TREATMENT

FORMAT & TONE

Feature film. Character-driven crime drama. 123 pages.

DRINK ZOMBIE PISS operates in the space between early Cassavetes and the Safdies—intimate, behavioral filmmaking where every frame is soaked in the sweat of people making terrible decisions for understandable reasons. The tone is not a thriller. It is not noir. It is the sound of three lives caving in at slightly different speeds. The humor, when it appears, is born from proximity to disaster: a man drinking from a cemetery faucet, a sex worker Googling whether her friend got a yeast infection from oral sex, a grant writer searching "heroin price per brick" on his work laptop. The violence, when it arrives, is clumsy, stupid, and real. Nobody looks cool holding a gun. Nobody says the right thing. The film's structure is its argument: we open on a man being shot, then spend the next two hours learning how an ordinary life accumulates enough small compromises to arrive at a cemetery with a loaded weapon and no good reason to be there.

The screenplay employs a flash-forward framework. The first six pages deliver the ending—Laurent shot, Prunella screaming, Matéo frozen—then snap back two days to show how each character's separate desperation braided into a single catastrophic afternoon. The effect is dramatic irony operating as dread. We know where this is going. We watch them not know.

SETTING

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Winter. The story moves through the institutional beige of nonprofit offices, the fluorescent hum of credit unions and hospital rooms, the dim domesticity of kitchens where married couples talk past each other, and the bleak economy of motel rooms and walk-up apartments where money is always the first and last subject. The city is not romanticized. It is a place where people commute, eat Chinese takeout, and stare at ceilings. The cemetery—Riverside Memorial Park—is the story's only outdoor set piece, and its quietness is the point. It is the kind of place where you can do something terrible, and no one will hear it. The landscape does not judge. It simply absorbs.

CHARACTERS

LAURENT OSBERT BEAUMONT (51): A grant writer at a nonprofit in Pittsburgh. Laurent is neatly dressed, composed, precise—the kind of man who looks like he belongs anywhere but doesn't feel it. He has spent six years managing federal funding for a trauma-informed youth outreach program, and during that time, he redirected $187,400 in grant funds to cover a payroll shortfall. The money sat in the wrong account for seventy-two hours. He moved it back. He assumed no one would notice. A routine Year Six audit is now two weeks away, and his compliance officer has made the math explicit: if the correction doesn't land clean before the auditors arrive, it becomes a question of intent. Laurent's marriage to Petra has gone cold. He deflects her intimacy, avoids his son's school meetings, and retreats into a study where a manuscript he wrote years ago sits in a drawer he can no longer open. He is a man who has spent his adult life performing competence, and the performance is now the only thing left. When Matéo calls asking for help with a drug deal, Laurent says no. Then he says one drink. Then he's in the car. Then he's loading a gun at six in the morning. Laurent's arc is not a fall from grace. It is the revelation that the grace was never real.

PRUNELLA SAMANTHA SALT (32): A sex worker in Pittsburgh, behind on rent, staring at an eviction notice, and running out of time. Prunella is smart, blunt, and exhausted in the way someone who has been solving problems alone since before she was ready would be. She has a small circle—Liora, a transgender woman and her closest friend; Spitlick, a twitchy acquaintance—but no safety net. During a routine appointment with a client named Gaufrid, she discovers a duffel bag of heroin bricks in his kitchen. She steals two. It is not a plan. It is a reflex—the mathematics of desperation calculated in real time. Prunella knows the theft will be discovered. She knows Gaufrid is dangerous. She goes to Matéo because he's the only person she knows who knows the kind of people who buy what she's stolen. Prunella is the engine of the story's plot, but she is not its villain. She is a woman who reached into a bag and pulled out the rest of her life.

MATÉO LUCIEN PASCAL (50): Laurent's high school friend and Prunella's regular client. Matéo is lonely, eager to matter, and constitutionally unable to say no when someone needs him. He lives alone in a cramped house, eats cold takeout standing at the counter, and has the kind of nervous energy that reads as both endearing and unreliable. His hands shake. He locks the deadbolts twice. He agrees to sell stolen heroin before he's finished processing the request. Matéo is not a criminal. He is a man whose desire to be needed has overridden every instinct telling him to walk away. He knows a buyer—Ramón—because Matéo is the kind of person who accumulates connections without ever understanding what they cost. He calls Laurent because he can't do it alone, and because Laurent is the only person in his life whose presence makes him feel like a situation is manageable. Matéo is the connective tissue of the story, the person who pulls all three protagonists into the same car and drives them to the cemetery. His disappearance at the end is not dramatic. It is the silence of a man who has nothing left to say.

