Post by PRELUDE on Feb 25, 2019 5:03:28 GMT -5
PLAYBILL
SYNOPSIS
June, 2017. Spiral, the UNLEASHED World Champion, has avenged a prior loss by forcing the MMA doctor who intervened in one of his fights to commit suicide. After dumping the body, he hikes to the bus terminal in Korolyov, where he hails a taxi to drive him to the airport.
CAST OF CHARACTERS
MADS MIKKELSEN as SPIRAL (THE NARRATOR)
ANYA TAYLOR-JOY as MADDI (THE ENTITY)
ANYA TAYLOR-JOY as MADDI (THE ENTITY)
Un·re·li·a·ble Nar·ra·tor
noun
1. A narrating character or storyteller in a literary or other artistic work—such as a novel, play, song, or film—who provides inaccurate, misleading, conflicting, or otherwise questionable information to the reader or audience.
noun
1. A narrating character or storyteller in a literary or other artistic work—such as a novel, play, song, or film—who provides inaccurate, misleading, conflicting, or otherwise questionable information to the reader or audience.
PRELUDE
THE BEGINNING IS THE END
Under conditions of peace
the warlike man attacks himself.
the warlike man attacks himself.
— Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil
“The Eater must eat,” I say under my breath, my voice strained and gritty. I’m riding in the rear seat of a taxi, on my way to Vnukovo International Airport. It’s late, sometime after eleven. I glance out the window to see the lights of downtown Moscow drowning out the stars and turning the sky a murky orange. An hour ago I forced a doctor named Fedorov to take his own life and left his body to rot in a swamp. His death brought me no satisfaction.
“My hunger is becoming harder to ignore, and I’m becoming less interested in ignoring it. How long can I maintain this façade? How long until this person suit can no longer contain the Real Me?”
A hand finds my shoulder and a voice tells me, “Patience, my sweet.” I turn away from the window to the woman sitting next to me—a beautiful creature, with big, wild eyes, and a mop of curly dark hair.
It’s Maddi. My twin sister. My dead twin sister. Who I murdered all those years ago.
Her fingers knead into my shoulder, then my neck. “The time will come when you look upon this world with serpent eyes and there is no more skin left to shed. You, the Great Pale King, shall walk without fear.”
The words twist beneath my skin. I answer, “And the funeral pyres will blot out the sun.” My eyes search Maddi’s. She’s the perfect picture of my dead sister…before I strangled her to death and framed her idiot boyfriend. This thing sitting next to me, caressing me, and telling me all the things I need to hear, is The Entity, who, until recently, was a formless voice manifested in my head. It nurtured me from birth, guided me to evolve beyond the limitations of this human form and become the Great Beast.
It was My Dark Self, always lurking beneath this person suit, always whispering its machinations in my ear. But The Entity grew tired of life in the backseat. It assumed the form of my sister Maddi, just as I remember her. Perfect in every way.
She hisses in my ear, “We know what the prophecy says, my love, and we are witnessing it. See the mad men around the world move their great forces into strategic positions. See them antagonize one another, condemn one another, threaten one another. They ache for the war to end all wars.”
“The final battle,” I add with a growing smile.
“Ragnarök,” she whispers with a very Spiral-like smile.
I catch the driver looking at me in the rearview mirror. He panics, drops his eyes, and returns his attention back to the road ahead. He of course cannot see Maddi or hear our interactions. I wonder, then, what has piqued his curiosity. Considering my history in this forsaken country, it’s not unfathomable the Russian mob put my face out to the cabbies in the area.
I lean forward and say, “English?”
He nods sharply.
I ask, “How are doing on time?”
Again his eyes meet mine in the mirror. “Thirty minutes, sir.” His accent is thick, but his english is passable.
“Good,” I say, then add, “I couldn’t help notice the way you were looking at me.”
“Oh, that.” He swallows nervously and clears his throat. “I don’t get many famous people in my car. You’re the fighter, da? I watched you fight that woman in Sankt-Peterbúrg. You are badass, my man. UNLEASHED MMA champion, right here in my car.”
I hear Maddi chuckling from behind. She says, “Isn’t that cute. He’s a fan.”
I throw my hands up and tell the driver, “You got me.”
“Hey,” he says, his eyes moving back and forth from the road to the mirror. “Do you have it with you? The belt?”
“No, sorry,” I say with a wave of my hand. “No bags. I’m traveling light. I tell you what, though—” I look over the seat and down at the dashboard to his ID badge. “Ostap,” I read aloud his name, as I slink back into the backseat. “We will be fighting in Moscow soon. When I do, I will leave you tickets with the cab company.”
