Radiance

From the Personal Reels of Percival Alfred Unck

[SEVERIN UNCK stands amid a tangle of cables on the set of The Abduction of Proserpine. Vampire extras mill around her, touching up their makeup, chatting, taking their teeth out to smoke. She is very small, perhaps four or five. She wears a black dress with a black bow and black stockings. Her face is painted deathly white. She looks up at a demonic ice dragon with sword whiskers and icicle teeth, a massive puppet managed by the renowned TALMADGE BRACE and his team. She does not see her Uncle Madge pulling on the puppet’s works. It towers over her. She stares at its tinfoil eyes intently, quietly, hands clasped behind her back. She rocks up on her toes.]

SEVERIN

Did you eat that big old city all up?

[The ice dragon nods solemnly. His lines creak.]

SEVERIN

What a bad thing you are. You ought to be punished.

[The ice dragon nods again. TALMADGE works his lines and pulleys just out of frame, slumping the creature’s snow-puff shoulders in deep shame. He can barely suppress his amusement.]

SEVERIN

Why did you do it? If you were really so keen, I should think you’d have waited till the city fattened up a bit. It couldn’t have filled you up! It was only little.

[TALMADGE cannot answer; the beast will never have a voice, so he had no reason to devise one to match its vast crinoline body.]

SEVERIN

Daddy says the settlers dug too deep and woke the ancient heart of Pluto. But you have wet glue on your nose, so I don’t think you are the ancient heart of Pluto.

[The ice dragon shakes with TALMADGE’S silent laughter. Severin reaches up and wipes away the glue with her thumb. She whispers into the puppet’s huge, glitter-spackled nostril.]

SEVERIN

I forgive you. I get hungry, too.