Forsaken [Scene 1]

A radio play written with Pasha

EXT. CHURCHYARD - NIGHT
Church bell rings out seven o'clock. Owl hoots in the distance. Door closes. Rustling from bushes.

PRIEST
(nervous)
Who's there?

Footsteps.

PRIEST
(business-like)
Have you come for confession? I was about to lock up.

VAMPIRE
(sombre)
I haven't come for confession.

PRIEST
You're him. The vampire.

VAMPIRE
Good guess.

PRIEST
I knew you'd come. All those disappearances. The newspapers said it was just superstition, but I knew. I knew you'd come.

VAMPIRE
And yet you don't have your little crucifix

PRIEST
I couldn't find it.

VAMPIRE
How careless of you

Vampire produces the crucifix. Sizzle as it burns his hand.

PRIEST
(surprised)
You entered the Church?

VAMPIRE
Didn't need to. One of your flock was only too happy to do the job for me. The promise of eternal life is awfully good at persuading people.

PRIEST
Yours is a half-life.

VAMPIRE
Better than death

PRIEST
Is it? Never walking in the sunlight? Feeding off the life-force of others, a creature of sin? You've abandoned God.

VAMPIRE
That's one reading

PRIEST
What do you mean?

VAMPIRE
Why did your precious God allow me to be bitten? Why did he create vampires at all? Seems to me, it was He who did all the abandoning.

PRIEST
You'd fit right into my congregation

VAMPIRE
What's that, a joke? Don't you know I'm about to kill you, boy?

PRIEST
I'm twice your age

VAMPIRE
Wrong again. I've seen more plagues and famines than you can imagine. Worst of all, I saw your man.

PRIEST
Who?

VAMPIRE
The one you all obsess over.