PETRA ROSEMARY BEAUMONT (47): Laurent's wife. Put-together, observant, and accustomed to managing disappointment without comment. Petra is not a passive figure. She is a woman who has been reading the silences in her marriage for years, and the audit of Laurent's life she conducts—the bank statements, the missing money, the calls that don't add up—is more thorough and more devastating than anything the federal government will produce. She does not confront Laurent. She presents the evidence and tells him she will work with whatever he gives her. The implication is surgical: she already knows, and she is offering him one chance to match her version of reality. He doesn't take it.

GAUFRID DE VEEND (40s): The man Prunella stole from. Gaufrid presents as respectable—a clean condo, a dress shirt, an unhurried manner—but the basement he prepares tells a different story: a metal chair bolted to the floor, a drain beneath it, zip ties, duct tape, a mattress with no sheets. He photographs it like documentation. Gaufrid does not rage when he discovers the missing bricks. He makes a phone call, says "today," and finishes his coffee. His pursuit of Prunella is patient and methodical, ending off-screen. We learn of her death through detectives arriving at Matéo's door.

RAMÓN ALEJANDRO FEO (43): The buyer. A calm, understated drug dealer whose quiet confidence and precise appearance make him far more dangerous than flashier men. Ramón arrives at the cemetery in a lowered Honda Accord with his associate, Basilio. He inspects the heroin. He accepts it. Then he pulls a gun, takes it without paying, and walks away. When Laurent draws on him, Ramón shoots him without hesitation. The transaction was never going to be fair. Ramón knew that. Laurent didn't.

STORY

The film opens in a cemetery on a gray afternoon.

Laurent Beaumont stands beside his black Lexus SUV with his old high school friend, Matéo Pascal. Inside the SUV, Prunella Salt sits in the passenger seat, pale and jittery, watching the road. No one speaks. Laurent walks to a standalone faucet near the graves—rusted pipe, spigot, no sink—and drinks. Matéo watches, uneasy. "That's cemetery water." Laurent doesn't care. Matéo calls it zombie piss. Laurent drinks again.

A blacked-out Honda Accord creeps into the cemetery. Ramón and his associate Basilio step out. Laurent meets Ramón between the headstones. He produces a brick of heroin from a leather pouch. Ramón inspects it. Nods. Then reaches under his jacket and pulls a gun. He takes the heroin and turns to leave. Laurent, in a moment of foolish resolve, pulls a gun of his own. His hand shakes. He fires. Misses. Ramón spins and shoots Laurent in the chest.

Laurent collapses against the SUV. Prunella screams and drops beside him, pressing her hands against the wound. Matéo stands frozen. Ramón and Basilio are already gone.

Title card: DRINK ZOMBIE PISS.

Two days earlier.

Laurent lies in bed at night, eyes open, hands folded on his chest. Beside him, Petra tries to initiate intimacy—leg over his, mouth near his ear. He gently lifts her leg off him. She asks what changed. He says he's tired. She says he's always tired. He tells her he loves her. She says she knows. The rejection sits between them like furniture.

Across the city, Prunella walks the streets in provocative clothing, her look unmistakably marking her as a working prostitute. At a diner, she sits with Liora and Spitlick. The conversation is profane and warm—birthday wishes, gossip, the disputed medical plausibility of a throat yeast infection. This is Prunella's world: small, loud, and tender in ways no one outside it would recognize.

Laurent works at his desk. The grant renewal document—Year Six, Trauma-Informed Outreach for At-Risk Youth—sits on his screen. He edits the same sentence repeatedly. In his desk drawer: a manuscript with yellowed edges. He doesn't open it. He closes the drawer.

Laurent drives home through Pittsburgh. At a red light, he catches the eye of a young sex worker named Queenie. She approaches the car. The exchange is awkward, charged, and ultimately nothing—Laurent can't, won't, doesn't. She tells him he looks like he's trying really hard to be a good person. He says he doesn't know what he's trying to be. The light turns green. He drives away through the Fort Pitt Tunnel, the city swallowing him.

Dinner at the Beaumont house. Chinese takeout. Calder, fifteen, wants to leave early. Romy, thirteen, laughs at her phone. Laurent asks nothing. Petra manages everything. When Laurent steps outside for air, he opens his Notes app, types a sentence, deletes it, and puts the phone away. The house continues without him.

