The Bloodless Stair
Key art
Filed beside the screening
The picture is The Bloodless Stair.
Scenario
2:57 · 16:9
A well of white stairs drops through the house, lit from below, so each tread seems to float. High windows hold the last daylight. A woman climbs with a sealed letter in one hand and a photograph of this same stair in the other. Lamps along the rail are already lit. Her shoes make no mark on the pale stone. The seal on the letter is intact, wax smooth, no thumb yet pressed to break it. The photograph shows the stair and a pale figure on a step. She does not hurry. The well of stairs gives back her footsteps as almost nothing.
A pale figure waits higher, at the turn. It does not come down. Its face is toward the wall. The lamps between the woman and the figure burn at the same small size. She climbs one flight. The figure remains one flight above. She stops on a landing and holds the photograph up. The paper figure and the waiting figure do not share a step yet. Minutes pass as her breath and as the daylight in the high windows thinning without becoming night. She does not call up the well. The figure does not call down.
She climbs. The figure remains one flight above. She climbs again. The distance remains. At a lamp she holds the photograph beside the stone. In the picture the pale figure stands on the step she occupies now. She breaks the seal. The page carries one line. She does not read it out. The paper trembles once and goes still. The line is ink and then, while she holds it, the ink thins. It does not vanish. It becomes a mark she could still see if she brought it closer, and she does not. The thinning follows the breaking of the seal. The photograph in her other hand still shows the figure on her step.
The figure descends, passes her without sound, face turned to the wall, and continues down. She looks up and finds herself on a higher landing than her last step earned. The photograph shows empty marble. Her shoes still make no mark. The lamps below, one and then the next, dim to match the thinning daylight, a downward order, and the lamp beside her stays as it was. She does not follow the figure down. She does not open the letter further. The one line stays faint and unread aloud.
She stays. Below, the pale figure stops at the lowest lamp. The last light in the windows thins across the stone. The photograph of empty marble does not develop a new figure. The faint line on the page does not darken back into a sentence she is willing to speak.
Her hand lowers the faint page to her side. The wax of the broken seal stays stuck to the paper and does not fall onto the marble. The pale figure at the lowest lamp does not climb again. Daylight continues to thin and does not return up the well. The higher landing under her shoes is solid. The photograph of empty marble bends a little in her fingers and still shows no one on the stair.