An Episode of Not Quite Dead.

Episode Content Warnings

Please bear in mind that this show is a work of horror fiction and frequently places characters in situations which jeopardise their psychological and physical health. This episode contains:

– profanity

– sudden noises (bats, breaking glass)

– discussion of traumatic injury

– discussions of death, including murder

– detailed discussion of medical terminology and procedures, including autopsy and dissection (with consent)

– mentions of blood, drinking and smelling blood

– sounds of a character in distress

Transcript

THE RUMBLE OF A CAR’S ENGINE

NEIGE

Left, just here.

ALFIE

Where?

NEIGE

That gap in the trees.

CAR ENGINE CALMS, THE BRAKE CREAKS

ALFIE

What? Down there?

NEIGE

Oui? Did I speak in French or something? Just go.

ALFIE

It’s not a road.

NEIGE

It was once.

ALFIE SIGHS

ALFIE

We can’t just drive across woodland because there was a road there once, that’s not how it works.

NEIGE

Worried about obeying traffic laws in the middle of fucking nowhere, what is the matter with you.

ALFIE

No, just is it even going to be possible to drive through there? For real? How long’s it been since–

NEIGE

Just go, there will be a route.

ALFIE

Alright fine.

TYRES CRUNCH ON DIRT. THE CAR JOSTLES.

ALFIE

This isn’t – I don’t think we can go down here.

NEIGE

There was a track, before. It’s been a while.

ALFIE

How long is ‘a while’?

NEIGE

Eighty years, give or take. I don’t know that Casper and his friends kept the road very clear even then.

ALFIE

Right. Nearly a hundred years. Mate, do you know how fast trees grow.

NEIGE

You call me ‘mate’.

ALFIE

Yeah. I just– never mind.

NEIGE

Stop here.

ALFIE

What? But?

NEIGE

Stop!

ALFIE BRAKES.

ALFIE

Jesus!

NEIGE

Yeah.

ALFIE

You know when I’m driving, if you yell, I assume something is going very wrong.

NEIGE

Why? You have eyes? Senses? Yes? You know it is fine.

ALFIE

Well yeah, but—

NEIGE

But what? Always you are saying ‘Neige, Neige, I am not a child, do not call me ‘mon petit’’ and then you act like you are a newborn infant, blind and defenceless.

ALFIE

Hey, that’s a bit–

NEIGE

How in the name of fuck am I supposed to take you seriously if you don’t take yourself seriously, eh?

ALFIE

I– well. I do!

NEIGE

Boff.

ALFIE

Sorry, ‘boff’?

NEIGE

Oui, it means, ah, let me… uh. Like, ‘eh’, like ‘whatever’. Like you need to stop thinking so hard about these things and just get out of the car.

CAR DOOR OPENS

ALFIE

Neige–

CAR DOOR SLAMS

ALFIE CUTS OUT THE CAR’S ENGINE. THE RINGS JINGLE.

ALFIE

Fucking idiot ancient vampire fuck. With his stupid– face. And his– his hair.

ALFIE TAKES A DEEP BREATH

ALFIE

Right. Right. Okay. Okay.

CAR DOOR OPENS. ALFIE’S FEET CRUNCH ON THE FLOOR.

NEIGE

What is wrong with my hair?

ALFIE

Nothing. Pretend you didn’t hear that.

NEIGE

Why? You know I did.

ALFIE

Yeah, but. You know what, never mind.

NEIGE

Boff.

ALFIE

Sure. Boff.

NEIGE

Come on then.

ALFIE

Where are we going?

NEIGE

To a house.

ALFIE

Uh. Out here? Are you sure? Doesn’t look like–

NEIGE

It burned down in the, uh. I want to say 1910? But maybe a little before, maybe a little after.

ALFIE

Oh great. So it’s not a house. Its the ruins of a house.

NEIGE

Yes.

ALFIE

Can we stay in a hotel or something, after? I miss running water.