In a motel room, Matéo sits on the bed with Prunella. The transaction is over. Cash changes hands. He suggests dinner sometime—just dinner. She says that's not how this works. He asks about the guy with the Porsche. She says he's married. They always are. She leaves. Matéo sits alone. The HVAC rattles on.

Prunella returns to her apartment, where an eviction notice is taped to her door. She rips it off. At her kitchen table, she opens her electric bill: past due. The city is charging more than it pays.

At Gaufrid's apartment, the sex is transactional. Cash is placed on the side table before they reach the bedroom. Afterward, Gaufrid sleeps. Prunella dresses, cleans herself with professional efficiency, and moves to the kitchen. Her elbow bumps a duffel bag on the counter. Inside: bricks of heroin wrapped tight in plastic. Not party drugs. Not for personal use.

Prunella zips the bag shut. Sits down. Puts her head in her hands. Then she opens the bag again, lifts one brick, and presses it against her chest. No sound from the bedroom. She takes it. Then she takes a second. She zips the duffel closed, sets it back where it was, and leaves.

At home, Prunella sits on her couch with the two bricks and a glass of wine. She tries to hide them in a drawer. They don't fit. She shoves them in a closet on a shelf. They stick out. She lies on her bed fully clothed, eyes open, and stares at the ceiling.

The next morning, Gaufrid counts his supply. Two short. His expression doesn't change. He calls someone, says "two," says "today," and finishes his coffee. Then: "Fucking bitch."

Prunella arrives at Matéo's kitchen with the tote bag. She asks if he still knows people. He plays dumb. She tells him she needs to move something. He stops playing dumb. She pulls out a brick and sets it on the counter. She tells him not to touch it. He stares at it and says, "Jesus Christ." She asks if he can sell it. He says probably. She needs "yes." He gives it to her. He names a buyer: Ramón. She's heard of him. He's not safe. Matéo tells her none of them are.

Meanwhile, at the nonprofit, Laurent is pulled into a conference room by Cricket Halloway, the compliance officer. A routine federal audit has been triggered—Year Six, automatic. Cricket walks him through it: a 72-hour gap during which $187,400 sat in the wrong account. It eventually went where it was supposed to. But for three days, it didn't belong to the program it was coded to. Laurent says it covered payroll. Cricket says she assumed. She tells him the money has to be reconciled clean before the auditors arrive. Two weeks. Laurent asks what the worst case looks like. Cricket says: "It becomes a question of intent." She tells him to avoid doing anything unusual. She leaves.

Laurent sits alone. He writes "$187,400" on his legal pad. Stares at it. Adds ".00." Crosses out the decimals. Leaves the number. His phone buzzes: Matéo. He doesn't answer.

Laurent calls his lawyer, Julien, from the office hallway. The conversation is precise and devastating. Hypothetically, it becomes disclosure rather than correction. A bridge loan requires documentation. Documentation becomes discoverable. Anything clean takes time. Laurent doesn't have time. Julien tells him, "Then you don't have a legal solution." Laurent asks what would happen if he fixed it himself. Julien's advice: "Then I recommend you don't tell me how."

Matéo calls again. Laurent ignores it. Then again. This time, Laurent answers. Matéo says he's trying not to make a mistake. Laurent tells him to stop before he does whatever this is. Matéo asks to meet for a drink. One drink. Laurent says no. Matéo tells him this isn't starting with him—he's just the one standing in front of it. Laurent agrees to one drink.

At the bar, Matéo tells Laurent there's a girl in trouble. Drugs. A drug deal. He needs Laurent to come with him. Just stand next to him. Laurent asks what happens if something goes wrong. Matéo says: Then I don't want to be alone. Laurent sets cash on the bar. They head for the door.

That night, Laurent sits in his study. He opens the same grant document. Then he opens a new browser tab and types: "HEROIN PRICE PER BRICK." Deletes it and types it again. He searches. He opens his desk drawer, looks at the manuscript, and doesn't read it. He moves it to the closet, behind the tax folders.

The next day, Laurent visits a credit union. He needs $187,400. The maximum unsecured loan is fifty thousand. A joint application with his wife would change things, but both owners would need to be present. A provisional hold would take 7 to 10 days, with an internal review. Visibility: internal and external. Laurent withdraws $1,000 from the ATM—the daily maximum. It looks pathetic in his hand. He pockets it anyway.

