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:/// Beautiful / one

 
INTERIOR - NIGHT

 
A giant, hairy nostril repeatedly tries and fails to inhale a sleek, shiny dolphin.

 
Or rather, it's just a CLOSE-UP of an ordinary nostril, and the 'dolphin' is a silver pendant, pinned lengthwise against every sucked breath of the dusky nare. It's like the little aquatic figure is desperate to swim free, but some decrepit olfactory organ is just sucking everything away into a vortex that won't let it leap away.

 
But there is something playful about it. A pendant doesn't just hang over a nostril. Someone is hanging it there. Someone with a pale, slender hand, dangling it, then toying with it... until finally, the dolphin stops up the snorer's nose and sticks there, waking him with a suffocated start.

 
The dolphiniste laughs lightly, offscreen, and it's a sound that tickles the air. ONE blinks the sleep from his eyes, taking in TWO's delightfully attractive face, and smiles.
 

 
They're in bed together, ONE under the bed sheet and TWO lying on top, still in her street clothes. TWO begins to pull at ONE's side of the bed sheet, kissing what she discovers of his body as she goes. She has kissed all the way down to his crotch by the time he is fully aware of what's going on.
 

 
TWO draws the bed sheet all the way back over ONE's head, as if covering a corpse.
 

 
TWO gets up off the bed and walks over to the cabinet in the adjoining bathroom, She opens and finds in the cabinet a pack of condoms (brand: LOVE BAGS). Opens that as well, and pulls out all the condoms — she pulls out every single one, unspooled in a series of strips of little plastic packets.

 
Now she unzips her purse while placing it on the sink. Stuffs all the loose strips of condoms safely in the purse, and then she fetches from inside a SECOND pack of LOVE BAGS. She opens that, and then pulls all the condoms out of this one as well, which leaves both empty packs sitting next to each other, where we can see clearly now that they're not quite identical: where the original pack reads 'REGULAR' in a normal font, the new pack from the purse reads 'EXTRA LARGE' in a boldfaced font.

 
TWO starts carefully folding each strip of extra-large LOVE BAGS and inserting them into the empty pack once occupied by the regular-sized LOVE BAGS. She does this one at a time, making sure they don't look messed with.
 

 
Finished now, she replaces the pack exactly where it was in the kitchen cabinet, and closing it, brings her reflection into view. She raises a hand to tidy her locks, but pauses when she realises they're already perfect.

 
The silver dolphin rests supine against TWO's collarbone as she affixes it back around her neck.

 
The bed sheet still draped like a death shroud over his face, ONE finally musters the will to peek above it. He has a peculiar look on his face. I think you know the one I mean.
 

 
TWO steps out without another word, leaving ONE to stare at the closed kitchen cabinet in dismay.

 
EXTERIOR - NIGHT

 
FADE IN on Granville Street as TWO's stiletto heels tap the sidewalk in time with a snare drum on the '90s alt-rock soundtrack (plenty of tracks to choose from), which should be prominent here. The camera always follows and centres on her, dressed to the nines and strutting her stuff, but the background edits itself (with jump cuts) of everything but the men. So male after male of the species attends her in the cuts, each with some kind of opening line or stare — on the street, in night clubs, even in line-ups for the washroom — but most of them are out of focus and at no more than background volume on the soundtrack, because she is the star here, not them. We don't even need to see most of their faces: only their bodies. Objectify them.

 
On first glance, the scene may appear to be victimising for a woman, but not this woman. In the observation of her gait, her mannerisms, and the expressions on her face, it should be clear that she does not perceive herself as the potential prey in this scene but rather vice versa: she is avariciously engaged in an act of sexual predation in her own right. She stalks Vancouver's main strip like it's her personal erotic stable, maintaining the most aristocratic poise at all times, as if no one could so much as speak to her without being whipped for it. Along the way, she considers and rejects men of every physical and ethnic description you'd expect to find in Vancouver, shutting each one down with no more than a wave or an icy look. Room should be made here for a few reaction shots of some of these men's wives and partners, appalled by their husbands' or boyfriends' poor neck control in the presence of this vixen queen.

 
Finally, she encounters a man she chooses NOT to shut down: a long, slender, Persian-looking type, with a full head of gorgeous, wavy black hair, muscular and dressed in jeans with a black T-shirt and a gold chain around his neck. She looks him up and down a couple of times. I'll call him, 'THREE'.
 

