Cut To Black Orchid Promotional Clip—2018
The screen fills with a breathtaking new mural. Nemesis—the Greek goddess of retribution, balance, and divine justice—holds her scales aloft with one hand, like a Lady Justice with big, feathered wings. In her other hand she wields a sword.
Her body is swathed in a white robe trimmed with gold. Her long wavy hair fans out behind her, rising like wind into clouds. She watches Narcissuskneeling at the edge of a still-surfaced pond. Her face is calm, her features serene. She radiates a sense of patience. And of beauty watching decay.
Narcissus’s face is illuminated by the faint shimmer of his own beautiful reflection staring up at him from the water. The reflection seems more alive than Narcissus himself. His posture is tender yet obsessive as he touches the surface with his fingertips. Tenderly. Lovingly. His eyes are hollow with longing. His body is emaciated. He’s ensnared by his own vanity. Wasting away from it. Flowers—narcissi, pale and ghostlike—grow from under his feet and spread out from him in a live carpet. They grow into the water. It appears as though the narcissi are feeding on his essence, drawing the life from him for their own sustenance.
VO—Trinity Scott
“Nemesis was the goddess of retribution and restoring divine balance. She punished hubris. Her role in Greek mythology was to ensure no one became too arrogant, and no one escaped wrongdoing. She maintained harmony by dooming those who overstepped their boundaries—kings who dared defy the gods, mortals who bragged excessively of beauty or power, or those who disturbed the equilibrium of the world or society. Unlike the Furies, who are wild tormentors unleashed and unstoppable, Nemesis possessed patience, and would simply, inevitably, give what was due.
“In the muralReflections of Arrogance, Goddess Nemesis allows Narcissus to truly see himself, and the truth is his undoing.
“It’s his end.
“It was to this place in the bowels of theBlack Orchidthat Helen Harrington directed the forensic dive team.
“It was here she believed they’d find justice done.”
Underwater. INT:Black OrchidWreck
One of the divers points to something in the silt below the decaying mural, its paint peeling in ribbons that wave with the current.
The camera moves closer. Disturbed silt drifts upward, glittering through the beams of light.
A strip of pale, ghostly fabric sways slowly in water disturbed by the divers.
The camera zooms in on the fabric. The beams converge on the area.
More of the same fabric drapes a skeleton. Above it is a skull. White hair floats around the skull in a fan laced with seagrass. The facial bones have been colonized by algae and tiny crustaceans that scurry from the brightness and crawl into the eye sockets and between the rows of teeth.
Looped around the brow of the skull is a band that holds a fragment of black cloth.
The camera pans lower.
Silt collects in pockets on the fabric. Light gleams on the waxy sheen of adipocere—flesh turned hard and soap-like by the cold sea.
Near a skeletal hand lies a black cane so thickly layered in varnish that the exotic patterns of dragons and orchids and serpents beneath are still visible.
The beams shift, revealing a second body.
The camera jerks slightly as the diver is startled—a skull stares back, hollow eye sockets still framed by a pair of spectacles. Barnacles crust the cheekbone.
The camera moves lower. A loose bow tie hangs around the neck. Shreds of a suit cling to bones. At the feet—men’s shoes, preserved like relics.
The lead diver reaches into the silt and lifts something free. A puff of sediment clouds the water. As the cloud begins to settle, it reveals a clutch purse.
The diamantés on the clutch are dulled and furred with marine growth.
The second diver signals that he’s uncovered something else.
As the debris cloud settles once more, and motes rise eerily up into the shafts of light, the camera shows the shape of the injector pen.
Another pen is found near the suited body. Followed by a mask.
The camera draws close as the diver brushes away the algae.
The mask of Hermes gazes back at them—its mouth curved into a smile on one side that shifts into a sneer on the other.
