Who am I?
What am I?
Am I a victim?
Am I a murderer?
Am I a madman?
I am all of those.
I am a puzzle with ten missing pieces

 

GENERAL THEME
Orlak is the saga of a man who has no memory of his prior existence. For him, life began when he was fleeing. Unsure of from who or from what, he just knew he had to get away. Befriended, he is glad to take the assistance. However, when he blacks out, he always finds a dead body near him, slashed as if by razor like claws.

Orlak also has hands made of metal. His real hands have been replaced. And when he discovers that his fingertips contain stiletto like razors, he can only guess with dread on who kills the bodies he wakes up with.

A man with no past and a terrifying vision of his future.

It belches smoke and fire
It swallows people up and stores them in its belly
Then spits out all of the bad meat
Disease runs rampant, but the antidote is swift
For it must protect the blood
Pure blood, black blood
This is the city
His city

Iron and steel.
Copper and brass.
live wires and flowing pipes....
They surround him.
Enfold him.
Embrace him.
Like the mother he cannot remember.

 

SYNOPSIS OUTLINE

Prologue

A violent thunderstorm is raging and a man is running (its Orlak). Nude and frantic, he is running aimlessly in the dark. He hasn’t got time to think, each corner presents a new potential danger and the noises behind him keep coming closer. He is running through a city that is at once, modern, almost futuristic yet also run down and decayed. A future gone bad. Scenes of death flash in nightmarish fashion. Is he being chased? Or is he running from the nightmares? Finally, in a flash of light, he finds himself at the iron gates of the State Center for Psychiatric Study. Lightning flashes as he raises his arms in the air, revealing his the bleeding stumps of his wrists.

One Year Later

A male nurse at the Center approaches a cell door to delivery a patient’s medication, but is shocked to find its occupant has escaped. Alarms sound and a man (Orlak) is spotted in the Center’s courtyard, attempting escape. Suddenly, a trio of men armed with guns pop up behind Orlak as well as another man in front of him and start shooting. The man in front of him is killed. Orlak watches as the man lies bleeding on the ground but the trio of men pay no remorse...it is Orlak that they’re after. Orlak turns numerous corners and heads to the sewers via an aqueduct. He has escaped.

Switch to two men who are watching this scene on monitors that are apparently stationed through out the city. One remarks that Orlak has escaped and the other casually says that everything is going according to plan.

Orlak struggles through the sewer network. He is lost, confused, and exhausted. He falls to the ground and then sees a shadow hovering over him. A man reaches out and offers him help. As the man assists Orlak, the man introduces himself as Roland and offers to take Orlak to safety, away from the men chasing him. Roland does some expository on the nature of the sewers as he climbs up to another duct. Orlak, still exhausted, is unsure if he can make the climb. Roland offers his hand out to help but Orlak refuses to take it. After repeating a few times, Roland finally receives Orlak’s hand...it is made of pure metal.

As Roland takes Orlak upwards, Orlak asks where are they going and Roland responds to the city and Roland compares it to a circus like parents used to take kids. Orlak has no recollection of a circus, or for that matter being a kid. Orlak, stumbles, then falls. He is passing out.

When Orlak wakes up, he is still in the sewer. As he looks around for Roland, he spies a body. A closer look reveals a man that has been ripped to shreds as if with razor like knives. It is Roland.

Next scene has Orlak walking through the city. It is obvious why Roland compared it to a circus. It is a cesspool of misery, a crime ridden area where there’s nothing to steal...except human life. Orlak is taunted by some and almost attacked by others and of course, he doesn’t understand why.

Switch back to the two men monitoring Orlak. They remark that the medication should be fading. Now Orlak will be even more disoriented and confused and they both agree....more dangerous.

As Orlak is looking down at his metal hands he accidentally hits a button and metal claws come out of the fingertips. Razor like stilettos, sharp enough to scratch steel, sharp enough to rip a man to shreds.

A girl (Tatiana) comes up to him. She thinks he is a guard and it becomes evident as she explains that he is wearing a city soldier’s outfit. She realizes that he is new to the city and is not a guard. As she talks to him about the city, Orlak mentions that Roland said the city was like a circus. Tatiana is a good friend of Roland and offers to help him out. As Tatiana provides for Orlak, Orlak learns a great deal about the city. It is almost two different worlds when it is night and day. In the daytime, the guards patrol the city and most of the citizens are law biding but at night-time, the lawless come out and the guards refuse to even come into the city.