NEIGE

We will fix the water at home. This trip will also help some of our, uh, how you say? Flow of cash issues?

ALFIE

Hmm.

NEIGE

Was that the wrong phrase?

ALFIE

No. Just. Weird to call it home.

NEIGE

We do not have to.

ALFIE

No, it’s fine.

THEY WALK, FEET CRUNCHING ON THE DIRT

NEIGE

In my experience, home is wherever you can be safe. Sometimes it is a place, a house. Sometimes a person. Sometimes, it is a way of thinking.

ALFIE

Yeah. Okay.

NEIGE

Here.

ALFIE

Oh, great, a fence that says ‘keep out’. Perfect.

METAL FENCE RATTLES

NEIGE

(distant)

Are you coming?

ALFIE

Yeah. Sure. Why not at this point?

NEIGE

Okie, you want–

ALFIE

No! I’m fine!

METAL FENCE RATTLES AGAIN

ALFIE LANDS WITH A THUD AND A SOUND OF EFFORT

ALFIE

Let’s go.

NEIGE

Oui. Good.

FEET CRUNCH ON THE FLOOR

A SUDDEN BURST OF MOVEMENT

ALFIE GASPS

NEIGE

Bats.

ALFIE

(breathlessly)

Yeah, yeah.

THE SOUND OF THE BATS GETS QUIETER

NEIGE
We are not far off. They have come from the house, I think they live in the ruins.

ALFIE
When did you last visit?

NEIGE
Oh. 1890 or so?

ALFIE
So how do you know about the bats?

NEIGE
That’s the direction they came from, can’t you smell that?

ALFIE

Uh. What? No.

NEIGE

Eh, you can. Breathe, do you smell it?

ALFIE

What, the forest?

NEIGE

‘The forest’, eh, come on, breathe in, what do you smell?

ALFIE

Jesus, I dunno, Neige, stuff?

NEIGE

Stuff?! Puh. What is ‘stuff’?! Come on, put in a little bit of effort, pretend to give a shit at least.

ALFIE

I don’t know how to smell what direction bats came from. How the hell would I know how to do that?

NEIGE

Hmm. You are over thinking it.

ALFIE

How can I be–

NEIGE

Sh. Close your eyes and breathe in deep, just let it come.

ALFIE BREATHES IN DEEPLY

NEIGE

You see? You find the trail, non?

ALFIE

No. Not really. But I don’t know where the house is, so maybe that’s–

NEIGE

No, see, breathe deep again. Tell me what you smell.

ALFIE

Well. I can smell the trees, the dirt. I– hot metal? The car?

NEIGE

Oui. And?

ALFIE

Umm. The bats, I guess? They’re heading. Umm. Not towards the car, sort of past there, arcing nearby, towards the road we came off. The fields, I think. And there’s something else. It’s almost metallic, but not quite. Like damp earth, almost, and a gas leak, and plants on summer’s day. What is that?

NEIGE

It’s about to rain.

ALFIE

You can smell when it’s about to rain?

NEIGE

So can you, mon râleur.

ALFIE

I can. That’s. Huh.

NEIGE

What else do you smell?

ALFIE

Um. Something like dirt, but not dirt. It’s. Coal?

NEIGE

Close. Old burned wood. That is the remains of the house.

ALFIE

There’s other smells around there. Wood, but not trees. Rot, like, rotting wood.

NEIGE

Well done.

ALFIE

I smell you, too. You’re like. A bright flame, but a cold flame, like– like a flame caught in a shard of ice, like–

NEIGE

Okay, mon râleur, that is enough.

ALFIE

Sorry.

NEIGE

Let’s go.

ALFIE

Yeah, I. Sure.

ALFIE JOGS TO CATCH UP

RAIN STARTS TO FALL

NEIGE

Here.

ALFIE

Uh, yep. Sure is the ruins of a house.

