Carmilla and Laura

by S.D. Simper

Needless to say, I gasped when she suddenly threw her arms around me, giggling with girlish delight.

“Goodnight, Carmilla,” I whispered at the door. As I gently shut the door, I heard a treasured tone say, “Goodnight, my Laura.”

“I find that adorable. You are adorable, my darling,”

Carmilla squeezed my hand and left me with a kiss upon my jaw. I wanted to follow; I wanted to run.

Such a sight we were, she in her deep hues of blue and black, myself in pastel pink and white.

She spoke such poetry. How could I not love her words?

I’ve tried to give you everything, but your loneliness was not something money could fix.

“You are perfect, my darling. You’re perfect, and you are mine. I could never think less of you.” She thought the world of me, and I felt like a wolf romancing a lamb.

“. . . it implies we have made love, and for two women, that would be quite impossible.” She said absolutely nothing. When I finally dared to meet her stare, her eyebrow had lifted, as though a challenge had been issued.

“My darling, history tells of centuries of women loving women in all manner of beautiful ways. With their hands, with their tongues—no man can know a woman as another woman can.

“I have been in love with no one.”

“And I shall never be in love with anyone, I think,” she continued, and then she leaned in and whispered, “unless it be with you.”

Two halves of a whole, she and I, and by God I understood—I felt I had missed her all my life.

If she were a monster out to ruin me, would she not have done it long ago?

I gave him everything, but he stole even more.”

“I do not know if I believe in God,” Carmilla said. “Because it means he created a creature like me, only to condemn me to Hell from the start.”

She worshipped my body like the God she did not believe in,

what better fate could there be than for you to come with me, loving me unto death, even hating me unto death, for at least we would be—” She gasped, though it masked a sob, running forward to me, but stopping, crumbling when I glared. “. . . together.”

“Carmilla did love me, but not in the way you or the rest of the men could understand, nor in a way you and I could ever share.”

The world had not been made for them, the vampire girl had said, and the professor smiles to think it could accept their strange and tragic love affair now.

“Whereas I was more concerned I’d have to stay another night in Germany.”