KILLING ON CARNIVAL ROW Written by Travis Beacham No portion of this script may be performed, reproduced, or used by any means, or quoted or published in any medium without the prior written consent of Kopelson Entertainment. July 22, 2005 © 2005 KOPELSON ENTERTAINMENT All Rights ReservedEXT. SEWER TUNNEL -- NIGHT An archway at the end of an alley. Broken and bent long ago, crusted with moss. A trickle of water cuts through. A SCREAM from within. Laboured BREATHING, the rapid SPLISH SPLASH of footfalls. AISLING COBWEB, beautiful and intense, bursts from the tunnel into the narrow alley. Her body, petite, young, and frail, tense with fear. From her back’ sprout a pair of large moth-like wings, fragile, intricate, frayed at the edges. Aisling Cobweb is a faerie. and she's running for her life. she catches her tattered skixt on metal grating and stumbles face first. She turns, panicked. In the darkness, distant at first, an eerie WAIL. Her eyes widen. Aisling, flexes her wings, and takes to THE AIR with frantic agility. She flies, weaving between narrow alleys, dodging gas lanterns and’ sagging clothes-lines. Her papery wings carry her. swerving around tight corners. She slams into the side of a steep inclined ROOF where she scrambles for a foothold on the. slate shingles. A black clawed hand grabs’ her ankle. Shé Kicks free and makes it to the pinnacle of the roof. She leaps, flaps her wings, and climbs again into THE NIGHT SKY Above the rooftops. Ahead of her, through the thick billowing fog, she sees the obscure shape of a tower bridge. She heads for the nearest TOWER and alights at the top between two gargoyles. Wincing, she stretches her wings. She hugs her knees and shivers.2. She cautiously looks out over the city, gas lights diffused through the thick night fog. She looks down towards the river. No sign of her pursuer. No sound except the river LAPPING against the moorings of the bridge far below and nearby doves COOING softly. In a fluttering whirlwind, the doves suddenly scatter. Aisling looks around. She dares not breath: Suddenly, A DARK SHAPE swoops in and snatches her from her Perch. Aisling's piercing screams echo in the night as the struggling pair melts into the murky fog. Rasping HISSES, the CRACKING of bones, and a ravenous wet SUCKING noise. Her screams dwindle to a hoarsed MOAN. Like a rag doll, Aisling falls through the fog, limp, her wings raggedly shorn from her body. She lands in ‘THE RIVER with a sickening SLAP. Her violated corpse floats face down, drifting with the current, trailing a sparkling rainbow viscus of faerie blood, Somewhere in the distance, a FOGHORN sounds. TO BLACK EXT. THE BURGUE (AERIAL VIEW) -- MORNING An urban hodgepodge of crumbling rooftops, grimy belfries, and smoke-stained spires. Chimneys and smokestacks pump towers of soot into a stone gray sky. CARD OVER: "City of the Burgue" PHILOSTRATE (V.0.) The Burgue: city of soot and sorcery, city of humans and monsters, of faerie whores and drug peddling dwarves. (NOTE: Labels and borders show various zones of the city as each area is introduced.) PHILOSTRATE (V.0.) (CONT'D) Im the East, you have Argyle Heights, the academic district. In the North, The Docklands, center of indust: and ‘shipping, where the Selkies, the seal folk, work the barges. (MORE)