NEIGE

Let me just–

PLANTS MOVE AND RUSTLE AS THE RAIN GETS PROGRESSIVELY LOUDER

NEIGE

Yeah, here.

WOOD GROANS AND THUDS SOFTLY ON THE UNDERGROWTH

NEIGE

Alfie, come on.

ALFIE

Wait.

NEIGE

What is it?

ALFIE

The bugs. I– I knew there were a lot of insects. But. There are thousands of them. Millions. More than there are people alive, I think.

NEIGE

Yes. And more in this forest than there are humans that have ever lived. It is raining. They’re running for cover. Now come on, or we’ll be soaked through.

ALFIE

Okay.

FOOTSTEPS

NEIGE

The stairs have mostly gone.

A DISTANT THUD

NEIGE

(further away)

Jump down, it is safe.

ALFIE

Uh. Okay.

SOUNDS OF MOVEMENT

A SOFT THUD

THE RAIN IS QUIETER NOW

NEIGE

There is an old hurricane lamp around here, somewhere. Eh, voila!

THE WHOOSH OF A HURRICANE LAMP LIGHTING

ALFIE

What is this place?

NEIGE

Well, when I bought the place, it was a, uh, mostly a cold store, but also, the lord who lived here, there were some holding cells, he would hold criminals down here, you know, until the law could get to them. It was a different time, non?

ALFIE

Those bars, down there. That’s what that is.

NEIGE

Oui.

ALFIE

And the chains?

NEIGE

Ah, non. Those Casper installed himself.

FOOTSTEPS

NEIGE

What do you smell?

ALFIE

Old books. Damp. Moss. Stone. Rust. Something else, too. I kind of recognise it, but I don’t know from where. And there’s blood. Lots of– lots of layers of blood. But it’s old. Very old. Human, vampire, and– and. Is that?

ALFIE GAGS

ALFIE

Them. Those things.

NEIGE

The half-made, as you call them.

ALFIE

Casper– he didn’t– he wouldn’t—

NEIGE

No, no– no. He wouldn’t. He brought them here, to hold and observe. Eventually he would put them out of their– well. Is it misery if they have no perception of their own existence?

ALFIE

I– they don’t?

NEIGE

Not as far as Casper could see. Of course, we did not have these fancy machines you have now, you know? Perhaps there was some spark of life in the brain, but Casper found one who had lots the back of his head. Only the very centre of the brain remained in tact, and still, it behaved as the same as the ones who he saw who were entirely uninjured.

ALFIE

The brain stem. That’s the bit they need. Like… Hmm.

FOOTSTEPS

ALFIE

Rotten books.

NEIGE

Not all of them are rotten, see?

THE SLIPPING WHOOSH SOUND OF A BOOK BEING PULLED OFF A SHELF.

NEIGE

Ah. My my. I thought of all these would have been lost in the fire.

ALFIE

What is— oh, it’s– that’s.

NEIGE

Moi, nu. Bite dehors et tout. I did love that robe, it was velvet. Now, that would have been lost in the fire. Even if it hadn’t been, velvet does not age well, tragically.

ALFIE

I didn’t know he could draw.

NEIGE

He was an architect, of course he could draw.

ALFIE

I– but that’s houses and shit, not–

NEIGE

Not erotic portraiture? Some skills are transferrable.

ALFIE

Clearly.

NEIGE

Hmm.

ALFIE

What’s the difference between a house and a, uh. Dick. After all.

NEIGE

Shut up, bête.

ALFIE

It’s beautiful.

(pause)

No I mean the drawing, the drawing!

NEIGE

Whatever you say. Yes. Moving on. Let’s see.

THE SLIPPING WHOOSH SOUND OF A BOOK BEING PULLED OFF A SHELF.

NEIGE

Et voila, this is what I was talking about! These are some of his, uh, etudes d’anatomie? How you say?

ALFIE

(distracted)

Anatomy studies.

