklace out from between her breasts, laughs a low chesty chuckle at it, and fastens it around her neck. She picks up the glass, raises it in a salute in the direction Eve walked off.
OLD WOMAN (crooning quietly)
Ocean, ocean, mother of mysteries, bear me to the place of birth.
She knocks back the drink with relish, wipes her mouth with the back of her hand. She chuckles again shaking her head and begins to sing A Foggy Day in London Town. We look out past her towards the faintly gleaming water as she sings the first two verses.
CUT TO BLACK
THE PASSION OF NEW EVE
OVER REST OF SONG, WHICH IS EVENTUALLY JOINED BY A DISTANT, ON-THE-WIND SOUNDING PIANO AND TROPICALIA ORCHESTRAL ACCOMPANIMENT THAT SNEAKS IN A 'VENUS' MOTIF, ANOTHER SHELL BURST AND PATTER OF WET SAND. WHEN THE SONG AND ACCOMPANIMENT ENDS WE HEAR THE SURF, OCCASIONAL SOUND OF OLD WOMAN CREAKING IN THE CHAIR, FARTING, CLINK OF GLASS AND GURGLE OF VODKA BEING POURED, LIGHTING A CIGARETTE, HUMMING.
END