“To me Tom and Brad were normal. I didn’t treated them like super stars, but I thought:” I’m an actor too". I didn’t feel inferior to them and that was good. As Claudia I had to have that power… They were so sweet. They treated me like a Princess. They were super protective and nice with me. Tom was lovely. He put a Christmas tree in my bedroom and CD players and video games, and he always made sure that I wasn’t scared in every scene we filmed. He spoiled me. They both did.“
It’s here! After a year and a half of hard work, we are both so excited to finally share our film with you. Thank you all for your support and encouragement – this film means the world to us, and your kindness and enthusiasm has made this journey all the more meaningful. It is our great pleasure to share with you this labor of love, and we hope with all our hearts that you enjoy watching it as much as we did making it.
(Prompts from this list! Feel free to send me some!)
OH BOY, RAPH. LOOK WHAT YOU WENT AND DID.
142: “It’s just your imagination.”
Shaky fingers are clawing at the pale arms, and the whole body is curling in on itself, and there’s sweat and blood, and Armand feels something heavy sinking inside when he realizes it’s familiar.
Blonde hair this time, and the palpable, overpowering smell of human fear filling the room. He takes a step back, away, watching the way the shoulders hunch, the way the vertebrae bulge out like spikes.
“They’re in my skin, Armand,” he’s crying, and scratching, and his pathetic human nails are only raising the most fragile little white lines. Barely breaking the skin.
His throat feels dry and he takes another step back. “It’s just your imagination,” he mumbles.
And he’s cold suddenly, even in the Florida heat. In the air so humid and heavy that it enfolds you. He feels the chill and remembers the way the drafts used to cut through the tower, and how it would hover around stones as if they were ice.
His hands had still been bloody, and his forehead pressed to the heavy wood door. Whimpering beyond it, and the pitiable wet thump as he’d attempted to pound at it without the use of fists.
“Armand,” gasping and screaming. “Please, please, they’re crawling all over me.”
Eleni’s hand, gentle and loving on his back as he froze there.
It’s just your imagination.
The sun would be up. He’d backed away from the heavy tower door, barred and sealed like a tomb. Left him there where he’d be safe from the dawn.
But this.
Daniel’s chest heaving, bones contorted into rigid, unnatural lines. And Armand had to go now.
Armand could feel the extra energy as he came through the carriageway into the back garden. Not completely sure what it was, only that he could sense them moving in the flat, and there was something sweet and playful and innocent infused in it, thrumming beneath the presence itself. Lestat was home, he could feel that as well, and Louis. Their energies were different from each other, each palpable and distinct. Lestat felt bold and loud and vivid, Louis soft and sweet and comforting. Lestat was a popping champagne bottle, the splatter of paint on a Pollock canvas, a firework in the night sky. Louis was a gentle hand on your back, reassuring whisper in your ear, the slow and seductive pull of dawn.
I’m here, he told them as he ascended the stairs. He wondered if he should let himself inside, or knock, but instead put his hands in his pockets and waited.
But then Lestat’s face was in the window, his eyes glittery and excited, skin darkened by the recent trip to the sun. The door opened on its own, Lestat’s doing, and it was instantly obvious that he’d chosen to use his mind because his hands were full.
Before he could speak, Lestat extended one arm out, in his hand a single German Shepherd puppy. Three others wiggled against his chest and he cooed in French at them. “Here,” he said, and thrust the one into Armand’s chest. Armand grabbed it instinctively, somewhat bewildered but immediately charmed by the warmth and purity radiating from the creature. “I named this one Armand.”
The spike of anger and reflexive venomous response that usually came out in these moments were quelled by the gentle life in his hands, and he looked away from Lestat to stare at it. It was kicking its legs and squirming but he gave it a little scratch behind its ear to calm it down. It stopped moving and looked at him, eyes so shiny and black, and responded by licking his face. Armand ducked his head so that Lestat wouldn’t see his smile.
“Come inside, I want to close the door. Don’t let them out,” Lestat said, and backed away to make space.
He saw Louis then, when he cleared the doorway, still snuggling his namesake to his chest. Sitting cross-legged on the velvet couch, Mojo curled up beside him, a solid black puppy in his hands. He was scratching its ears and smiling at it and…
Strange ache in his chest, because he’d never seen that look on Louis’s face before.
“Where did all these puppies come from?” he asked. Louis looked up at him as if waking from a trance, like he’d been too absorbed to even notice Armand had arrived.
“Turns out Mojo is a lady,” Lestat said. He plopped down on the floor in the center of the room and took turns giving each puppy pats on their heads. They climbed on his legs and chewed on his shirt.
He held his puppy away from his face to inspect it again. It tilted its head at him and whined, and… strange ache again as he realized how unusual it was, and how he was straining to remember last time he’d held an animal this close. At home, in Kiev. They could never keep pets in Venice. He felt cold all over for a moment before pulling it to his chest again, feeling its warm little body settling against him and hearing the fluttery little heartbeat.
“What are you going to do with them?”
Lestat shrugged and picked one up, rubbing his face against its chubby, furry belly.
“Why don’t you give one to Daniel? Maybe you can win him back.”
Lost Photographs from Daniel’s Missing Luggage, or,
Glimpses of an Unlife
I’m taking stupid photos at SFO when all the televisions flash red for breaking news. Jeez, I think, another bombing or political scandal. We’re being warned about graphic footage. Huh. New York’s getting two more inches of snow. Well, that sucks.
I must be dreaming, because his face—that’s Armand’s face on the screen!
This is wrong.
The footage is shaky and I can feel the panic threading its way through my body as I watch, helpless, when he screams something at the plaza. Even though I don’t know what’s going on, I know it’s him. It’s the way his hair curls when there’s snow on it, and it’s when—it’s wh—
New York’s getting two more inches of snow and, and they won’t—everyone is staring at me. Everyone, and they—it’s just two more inches of snow in New York. Have I fucked up? Did someone see my fangs—New York’s getting two more inches of snow and the footage keeps looping. I’m being yanked backwards and someone’s shoved me onto my knees and the floor slams into my jaw and suddenly I hear screaming.
It’s me. I’m screaming. Daniel Molloy is now screaming at Gate 7. Daniel Molloy is now screaming at Gate 7. They’re cuffing me and I can’t—
“FUCKING—TURN IT OFF!” I scream at them in ugly, gulping sobs, and someone gags me with a leather strap and one of them figures it out and tries to call on his walkie talkie but they won’t turn me away I can’t look away that’s not what he’s supposed to look like he doesn’t like the cold but now he’s burning.