PAGE TURNS

ALFIE

This is a dissection.

PAGE TURNS

ALFIE

These drawings are immaculate.

PAGE TURNS

ALFIE

How– how many of these–

NEIGE

This one, his name was Charlie.

ALFIE

Charlie.

NEIGE

Oui. He lived some towns away. Casper, he had a friend, you see, he was part of the experimentation that was happening at the turn of the last century, you know, a medical pioneer.

ALFIE

A human or a vampire?

NEIGE

(distantly)

A vampire. I never met him, That was why I had to come to check.

PAGES TURN

ALFIE

So who was Charlie, then?

NEIGE

He had, uh, consumption?

ALFIE

Tuberculosis. Yeah. I can see it in these drawings. They really are exceptionally detailed.

NEIGE

Casper and his friend met with him whilst he was alive. He agreed to let them study his remains, on one condition.

ALFIE

What was the condition?

PAGES TURN

NEIGE

You see these marks, here?

ALFIE

Bite marks. Charlie’s condition was that he wanted to be bitten?

NEIGE

No. His condition was that Casper kill him.

ALFIE

What the fuck, why?

NEIGE

It was faster, painless, and. Well. Erotic.

ALFIE

Hmm.

FOOTSTEPS, PAGES TURN

NEIGE

Ah, that was the other thing. The books have not faired well, but, let me see.

RUMMAGING, THUDDING. GLASS BOTTLES CLUNK.

NEIGE

Ah! Excellent! All of them are intact, incroyable. Look at this, mon amie, douze bouteilles de champagne. Perrier-Jouet, mon râleur. You know, last year, I hear at an auction, some idiot was selling the 1825 vintage for ten thousand euro, sacre bleu. This is 1812, oui? I know some people in Paris, they would buy this, fifty thousand euros, accun problème, voir?

(pause)

Mon râleur?

ALFIE

The smell, before. The one I didn’t recognise. It was formaldehyde.

NEIGE

Ah.

ALFIE

Duobus diebus postumis. What does that mean?

NEIGE

Two after death. It’s Latin. It’s how he marked the specimens, by how many days after death he’d preserved them.

ALFIE

Right. And these dark jars? Is that…?

NEIGE

The blood.

FOOTSTEPS. GLASS SCRAPES ON WOOD, THEN SHATTERS ON STONE.

ALFIE GASPS

ALFIE

Casper. Oh– oh my— fuck!

NEIGE

He found the blood a better preservative.

ALFIE

Oh— it’s– his blood. It’s him. That’s his blood.

NEIGE

The blood is his, yes. Breathe, mon amie. Breathe. What else do you smell?

ALFIE

Casper, um. Casper and. And a human. This– this is a heart.

NEIGE

Oui.

ALFIE

God, it looks like it might’ve been cut out this morning.

NEIGE

It was a good preservative.

ALFIE

Yeah. It really is incredible.

NEIGE

Oh, trust you to say that. I throw a hundred year old heart on the ground and you say it’s incredible. I see what he saw in you.

ALFIE

Oh yeah? What’s that?

NEIGE

A memory of himself. When he still cared about things.

ALFIE

You mean, he wasn’t always… the way he was.

NEIGE

Miserable? Oh. No. He was. But there was something bright about him, when… well. When he was working on this. Using the blood as a preservative fed into his theory that we were not alive in a traditional sense. That we were corpses, piloted by some thing suspended in our blood. This was before the birth of virology. His work in this basement was pioneering, but he shared it with hardly anyone.

ALFIE

Why?

NEIGE

Casper suspected it was a form of bacteria that could pilot a corpse. He studied the half-made most closely of all. He brought many of them here. He kept them in there.

ALFIE

And the house burned down in the 1910s?

NEIGE

Oui.

ALFIE

Did Casper set the fire?’

NEIGE

He never told me so I do not know for certain. But I suspect so, yes.