He looks at my reflection, excited. “No shit, my man?”
“No shit,” I say with a half smile. “But you have to do me a favor.”
“Anything.”
“Don’t tell anyone I was here. I’ve been talking to some people about some business opportunities here and I don’t think the promoters will be happy about it. So let’s keep it on the hush hush. A sekret, da?”
“Okay, my man. You got it. You were never here.”
As I offer him a thankful nod, Maddi says, “Can we trust him to keep his mouth shut?” Her words are needles drilling into my limbic cortex. I watch him quietly for a moment, then say to her, “I don’t think we have a choice. Besides, he knows nothing, and killing him would only make things more difficult.”
She says, “Rule number one.”
And I reply, “Never get caught.”
I feel her hand sliding under mine and our fingers interlocking. She says, “You need many more lives, but not like the doctor and not like this fool. Their lights are much too dim. You need bright lives. Beacons so bright that no one will doubt their testimony.” She leans against me and places her head on my shoulder. “And you know where we can find them.”
I start to say something but the thought is lost when my cell phone starts to vibrate in my jacket pocket. I check the screen and see the name on the ID. Maddi asks who it is. “It’s Leopold,” I tell her, then bring the phone to my ear.
“Leopold,” I say into the receiver. “How are things in New Orleans?”
“Listen to me,” he says quickly. “Do not tell me where you are.”
“Alright. I won’t tell you where I am.” I give Maddi a look of concern as she sits up next to me. “What can be so wrong that the highest priced attorney in Louisiana is calling me in a panic?”
“Judge Cates has issued a ruling. I am required to inform you that you must return to Orleans Parish at once and answer this summons or else a bench warrant will be issued for your arrest.”
My words are forced through clenched teeth. “You told me this was over, Leopold. They couldn’t touch me anymore.”
He says, “All you had to do was go to the weekly sessions with the state shrink for six months. They’re claiming you missed the last two and are using it to throw you back into the hospital for the duration of your original sentence. Ten years, Nathan.”
Nathan. I hate it when they call me that. “I was working. What do they expect me to do?”
“They expect you to follow the order. If you have a legitimate reason for missing a session for work, you bring it to me and I present it to the judge. You failing to show up is exactly what the District Attorney was hoping for.”
“I understand,” I say. “I became distracted and I’m sorry. How can I make this right?”
Leopold’s sigh crackles in my ear. “I’m going to deal with this. I have informed you of the subpoena ordering you to appear before the court in three days. However, I must tell you it’s very likely you will be arrested for contempt of court and you should prepare yourself to spend at least the weekend in county lockup. I cannot promise you will not be returned to the hospital but I will have my entire office fighting the D.A.’s motions. If you were unable to return to New Orleans for the hearing—for instance, if you were stuck somewhere outside the country—I would of course challenge the District Attorney in your absence.”
I take a breath and say, “I understand. I am on my way to the airport now. I do not expect any delays but if for some reason I am unable to arrive for the court date, I trust you to handle this.” I end the call, then reach the door and press the switch to lower the window. The driver looks back briefly when he hears the air whooshing in.
He says, “Something wrong, sir?”
I throw the phone out the window and roll it back up. “Not at all.” As the air gives it’s final hiss before the glass sinks into the rubber seal, I look over at Maddi. She’s shaking her head and rubbing the temple raw with the heel of her hand.
“We can’t go back there,” she says. “That place was not good for us, kiddo.”
She’s afraid of going back there, to Ascension Asylum for the Mentally Ill. Afraid of their proclivity for using experimental techniques on their patients. Afraid of the hundreds of electroshock treatments that fried my brain and the thousands of pills which sank me into an endless stupor. Afraid of the six years we spent trapped there, lost and forgotten, forced to wear the mask of Nathan Gram every day, all day, with no end in sight.
She’s afraid and I’m afraid, too.
“Don’t worry,” I tell her. “We aren’t going back there. I’m confident Leopold can handle this situation. We just need to find somewhere to disappear to until he does.”
The Maddi-Entity slides back over to me, slipping under my arm and resting her head on my chest, and wraps her arms around my torso. As my hand moves up her neck to the back of her head and my fingers run through her hair, my eyes find their way back to the window. There, a few feet past the glass, a city bus is riding next to us and on its side, scrawled in bright red on the side, are the words FEAR NOT FOR THE FUTURE, WEEP NOT FOR THE PAST.