Work Text:
Laura had hung the restored painting in her room—a square portrait, no bigger than two palms laying flat side-by-side—in front of her four-poster bed, carved from oak wood. She’d sat on her soft, freshly washed sheets and stared at it as if it had a spell put upon her.
Laura did not know whether the portrait had brought her the power she needed to fight the nightmares haunting her. Laura was not one for superstitions, but even she had trouble doubting the power of the portrait.
It was the portrait of Mircalla, the Countess Karnstein—wearing a high, plaited lace fontange over her thick black hair—with her face so similar to the pretty visage of Laura’s beautiful guest, her own descendant, down to the little mole at her throat. The oily surface of the painting shone a mixture of yellow ochre and vermillion, Mircalla’s face blending into the dark backdrop with soft edges. Laura had lain in her bed before going to sleep, staring at the woman’s face from over a century ago while she crossed into sleep. She believed in the portrait’s power.
Sleeping had been easy with Countess Mircalla watching over her, like traveling through a dark tunnel for miles before the scene opened up into a grassy field with an abandoned chapel, climbing with ivy. Laura had entered the chapel, and saw the gorgeous figure of Countess Mircalla herself, sitting with her back to her on an overturned pew in her brocade dress with its long train, the colors faded and covered in a fine layer of dust.
“Who are you?” Laura had asked. “Do I know you?”
The countess had paused, turned back. The pew rested within a bed of lilies surrounded by vines. Her face had always been an unrecognizable blur as she beckoned Laura closer. While Laura had obeyed, she’d imagined the sweet perfumes of a century past, the soft arms of this majestic lady, the silkiness of her dress.
Nightmares of death and monsters had turned into dreams of gentle breathing, soft skin, silvery laughter, and locks of long, silky black locks that ran like waterfalls between Laura’s knuckles.
She would not tell those experiences to anyone—not even in her diary, not in detail—not as long as she lived. The sin was so terrible that Laura feared total ostracization if she ever let her mouth loose about these fantasies. Yet, her dreams were the most amazing things Laura had ever felt in her nineteen years.
Even if her health was failing, Laura was always eager to go back to her dreams. She was entranced by them, knowing as long as she was there, she could show her true self without being shunned. Laura wanted to be with her love in her dreams.
Did it make Laura a bad girl for feeling like this? Was she a witch, then, because she’d felt warm and faint every time she’d stared at Countess Mircalla’s portrait, hanging before her bed, thinking impure thoughts? Even when she was awake, Laura often dreamed of going up to the painting and touching it, kissing it, all the while feeling the warmth running from her lips through her body to her breasts, her nipples, and between her legs. She wanted to look at Mircalla’s face as she felt passion and wetness gathering beneath her fingers, thinking it was Carmilla that she was touching; Carmilla that she was kissing and staring deeply into the eyes. Laura would never tell these thoughts to her guest; she could never gather up enough boldness, even as Carmilla’s seduction continued.
Continued the mysterious words that made Laura’s heart flutter, the deep looks within alluring dark eyes, the soft touches of Carmilla’s dark-haired head on Laura’s shoulder, the sweet scent of death and falling petals, the gentle clutch of boneless hands.
Last night, Carmilla had said good night to Laura before they’d both returned to their rooms, her eyes following Laura as if she’d wanted to come with her, shutting the door behind them, leaving Laura’s chamber one of secrets. They’d walked for hours side by side alongside the river the day before, listening to the birds call, knuckles brushing each other’s.
How could she ever explain these feelings? Tell Carmilla about her confusion or her desires? How would Laura ever face her if she did?
During the day, Laura tried to act like a respectable lady despite her health, attending to her lessons, dining, and reading, but it’d gotten harder the longer she stayed dreaming. Laura would stay in bed for longer, wake up later than usual, going to bed earlier each night. She’d gone thinner and paler, but she’d never lost her grace to appease her father and mademoiselle. She said her prayers each night before her bed in front of Madam Perodon because it was the only hope to purify her sins. An impossible task, though the priest would disagree; he’d say she would always have a choice.
The doctors came and went; they said she was more languid, sicker, but Laura paid them no mind. She’d never felt happier and more alive than now, in her dreams, with the animated figure of Countess Mircalla, experiencing vices she could never dream of in her waking hours. Laura had become attached to the dreams; she’d started living in those dreams.