ALFIE

Wait, what are you–

NEIGE

Tastes almost fresh. I had my doubts, but he was right. Sealed in airtight vessels, the blood never sours. Incroyable.

ALFIE

Neige, it– he’s. He’s on your mouth.

NEIGE

Désolé. Do you want—

ALFIE

No! No I. I don’t want to— to.

NEIGE

It is just instinct. No shame, mon râleur. Just instinct. Act on it or don’t. No judgement either way.

ALFIE

It had some stranger’s heart in in for a hundred fucking years.

NEIGE

Charlie’s heart, no stranger. It was given willingly.

ALFIE

Yeah. Yeah, but. No. I’m not lapping his blood up off the floor. No thank you.

NEIGE

Nobody said anything about lapping it off the ground like a dog, mon râleur. You could taste it as I did, but if you want to lap. Lap. Do not feel shame for your desires.

ALFIE

I don’t– I don’t want to.

NEIGE

Okie. Bien. Hush, it’s alright.

ALFIE

So much of his blood.

NEIGE

Ah, it has been here a long time, and it did not hurt him to give this. I was here when he filled this one. Smell, see? It is old. It is very old. Breathe it.

ALFIE BREATHES DEEPLY

NEIGE

You see?

ALFIE

Yeah. It’s almost… dusty?

NEIGE

Oui, that’s it. And you see the way the jar was sealed? Wax and animal fat.

ALFIE

Yeah.

NEIGE

Okie, bien, come on.

ALFIE

How many of these are there?

NEIGE

I don’t know. I never asked how many.

ALFIE

But you visited him here?

NEIGE

Yes. It was a grand place, beautiful in the right light, though Casper did not care for it well. He would have preferred a more modest residence, I think, only he needed the basement space.

ALFIE

So that’s why he bought this place?

NEIGE

Oh, he didn’t. I did.

ALFIE

You? Why?

NEIGE

He needed somewhere to live. He was… he was a lost lamb, back then. I thought it would be good to get him out of mainland Europe. I’ve never been a fan of the states, especially not back then, and I hate travelling by boat and it is simply too far to swim.

ALFIE

I’ll say.

FOOTSTEPS

ALFIE

So he kept half-mades in here?

NEIGE

Oui.

ALFIE

Where did he get them from?

NEIGE

He didn’t make them, if that’s what you’re fretting about. I have, uh. Connections. I made it known that if vampires should come across an half-made or make one by accident, then we would take it for them, if it could be contained. If not, then–

ALFIE

Casper Novotny, vampire avenger.

NEIGE

Oui. Something like that.

ALFIE

So it wasn’t all that mysterious, why people came to him for help. Why it was him they reached out to when things were going wrong in York. He wasn’t just the guy you went to when you had a problem. It was the half-mades. He was the guy you went you had this problem, specifically. And it’s because of you.

NEIGE

Not because of me. I was trying to help.

ALFIE

Yeah, you seem to do that a lot. Emphasis on ‘trying’. Why didn’t he tell me about you, Neige?

NEIGE

I don’t know.

ALFIE

What are you hiding from me? Don’t look like that. I’m not stupid. I can tell there’s things you’re keeping from me.

NEIGE

What do you want me to say?

ALFIE

The truth.

NEIGE

Which part of it? I have been alive a long time. The truth has grown beyond what can be contained in a conversation.

ALFIE

You’re so full of shit.

NEIGE

Oh, is that what I am full of.

ALFIE

When did you meet Cas?

NEIGE

Why does it matter?

ALFIE

It just does, okay!

NEIGE

It won’t explain why he kept me from you, what relevance would I have had to your relationship, eh? What would it have meant?

ALFIE

It’s not just you, it’s this! All of this! He didn’t tell me about any of it.

NEIGE

He was trying to protect you.