During this association, Orlak and Tatiana are escaping from some criminals who mean to steal Tatiana’s rations. Orlak, who is near fainting from the exertion, forces Tatiana to leave him and escape on her own. She has no choice but to do so. Orlak passes out as the two men come to attack him.

When Orlak awakes, daylight is coming. He looks around and sees the two men, both of them bloodied and dead. He looks at his hands and sees blood covering them. Is he a murderer? A madman? Or both?

Tatiana’s boyfriend belongs to a group, who seeks excitement by staging street fights with other gangs, with deathly consequences. These gangs reflect the very nature of the city’s nightlife: dark, violent and out of control. As Orlak becomes associated with Tatiana’s gang, there is mistrust among the others against Orlak. He is accused of sleeping with Tatiana by Tatiana’s boyfriend (KYLE). And also, Orlak was the last person to have seen Roland but Roland has been missing for days. Later, when one of the members reports that Roland has been found...dead...Orlak flees. He can’t protest his innocence because he doesn’t know if he truly is innocent.

Orlak eventually makes his way back to the Center for Psychological Studies. It is from there that he escaped and he hopes that they may have some answers for the questions that plague his mind. As he sneaks in and confronts the head of the Institute, we see it is one of the men who has been monitoring his progress. The doctor agrees to fill in the information the best he can.

Orlak is not the patient’s real name. He was given that name because of the metal hands and someone remembered a movie with a character of that name who also had metal hands. Yes, it was the Institute that put on the metal hands but Orlak had come in with his hands severed and near death. It was an experiment on a man who may have been doomed to die anyway, the doctor explains. Orlak asks about his memories, did they take those away? The doctor responds that when he came in, he had no memories, even then. The questions are still unanswered.

Orlak panics when he sees one of the guards. It is the man he saw die in the opening scene, the one that was shot by his own men. Now Orlak realizes that something isn’t right. Orlak escapes from the center and heads back into the city.

As he shuffles through the city lost in his thoughts, he is confronted by gang members who drag him into a warehouse arena, where a street fight is being staged. Against his will, he is tossed into a caged ring where he is facing Kyle. The fight begins and as Orlak takes punches, he begins to black out. The fight flashes like broken images and the scene fades as Orlak passes out.

The story closes with Orlak in a dingy room, looking out a window. How he got here, he is uncertain. We see neon flashing through the ripped shades. Orlak realizes that he has no past and can only build a future. If he could only predict this future, he could rest easier.

As he lies down in bed, he reaches under the bed and binds his hands together with a large chain. Tatiana comes in from an adjoining room and takes the key from him. She bends down and gives him a kiss on the forehead. As she leaves, she looks back and tells him to search for himself in his dreams and she closes the door behind her.

Orlak get ups and again looks out the window, through the city’s haze, he looks at the flashing neon sign, which reads, "Palms Read," except the "a" is shorted out, mocking and at the same time, beckoning Orlak to the palm reader in side. Orlak heads down and across the street to have his palms read. The gypsy is shocked at the site of his hands and chains. She picks the lock and goes through the motions of reading his palms. Orlak becomes irritated he realizes the gypsy is a scam and again begins to fade out. A storm begins and between the flashes of lightning, images start racing through Orlak’s mind. Orlak dashes out of the palm reader’s shop and runs wildly into the streets. Behind him through the window, we see the gypsy collapsed at the table, dead.

Orlak comes to the realization that he has no control over these artificial hands given him and proceeds to beat them wildly against a wall, smashing and destroying their construction. Now totally mad, he runs through the city, out of control, images racing in his mind.

He has no time to think, each corner presenting danger and the noises behind him keep coming closer. Scenes of death flash in nightmarish fashion. Is he being chased? Or is he running from the nightmares?

Images of bodies falling with red slashes cutting across. Images of metal hands beating against brick walls. Images of steel fingers prying at the twisted and gleaming hands.

Finally, in a flash of light, he finds himself at the iron gates of the State Center for Psychiatric Study. Lightning flashes as he raises his arms in the air, revealing his the bleeding stumps of his wrists. The entire scene turns red.... blood red.