Then, one night, after kissing her the usual way with a gentle whisper of “Goodnight, darling,” Carmilla herself came into Laura’s dreams.
The dream had started similarly—a wild garden, overgrown with untamed roses. Laura trod through the thick underbrush, dragging her soft gown through tangles of briars—thorny, hurting anyone who came near, but all so, so beautiful with an array of colors. Pink, scarlet, yellow, white. But most of them were red—bright, blood-like crimson blossoms that seemed to drip with that rich, mysterious fluid as they bloomed.
Beyond the wild garden was the line of trees, then the tiny little dirt road leading up to the abandoned chapel, where she knew the countess had always waited for her. Laura’s white gown had been torn when she made her way there, over-saturated with leaves. She picked some leaves out of her blonde hair and rounded the last bend in the road, greeted with the mysterious ruined chapel before her, its rose windows broken and dreaming in a multitude of colors.
There, sitting inside disrepair walls and fallen columns, on a decrepit altar, in a red velvet gown amazingly scandalous for the fashion of the day and for churches, was the black-haired beauty Laura was now more than familiar with. With her back to her, long locks unbraided. She worked some blood-red flowers between her curls.
“You asked for my portrait to hang in your room,” the dark-haired beauty asked, without turning. “Why is that?”
Laura approached with her dress in her hands and the sweet scent of roses in her nostrils. The tips of her dainty feet touched soft, wet soil lain with a layer of dead grass and reed.
She recognized her—dark, mysterious eyes, alluring lips, intoxicating air all around her. But it wasn’t Countess Mircalla this time. It was Carmilla, the countess’s descendant and Laura’s guest.
“You seem surprised to see me,” Carmilla said, her eyes flashing, blood-red lips seeming to break into a soft smile.
Laura opened her lips as if to retort, but stopped halfway. There she stood, in her white gown, her lips hanging open like a surprised goldfish. She could see the good-natured mockery in Carmilla’s eyes.
As if reading her head, her guest continued without Laura’s input, “Mircalla is but a centuries-old dream. Someone from another time. But me, I am here; I am now.”
Laura jerked when Carmilla rose and came to her, her body frozen in place. There was a spell surrounding Carmilla, an unexplainable, mystical power. Laura felt it took over her and influenced her in her dream. Desire and want writhed within her like the restless wings of butterflies.
When Carmilla was but an inch before her, her dark eyes and luscious lips taking over her eyes, Laura imagined what it would be like to kiss her, what it would be like to have her in her bed and her dreams, and Laura realized it’d be what she had wanted all along.
“What’s wrong?” asked Carmilla. “Laura, my love… You loved Countess Mircalla Karnstein, why won’t you love dear Carmilla the same way?”
But I do. Those words came out soundlessly before Laura felt Carmilla’s lips on hers, then on her cheek, her jaw, her neck. She felt her sucking a bruise into her flesh, and when a sharp, pleasurable pain pierced her, Laura seemed to shake in a dry spasm that emptied her head of all reason.
“Do you still pray before you go to sleep? Do you hang the charm we bought together on your bedpost?” Carmilla asked, her lips on Laura’s neck, Laura’s blood on her chin.
Laura swallowed, felt something sharp and dangerous poking at her throat. She pressed her lips together and nodded, too modest to speak her mind.
“There’s a different immortality, one different from what His Lord offers. A better one. Don’t you want to learn? Don’t you want to live forever, Laura?”
Again, Laura nodded, suddenly drowning in unspeakable feelings, hoping for Carmilla’s love all to herself, even if it meant going against her faith, her seat in heaven.
Hoping to be free, even if she had to forgo her immortal soul to follow what her heart desired.
Carmilla’s lips rose fully into a smile.
Then she laid Laura inside the grass, among wildflowers, peeled off her sheer gown.
There she took her, much like how Countess Mircalla Karnstein had done during the nights before like a secret lover, made Laura feel all the same taboo raptures her ancestor had given her. Making her sob and shudder, her desires burning. And more.
During the day, they still walked together, talked together, sat together when Laura would have afternoon tea while Carmilla watched her. Laura’s father tentatively approved of this arrangement, if it meant getting Laura out of bed, bringing some color back into her cheeks. It was with Carmilla that Laura acted somewhat herself.
But it was during nights when Laura was truly free with Carmilla, indulging in sins she’d never dreamed of, engaging in acts that would have them burned at the stake two centuries ago.