ALFIE

Yeah, but in the end, I was dying anyway! All those days he sat with me, and he was so— he was so fucking miserable about the fact he was going to have to turn me, and he was so stressed about what was happening in York. He was so distant. I needed him there and he wasn’t there, at first emotionally but then he was just actually, literally gone. All I felt was that need for him to be there. And he just left. And I didn’t know him at all.

NEIGE

He was a complicated thing.

ALFIE

So?! I knew he was complicated. I knew he was a vampire and I understood that meant he was different. Obviously there was a lot I just didn’t get, but there was a lot that I did. I was consenting to be turned myself! Informed fucking consent. He knew more than he let on about being a vampire and what it meant. He acted like there was a terrible weight to what was happening and I thought there was no way for him to articulate it, but this stuff, this stuff he could have told me about. Sure there are some things you can’t learn, you can only live them, but this stuff! This he could have told me!

NEIGE

But he wouldn’t have. He wouldn’t have. That was not who he was.

ALFIE

Why?!

NEIGE

(exhausted)

It just wasn’t.

ALFIE

When. Did you meet him.

NEIGE

If you asked Casper. He would tell you it was summer. I had got news that a young vampire I had met almost a hundred years before was trying to start a revolution. Revolution was very much in the air at the time. France had been having revolutions approximately every five minutes for a century, it seemed to me. In the east, Russia seemed ripe to burst, but would not for almost fifty years. A blink for me, but slow for humans, as you reminded me the other day. Time does seem much slower when your life is so short. Each moment makes up a greater percentage of your existence, I suppose.

ALFIE

Fifty years been for the Russian revolution. So, what, some time in the 1870s?

NEIGE

1873. The year the Spanish Republic was born, and Tchaikovsky’s The Tempest debuted. If you asked Casper he would tell you we met at a bar in Berlin in 1873.

ALFIE

Right. What the fuck is that supposed to mean?

NEIGE

He had just killed his maker and abandoned his siblings, that is what he would tell you was when we met.

ALFIE

I’m not asking Casper how you met. I’m asking you, Neige.

NEIGE

Ah, you want to know when I met him?! Fine! Three months before Antoinette came to Praha, I was passing through, I went to a bar, I saw a boy, a pretty boy, smart boy, he was talking. He was lovely. He was interesting. At the end of the night, we walked to together. I leaned close, you know, the way you have seen me do. I kissed him, I drank from him, I left.

ALFIE

He– he was human. You met him when he was human.

NEIGE

He did not remember it. I didn’t see him again until after he had killed Antoinette.

ALFIE

Jesus.

NEIGE

It was strange. She was– that was how she was choosing them. In that she was not choosing them, the members of her little family. I was.

ALFIE

What do you—

NEIGE

She would smell my bite in their blood, she tracked them down. She bit them. She– she raised them wrong.

ALFIE

Fuck. Oh my god, you’re— you’re the reason. You’re the reason Cas was turned.

NEIGE

I drank from thousands of humans, mon râleur. She did not turn them all.

ALFIE

But– did. Did Casper know?

NEIGE

Oui.

ALFIE

Is that– is. Is that why he left you? Because you told him?

NEIGE

He didn’t leave. I left.

ALFIE

I— but.

NEIGE

I sought him out deliberately when I heard what he had done to Antoinette. It took months to find him, which back then was pretty fast. I followed him a little while, watched him from a distance. He was trying not to kill, but he was making an ass of it. I didn’t want to step in and commandeer him, but then one night I saw him with this girl. They were speaking together, laughing, as though he were human, as though they had made a real connection. Then, in the night, he killed her by accident. Ir was awful to see how it destroyed him. So I decided we should speak. I didn’t intend to take him as a companion, and at first, we were not like that. We spoke as friends and parted ways at the end of the night.

Over the next few years, though, he began to garner a reputation which fascinated me. Twice he had drained vampires far older than himself to put a stop to what he perceived as an injustice. It seemed in him was the real spirit of what Anoinette had claimed to strive for. A revolution amongst vampires, not one that swayed to the whims of human politics, but might have a chance at reshaping our whole way of life, the whole structure by which we interacted with the human world. A chance to raise vampires from darkness and squaller and prove we were just creatures the same as any other.