At Matéo's kitchen, the deal takes shape. Ramón can meet the day after tomorrow. Cemetery. Noon. Two bricks. About a hundred thousand. Laurent asks if Ramón knows it's stolen. Prunella says he doesn't care. Laurent asks who else knows. Just Ramón and his guy. Laurent watches Prunella pick up the tote bag. They head out.

In the dark of his bedroom at dawn, Laurent kneels in his closet. Behind the boxes: a locked metal case. Inside: a handgun. Clean. Well-maintained. He checks the magazine. Loaded. He racks it. The sound is loud in the small space. He freezes. Listens. Nothing from the bedroom. He tucks the gun into his waistband. Adjusts his shirt. Looks at himself in the mirror.

The drive to the cemetery. Laurent's knuckles are white on the wheel. Prunella sits shotgun. Matéo rides in the back, knee bouncing. Laurent says he's not involved. He's there, so no one does anything stupid. Prunella sees the gun printing through his shirt. She calls it insurance. He calls it caution. She says those aren't the same thing.

The film returns to where it opened. The cemetery. The waiting. The faucet. The zombie piss. Then the Honda Accord. The exchange. The robbery. The gunfire. Laurent shot. Prunella pressed her hands to his chest. Matéo froze, then dialed 911. "Tell them he was robbed," Prunella says. "Tell them whatever you want. Just make them come."

At the hospital, Laurent is stabilized. The bullet missed his heart. Clipped a rib. Exit wound. Prunella tells the police it was a robbery. Laurent adopts the story. When Petra arrives, she doesn't ask what happened. She tells him that if it's drugs, they don't stop asking questions—if it's a robbery, they do. She tells him to say it again if they ask, and to say it better.

But Petra has already begun her own investigation. At the kitchen table, she finds the $1,000 cash withdrawal on the bank statement. She opens the closet and discovers the manuscript Laurent hid. She goes through every account—checking, savings, credit cards—and comes up $11,000 short of where they should be. She accounts for the roof, for Calder, for groceries, gas, and the electric bill. Eleven thousand. She tells Laurent: I'm not asking where it went. She tells him Matéo called the house twice and hung up before the machine picked up. "That's not something a friend does after a robbery." She leaves to pick up something for dinner.

Meanwhile, Gaufrid prepares a basement. A metal chair bolted to the floor. A drain beneath it. Duct tape. Zip ties. A mattress with no sheets. He photographs everything. Not artistically. Just proof. He tracks Prunella on social media—finds a group photo of her, her arm around Liora. He screenshots it. Sends a message: "the girl from Wednesday... find out where..."

Prunella receives unknown calls. She doesn't answer. She powers off her phone. She writes an email that begins "I need to tell you something about" and then deletes it. A knock at her door. Soft. Almost polite. A voice through the wood: "I know you're there." Gaufrid. "We should talk." Prunella climbs out of the fire escape. She's halfway down when she hears her apartment door open behind her.

She spends the night at a convenience store parking lot, then at a bus stop bench. At 4:47 a.m., Gaufrid's car pulls to the curb. He steps out. "You left your window open." She backs against the shelter. He tells her not to lie. She tells him she didn't take anything. He says, "Don't."

The next morning, detectives arrive at Matéo's house to ask about Prunella Salt. She is dead.

At the nonprofit, the federal auditors have arrived. The meeting is precise and devastating. They know about the seventy-two-hour gap. They know the auxiliary operating account wasn't disclosed. They know the correction was issued after the notice. Odessa, the lead auditor, tells Laurent: "Temporary misuse is still misuse." Cricket, his compliance officer, tells him afterward: "You're no longer invisible. That's worse than trouble."

Laurent doesn't answer Matéo's calls. Matéo texts: "She's dead." Deletes it. Texts: "Call me." Deletes that too. He sets the phone down and puts his head in his hands.

Laurent sits alone in his study. He opens the closet and retrieves his manuscript: THE AUTHENTICITY PRINCIPLE by Laurent O. Beaumont. He flips through it. Margin notes. Crossed-out sections. He stops on a random page. Reads one paragraph. His face doesn't change. He closes it. Puts it back in the desk drawer. Closes the drawer.

He leans back in his chair. Stares at nothing. The grant sentence he's been editing for days remains unchanged. His family moves around him at a distance that has become permanent. The house is dark. The drawer is closed.