Laura was certain they shared their dreams. She’d seen in Carmilla’s gaze, known from the waking hours they’d spent together she’d known; she’d been there.
Those unspeakable moments of them alone together, silk and velvet stripped away as they lay naked together on the soft grass, inside an abandoned chapel—legs entangled, relishing in each other’s embraces. Soft lips, passionate touches… All those tingling sensations Laura had not known by herself, the way Carmilla showed her and taught her, how Carmilla opened her up for new experiences. Laura, blossoming like a flower, soaking up her demonstrations like a sponge, and Carmilla’s hair smelled of morning lilies and fading dew, as well as clean graveyard dirt and a pinch of metallic, tangy—
Perhaps it was only in dreams they could remain with each other, in each other’s arms, for eternity, without the scrutiny of the world around them.
“This is the Karnstein chapel,” Carmilla said one night. “It’s where my ancestors are buried. It’s where I live.”
“Where you live? You mean in a Schloss near the ruin?”
“Oh, how funny you are, Laura.” Carmilla covered her mouth with her pretty hand as she laughed. Then, as if a strange power overtook her, she shuddered in one of her passionately rapturous moments again and said, “Oh, darling… darling! I live in your warm life, and you shall die—die, sweetly die—into mine…”
It’d used to scare Laura, but strangely, death had stopped being something to be feared. There was might in death; mysteries Laura was eager to explore. She felt strangely powerful whenever she thought about the grave she might sleep in when she finally wasted away from the disease eating her alive.
The thoughts of death now lulled her to sleep, and Laura longed for the embrace of the earth, her body lying flat in an intricate coffin buried underground. It was the sweet, grim images that Carmilla’s seduction had inspired in her, and that taboo image of death was like wine, intoxicatingly saccharine, dangerously seductive.
Yet, even so, Laura wouldn’t be dead; she would be sleeping. And when the time was right, when Carmilla would call her, she would rise and phase through the earth as she did in her dream to join her lover once more. Laura was never a naïve country girl as everyone had presumed—she had her dark thoughts, her sins, and Carmilla was only peeling away the superficial layers, laying her true self bare and raw that the world was not ready to face.
Laura was ready to become that for Carmilla, with Carmilla.
And so it went until Laura slept more than she was awake, in bed more than erect and walking. She stopped caring or noticing when the doctors were here, shaking their heads at her father, unable to break the terrible news; or madam kneeling beside her, praying for her. First, she prayed for her health, then for her soul.
And Laura just slept. Slept. Addicted to her dream dwelling, the fantasies she’d built with Carmilla, the light she’d seen through her imagination’s eye, in a place she could never go. Laura had anticipated being there every night, and now every day.
Something big was coming that would mark the final stage of her metamorphosis; Laura knew it. Even the moon was brighter and rounder than usual tonight.
Tonight, Laura felt herself, even though she was dreaming. Her father had ordered her door locked, having been warned that she might not last another night. But Laura knew it would not stop her usual fantasies from coming to her through the cold stone walls, wrapping her up like a soft blanket.
In her dream tonight, Laura sat inside that little ruined chapel, in an open coffin. Her coffin. There was a plate on it that had her name carved in gold.
And Carmilla came to her through the dark—from where, Laura couldn’t say. She’d never seen her lover stepping through the chapel door, or phasing through its walls, but she’d felt her presence, sensing the soft touch of her arms around her.
Laura leaned her head against Carmilla’s arm, closed her eyes. Carmilla rocked her like an infant, her thick, silky black hair caressing Laura’s skin.
“Tell me about your past,” Laura asked. “What really happened on your first ball after you were assassinated?”
“When you die, you stop seeing or knowing for a while. Then you would wake up from your underground cradle, and it’s like a new light opening before you, a new life coursing through your veins. And you would feel so thirsty. So, very thirsty, and you know you can’t stay there forever. You must rise and feed.”
“Does it hurt? To die?”
“Yes and no,” answered her lover. “It’s a very sweet agony.”
“Were you still yourself?” asked Laura. “After you died? Do you still remember who you were before?”
“I can see my past life like the way divers see through the surface of the water—with effort. Life from before is seen through a thick medium, rippling, dense… but most certainly transparent. It’s like seeing someone else’s life playing before me, but I know it’s mine.” Carmilla straightened away from Laura. “Touch this grass, Laura.”
Laura did, and felt the dew seeping through her fingers. The grass contained some mystical power that coursed through her.