The allure of his ideals was incredible to me. In my long years, I had only been so inspired on very few occasions. The next time we met was. Well. It was far more passionate than the first.

ALFIE

But you didn’t stay together.

NEIGE

You already know this.

ALFIE

Yeah but. Why?

NEIGE

I have explained this already, too.

ALFIE

No, you haven’t.

NEIGE

I have. He loved me. I loved him. So it ended.

ALFIE

That doesn’t make sense.

NEIGE

Doesn’t it? You did meet him, didn’t you?

ALFIE

Yeah, but. He didn’t– he.

NEIGE

He left. To save you.

ALFIE

Is that what he… Neige. What actually happened between you two?

NEIGE

This place, mon coeur, is more than just his laboratory. It was his sanctuary and his prison. Every one of those poor things he held captive in that cell, he saw himself in them.

ALFIE

But he was nothing like them.

NEIGE

Not to you and I, no. He wasn’t. But to himself, based on his studies… the thing that differentiated us was the blood. In them it didn’t take, in us, it did. That was the only reason they decayed and we did not.

ALFIE

But they’re mindless. They don’t think.

NEIGE

A vampire caught on the tides of the drive will not think either. You did not think, when you killed that man.

ALFIE

But I should have.

NEIGE

Yes. But the point at which you should have thought was so as not to give me your blood beforehand. I am an ancient vampire. I can live on very little. That is why it is safe for me to feed you, ravenous little beastie that you have been. When you are new, the hunger is so raw. I do not remember it, not truly, but I have seen it in the eyes of many other new made vampires. I know it hurts. I am sorry for the pain.

ALFIE

(whispered, like he’s sharing an awful secret)

It does hurt.

NEIGE

Ah. Désolé. I did not think when I broke this glass, you have not fed since last week. You must be in agony.

ALFIE

(lying about it, and you can absolutely tell)

It’s not so bad.

NEIGE

Liar.

ALFIE

(breathless, struggling)

Is there– where can we. I think. I need.

NEIGE

(softly, gently)

Oui, there is somewhere close by. We have some hours until sunrise, there will be people we can use. What?

ALFIE

‘Use’.

NEIGE

(sarcastic again)

Better than killing them.

ALFIE

(like he might cry)

I guess.

NEIGE

Let’s go, mon râleur.

ALFIE

Yeah. I– can I. Have a moment. By myself?

NEIGE

Yes. Of course.

FOOTSTEPS. WOOD CREAKS.

MORE FOOTSTEPS, CLOSER THIS TIME. ALFIE SIGHS. FABRIC RUSTLES.

ALFIE

Casper. I’m so sorry. We’re going to come and find you, okay? You’re so wrong about yourself, you know? You’re not a bad thing. You’re not.

(pause)

I just– I do. I wonder, the taste. Now I’m a vampire. I wonder.

SWIPING SOUND. ALFIE MAKES A SMALL MOAN OF PLEASURE.

ALFIE

Different. Different to before. So different from Neige, but– I can taste. Like the ghost of the flavour of him. In all the honey and the warmth of Casper, a thin note of Neige’s icy, winter breeze. Like a cracked window in a sauna. He drank Neige’s blood, not long before he preserved this heart. I think that’s what it means.

(pause)

Do I taste like him? Like Neige, because I drink from him? Or like Cas, because he was the one who turned me?

Anyone who bit me would know I’d tasted both of them.

(pause)

Fuck, that’s so hot though. Jesus christ why is that where my head– what is wrong with me?

SOFT THUD

ALFIE

Neige?

NEIGE

Come on, we should go.

ALFIE

Don’t even—

NEIGE

I did not hear it. Let’s go.

[END]