"Please, please please please!" Laura whined, kneeling at the edge of Carmilla's bed and resting her head on her hands. She gazed up at her with puppy dog eyes and a child-like pout.
Carmilla shifted her line of sight away from the girl and back to her book, clenching her jaw and exhaling with unamused resolve.
"Come on, Carm," Laura pressed, clasping her hands together in a pleading prayer, "You met the Bloomsbury Group." She sat up on her knees, gesturing wildly with her hands and even wilder eyes, getting into her flustered habit of placing emphasis on every word, "I'm a book nerd. You met the Bloomsbury Group! Book nerd plus Bloomsbury Group equals a…a near-orgasmic intellectual experience!" Carmilla couldn't suppress the twitch of her lips and quirk of her eyebrow at her girlfriend's mention of orgasms, so she slowly put her book to the side and pulled her legs to her chest loosely, patting the mattress once next to her. Laura scrambled onto the bedsheets like a puppy, biting her lip and squealing with excitement. She fidgeted with glee, facing Carmilla with stars in her eyes.
"Okay, so I didn't meet all of them, like, I was only there for the later half," she began languidly, pretending it wasn't one of the most influential experiences of her infinite life.
"Did you meet Virgina Woolf!?" Laura exclaimed in one breath, hope bleeding out of her eyes like tears.
Carmilla looked at the smile she hadn't seen since the dread of her mother's impending visit fell over them, and thought about telling Laura how Virgina's mental instability had returned shortly after her friend and fellow Group member Strachey the painter died, and Dora Carrington shot herself (the woman who had introduced Carmilla to the famed artistic group). Their fates launched a shattering string of deaths from war and illnesses claiming art critic Roger Fry, whose purposeful pretentiousness Carmilla always found immense amusement in; and the brave soldier son of Vanessa and Clive: Julian, a boy with excessive bravado but the genuine belief that he was doing the right thing. Virginia, her husband Leonard, and Carmilla had often been invited by the couple to visit for hound races, and they would enjoy the sneers of higher society England while walking about in liberal dress—one time consisting of a cross-dressing prank. She thought about telling her that Virginia had often confided in Carmilla her fears of the coming war, and how they had spent one rogue evening together but very, very drunk. She thought about telling Laura how she found Virginia drowned in her own bathtub in 1941, crushed by the human waste of the war and her recurring nervous breakdowns. Her mind settled on the water herself had run, when Virginia asked for "a bubble bath for my nerves, sweetheart."
She had not been a lover, but a dear, true friend.
Carmilla turned her face down momentarily, hiding behind her bangs as she quickly blinked tears away.
"I knew her, yes," she said, smiling brightly again up at the mortal.
"Oh my gosh!" Laura cried, clapping her hands together in glee and excitement, "What was she like? Tell me everything about her!" Carmilla laughed dismissively, again hiding watery eyes under black fringe.
"I only met them all once, at a party. It was Edmund Forster and his friend Maurice; Virginia, her husband Leonard; the Bells and their son, Julian; then some artists I can't remember and a few biographers, too, I believe. There isn't much to tell. They all drank and kissed each other, but it was in the way that someone goes wine tasting, leisurely exploring rather than searching or seeking, and it was pleasant. I had a very good time." The half-misty glint in Carmilla's dark eyes went unnoticed in Laura's giddiness, and she flung herself on the vampire.
"Ahhh! I can't believe it!" Carmilla laughed with fangs and returned the embrace, kissing Laura's hair, breathing in the scent. The blood of her brain blasted her senses, flooding them with a red haze. She released her breathing heavily and barely light-headed. Laura was oblivious to this particular effect she had on her lover and roommate, and Carmilla was thankful. It wasn't a desire to drink her blood, per say, but rather an acute enjoyment of the scent. She savored it, and when they touched she could hear Laura's heartbeat through her veins.
But she hoped that was just because they were touching, not because Carmilla was a vampire.
"Tell me more!"
"I told you, there's not much to tell," Carmilla replied, not wishing to remain in the realm of memories she so often wandered alone.
"Babyyyyy," Laura whined, twirling a dark curl playfully around her finger, "It's not everyday you get to visit immortality." Her remark was casual, but it stung Carmilla like a wooden splinter. She jumped up from the bed, moving around its head to yank open the mini fridge and pretend she was looking for something.
"Actually it kind of is," Carmilla snapped sarcastically, to which Laura tilted her head in mild annoyance.
"You know what I mean," she said, "Don't go all broody vamp on me now."
"Have you ever considered that maybe there's a reason the broody vampire trope exists? Why can't you just treat me like a person, not a vampire?" Carmilla slammed the fridge shut and stalked to the open window, gazing up at the stars which seemed less and less effective at making her seem unimportant every day that she lived to see them.
"You know that's not what I meant," Laura said, but her voice was gentler now. She rose and followed Carmilla, standing behind her and placing a hand on her shoulder. "It's just that…I don't get to see all this cool history stuff. I don't get to visit immortality-"
"For beings without immortality, you humans sure do talk about it a lot," Carmilla spat, moving away from the sky and consequently, from Laura.
"Look who's being species-ist now! I don't know what your problem is, I'm just interested in-"
"My problem is that immortality is relative!" Carmilla shouted, fury churning in her eyes, "Flies live for three weeks if they're lucky, you have immortality!" She went to Laura's bed, unable to really escape her without having to leave their room, snatched the yellow pillow from it, then retreated to her own. She curled up around the mass of sweet-smelling sunshine and threw a book at the lightswitch without looking, engulfing the room in darkness. "I will die when the world ends, just like all the other creatures and bacterium that crawl on this earth." Carmilla growled her vain wish as a condemnation, paralyzed by its possible invalidity.
"Okay, that's dark," Laura punned dryly, waiting for her eyes to adjust to the lack of light, frustrated that her opponent did not have the same struggle. But when she finally saw the vice-grip claws digging into her pillow with white-knuckled desperation, she felt every silent sob and each one wracked her own heart against its ribcage.
Laura crept into the small twin bed behind Carmilla, cradling her crying form against her own. She curled her arms around the sufferer's ancient waist, burying her face in honey hair.
"I am not a fly," she whispered, kissing the back of Carmilla's neck and curve of flesh behind her ear. The vampire sniffled and caught her breath in uneven shudders of sorrow.
"The longer I live, the less time I spend with you." Carmilla placed her hands over Laura's, which fell on her stomach, and clutched them with delicate tenderness. "When I blink, that's you, alive and gone, and when I nap, every living thing has been removed from the earth. If I were to sleep, then I shall wake up in a barren sea with no sun or life, waiting and praying for the end of time, or at least a death to consciousness."
They lay in the dark, aware that there was no solution. There was nothing positive or reassuring to be said, no Twilight-transition would be brought up, as neither would ask that of the other. The utter despair of this unending suffering crippled Laura with pity and drove Carmilla into depression and insanity with its inevitable truth. The cruelty of life was multiplied with its lack of relief, and no respite could be found without death. But that kindness could not be afforded by those with no soul, for it is the price with which we pay off infinite pain and bribe the reaper to sever loneliness. Souls could not be sold, for they are priceless, and so they had to be stolen. There was no charge for theft in the courts of supernature, and therefore Carmilla was robbed of her happiness irreversibly. She became a martyr held hostage and a sacrifice to solitude, serving the sentence for a crime she did not commit.
"Love is immortal."
Laura knew it was cliche. And cliches are not souls. Carmilla knew this.
"Even love will die with you."