“Underneath here is my grave,” said her lover. “My grave from a century and a half ago. A part of me certainly died forever here. Still, I died and was buried here, but I wasn’t dead. I will never die.”
On her bed, outside of her dream, Laura shuddered under the shadowy mass looming above her, caressing her with its tendrils and claws, whispering ragged promises of love that lured her deeper into a slumber. She didn’t wake when the shadow kissed along her neck, opening its mouth wide to show sharp, needle-like teeth.
“Will you come with me, Laura?” asked Carmilla. “Will you cross the barrier of death with me, and stay alive forever?”
As she’d always done in Laura’s dream, Carmilla laid her down—inside the coffin this time—and removed her clothes. Laura was dressed in a wedding gown, a funerary tradition, and the pure white silk fell away to smooth skin and ample breasts. Laura’s breathing heaved inside her chest.
Her lover chanted, “Darling, darling… You must come with me, loving me, to death; or else hate me, and still come with me, and hating me through death and after…”
Laura closed her eyes, shuddered. Carmilla was licking down her neck, sucking on her breast. Carmilla was tracing a deft tongue down her navel, traveling toward that wet, heated sin between her legs.
Outside of her dream, the dark mass had attached its mouth to the sleeping girl’s neck, a shadow against pale, living flesh, and sucked. Blood flowed into that pulsating mass as it grew stronger. It caressed the girl with tendrils and long, bony fingers, tender like butterflies’ wings.
“I—I—” Laura panted.
Carmilla took her bud inside her mouth, licked, suckled. Laura’s legs hooked behind her back, toes curling. Her soul escaped from her body as her vision turned into a white canvas of rapture.
“Carmilla, Carmilla,” Laura said. “Darling, dear, my love… Take me… Oh, Lord, take me with you!”
It was everything that she had wanted. Carmilla’s love, a life with her… a life without hiding or suppressing her true desires. Laura was a bad Christian girl, destined for hell, but with Carmilla, she could live forever.
Laura could feel life escaping, yet she did not feel weak. She felt strength pulsating through her as her mind reached an enlightened state of ecstasy, climbing onto that precipice of love and life. And Carmilla worked her so beautifully, making her feel so good. Her tongue jabbed and probed, testing, spearing, caressing, pushing Laura further and further toward the ledge.
Then, as the last drop of her blood left her body, Laura’s body contracted, spasmed, her orgasm coursing through her for the last time, in the forever-welcoming embrace of her lover.
And, of Death.
Finally, Laura was lying in her coffin.
A sweet girl of summer, young and ripe for the picking, gone. And, just as in her dreams, they slowly, slowly lowered her into the dark underground, where death no longer scared her.
She was in her wooden box, but she wasn’t dead; she was sleeping. Laura could still hear, still feel—the soft silken lining, the muffled sounds from above the ground, where birds called, the wind blew. And the sweet smell of spring soil, the fragrance of flowers.
Laura heard their weeping voices, the eulogies, the funerary rites and hymns for her. She saw through her mind’s eye her father’s head lowered, his face looking older, twisted with pain and a single drop of tear, standing beside General Spielsdorf in his funerary frock coat. The guests all wept for her.
All the while Laura slept, perhaps not in peace, but in hunger, with her arms crossed, six feet underground in a newly dug grave. Her face was rosy; her lips were like buds of a newly sprouted rose.
Waiting for her lover to come.
The morning passed, then the afternoon. The funeral party came and went, leaving a new grave, a headstone for a girl left too early. The sun tilted toward the horizon, throwing long shadows—and with them, fresh energy filled Laura’s limbs.
The grave at night was a swirl of colors—purples, pinks, blues. It used to be so dull, so dark and scary, but now Laura only saw beauty and new possibilities. The little critters with their fresh blood running into the woods; the distant sounds of village girls’ heartbeats some thirty miles to the west. Laura could sense blood even this far away.
She’d never known how she’d left her grave without disturbing the dirt. She never had clear memories of coming and going from the ground, phasing through the dirt. Her life before was like distant dreams, images seen through a dense medium, and all but new power and life, the heightened senses, and the thirst for blood flowed inside her.
Laura rose, standing on the new, loose dirt of her own grave, drinking in the fresh scents of life.
And waiting there before her, in her halo of moonlight, dark hair smelling so sweetly of blood as she raised one arm and beckoned, was Carmilla.