 
TWO raises her cel phone to him. We might think she's going to take a picture, until he raises his too. Wordlessly, they tap their cels together. On TWO's cel, THREE's photo appears - a professional headshot - surrounding by his vital statistics. At the bottom there is a crypto payment address, but it's greyed out and stamped NOT FOR SALE. Next to the stamp is a list of his sexual preferences and practices — which may involve a few kinks (actor's choice, perhaps), but nothing too shocking. Opposite, THREE is also inspecting TWO's sexual credentials via his own crypto tap-that app. Although we can't see TWO's details, THREE can, and he seems a little bit uncomfortable with what he sees.
 

 
THREE remains silent through this and seems increasingly put off by it. Finally, he raises his hands.
 

 
This stops THREE short.
 

 
TWO wears a cherubic grin for this. THREE just stares her down. His nostrils flare. The whole bit. There might as well be steam coming out his ears. He says nothing. Neither does she. They just lock eyes for a long, tension-filled beat.

 
INTERIOR - NIGHT

 
THREE's head hits the headboard of a bed as TWO slaps him across the face. Then again, harder. Then she kisses him deeply, fervent. They are in a cheap motel bedroom. As soon as the kiss breaks, it becomes clear that they're in mid-fuck already, with her on top. Probably they've been fucking for some time.

 
TWO strikes him again, with a closed fist this time, bashing his head against the headboard. She attempts to rain more blows on him, but he catches her arms and holds them still as he bucks up into her, trying to finish before she knocks him unconscious. This isn't sexy and should not be portrayed as such. It should feel more like watching a mugging, or a road accident.

 
TWO finally manages to yank her arms away from his grasp with a resentful tug, but does not recommence striking him. Instead, she starts waving her arms above her head as she rides him cowgirl, as if on a rollercoaster. It should look a bit strange. Not unsexy exactly but rather... what's her actual deal?
 

 
Now TWO gets a panic in her eye, like she's about to be hit by a train.
 

 
Extending her arms upward in a final lunge, TWO finally reaches what she's been stretching for: the makeshift overhead lamp's brown power cable, hanging from the ceiling in loops. She finally snags one of the loops with a finger, using it to pull the whole assembly down, lamp and all, until the cord is around THREE's neck.
 

 
She punches him in the stomach as hard as she can, and as he exhales, cinches the cord tight around neck, and hangs hard as he tries to scream out but it's hopelessly strangled because she has done the job right, and she is hanging off his neck by that cord, pulling it as tight as she can, throughout his thrashing, which causes the still-powered overhead lamp to tumble further, off the bed, sending light and shadow wheeling expressionistically around the room, the only projection of her inner turmoil as her body remains tensed absolutely in its slow killing stroke, her face a mask of exertion, until finally... he dies.

 
And in his death throes, his legs begin to twitch and spasm — just like in the movies. [In reality, cadaveric spasm is unusual; nevertheless, it happens very convincingly in this scene.]
 

 
And TWO experiences what should play like the most powerful orgasm ever put to film, hunched over THREE's shuddering, spastic corpse. It takes at least a full minute of screen time for this disconcerting climax to play out to the point where TWO regains her senses again, and flops out of her dead saddle, sweaty and spent.
 

 
THREE's body lies motionless. She looks over at it as if expecting a reacion.
 

 
She kicks at the carcass, as if it's merely asleep.
 

 
She smiles widely now, recalling his final words...
 

 
...and breaks out laughing. And laughing. And laughing. Louder and louder come the peals of mirth...
 

 
...until TWO begins to turn red, pausing just long enough to repeat the 'joke'...
 

 
...before breaking out into gales once again. The sun is rising.

 
BEGIN MAIN TITLES.

 
B E A U T I F U L

 
All the main titles, including the one above, should be SUPERIMPOSED over a slow-dissolving series of purely window-lit shots of our conventionally attractive anti-heroine, toying with her blonde locks and giggling girlishly as she lounges in bed, long legs crossing and uncrossing in her diaphanous nightgown that glows ever so translucently in the breaking dawn like some angelic aura, even as she and the camera — perhaps the world? — entirely ignore the murder victim's corpse that only from memory can we deduce must still be right next to her, on the bed, lying in shadow...

 
Done right, this sequence should produce the most intensely visual feeling of dramatic irony. Despite her apparent sweetness to the eye, TWO is a stone cold serial killer. Not a victim. Not a symbol. Not a symptom. Just a lone predator who abuses the bountiful privileges accorded to the 'beautiful' to wound and bring down her preferred type of prey animal — Homo sapiens — and then to kill that animal. And this will be the tale of her origin and apprehension.