‘Carmilla’ Creatively: STUDENT VS CRITIC
March 27, 2013
By ELI
Student
In a fight of vampire versus vampire, I am to face Carmilla, a vampire who seduces her victims to feed and slowly drains them of life.
Whatever happened to preying on victims that were there and easy enough to catch and kill in one blow?
Unlike Carmilla, a woman who has lived for some time now as a beautiful being seducing young girls to secretly feed upon, I, Eli, have the dirty work done for me.
I send out my caretaker to kill those who fall victim to his knife and bring back the life force that I am forced to live upon.
Though I may seem spoiled since I do not go and get my food myself, I have been through much more than she could ever imagine.
While she stakes out the right type of person that she’d like to feed upon, I am more into the idea of finding what I need when I need it, or I will start to smell more like the animal that I am.
Carmilla does not understand what it is like to live in the new age, where people know more about our kind. In fact, she is completely oblivious.
She may be have been the Countess Mircalla Karnstein, but if she were alive today and had not been staked, beheaded and burned to ashes, she may have been a match for me.
But since I have lived much longer than she has, and I have survived in a culture that knows more of our kind, I would conclude to say that I am the better vampire.
By COUNTESS MIRCALLA
Critic
“Carmilla,” published by Sheridan Le Fanu in 1872 but penned by a young woman close to my heart, is the most exquisite vampire tale ever written, for through it lives a most exquisite vampire.
How strange to see oneself through another’s eyes! When I first took Laura in my arms, I could see no further than the warm smell of flesh; but as I held her trembling body to my breast and smoothed her hair as a mother does and sank my aching fangs into her ivory throat, I could taste our destiny: she would be for me a feast, and I for her a muse.
Unlike that vulgar Transylvanian and his pale progeny, I am not content to feed on boring bourgeoiselettes and rancid peasants, fools who reek of stupidity and fear. I require sympathy and consent, devotion born of innocence having freely chosen to sacrifice its blood and breath to a purer, more perfected life. I have bathed in the blood of countless virgins, but I prefer to marinate in love.
As through her words I grew more compelling on the page, Laura faded as I fed into a fragile, crystalline beauty that slowly, softly shattered. She gave me substance and sustenance; I gave her translucent wings. Translated at last into mist, she used them to fly away.
Yet, still from the silence of the grave, she whispers my names—Mircalla, Millarca, Carmilla—while, ravenous, I catch the scent of her double, just outside your door.
