Mikey
and Mandy Meet Lust and Death
(with background from CARMILLA, by
J. Sheridan LeFanu (1872)*)
As
LeFenu writes:
“I am now going to tell you something so strange that it
will require all your faith in my veracity to believe my story. It
is not only true, nevertheless, but truth of which I have been an
eyewitness.”
Well, the adventures of Mikey and Mandy on this photo shoot wax just
as strangely, although until now I have not had the heart to tell
Mikey any of the truth, for fear his mortal life would be shortened
by fear and his dreams tormented by erections and premonitions.
He thought he was going to an ordinary photo session of a popular
Goth vamp named Scar and her newfound innocent friend next door, Ivy.
But Mandy, being a mystic, came upon with scene knowing the truth
and sensing both arousal and horror. Before all other vampire stories,
there was a true account by a woodsman in 1870 of a vampire named
Carmilla, who was in truth the ancient vampire Mircalla, Countess
Karnstein, buried in a crypt in Europe above ground, having died in
1698. J. Sheridan LeFanu wrote up the tale.*
We who know Vampires also recognize that fiction always has them beheaded
or staked or burned, but we also suspect that they always return,
since they do not live within the vibrations of the mortal plane,
and so are not bound by its rules, morals, or punishments.
Scar was, I knew now without a doubt, the latest incarnation of the
Countess, who had fixated her blood lust on Ivy over 150 years ago
and was still pursuing her to this day, currently in the strange town
of San Diego.
Ivy, new to the vicinity and alone, knew nothing of this, but I could
easily see she was enchanted by Scar and very lonely for friends and
lovers, just as she was so many years ago.
In the old tale, Ivy lives in a very deserted part of Austria:
My father was in the Austrian service, and retired upon
a pension and his patrimony, and purchased this feudal residence,
and the small estate on which it stands, a bargain. Nothing can be
more picturesque or solitary. It stands on a slight eminence in a
forest. The road, very old and narrow, passes in front of its drawbridge,
never raised in my time, and its moat, stocked with perch, and sailed
over by many swans, and floating on its surface white fleets of water
lilies. Over all this the schloss shows its many-windowed front; its
towers, and its Gothic chapel.
The forest opens in an irregular and very picturesque glade before
its gate, and at the right a steep Gothic bridge carries the road
over a stream that winds in deep shadow through the wood. I have said
that this is a very lonely place. Judge whether I say truth. Looking
from the hall door towards the road, the forest in which our castle
stands extends fifteen miles to the right, and twelve to the left.
The nearest inhabited village is about seven of your English miles
to the left.
When Ivy is only six years old, she has a dream that both excites
and terrifies her; in fact, it stays in her mind throughout her young
adult life:
I saw a solemn, but very pretty face looking at me from
the side of the bed. It was that of a young lady who was kneeling,
with her hands under the coverlet. I looked at her with a kind of
pleased wonder, and ceased whimpering. She caressed me with her hands,
and lay down beside me on the bed, and drew me towards her, smiling;
I felt immediately delightfully soothed, and fell asleep again. I
was wakened by a sensation as if two needles ran into my breast very
deep at the same moment, and I cried loudly. The lady started back,
with her eyes fixed on me, and then slipped down upon the floor, and,
as I thought, hid herself under the bed.
One night, when Ivy has passed 18, a dark carriage with odd passengers
claiming to be a young girl’s family overturns on the road that
passes by Ivy’s house. The girl is injured and Ivy’s father
implores her family to let her rest at their house. The other passengers
seem more than willing to let the lovely lady leave the coach. Ivy
is thrilled, having no one her age to play with or share secrets.
Even her elderly nannies and servants are charmed by the stranger.
"I like her extremely," answered Madame, "she
is, I almost think, the prettiest creature I ever saw; about your
age, and so gentle and nice."
"She is absolutely beautiful," threw in Mademoiselle, who
had peeped for a moment into the stranger's room.
For my part, I was delighted. I was longing to see and talk to her;
and only waiting till the doctor should give me leave. You, who live
in towns, can have no idea how great an event the introduction of
a new friend is, in such a solitude as surrounded us.
How odd things become when the two girls, already entranced with each
other, discover they had the same dream during childhood, or at least
Carmilla claims to have experienced the exact vision…
"How wonderful!" she exclaimed. "Twelve
years ago, I saw your face in a dream, and it has haunted me ever
since."
"Wonderful indeed!" I repeated, overcoming with an effort
the horror that had for a time suspended my utterances. "Twelve
years ago, in vision or reality, I certainly saw you. I could not
forget your face. It has remained before my eyes ever since."
Her smile had softened. Whatever I had fancied strange in it, was
gone, and it and her dimpling cheeks were now delightfully pretty
and intelligent.
Still, there are many things that worry Ivy about Carmilla. I could
see this all taking place again in the 21st century, as our Ivy constantly
shifted and stared at Scar whenever she moved. But she did not run
away.
There was a coldness, it seemed to me, beyond her years,
in her smiling melancholy persistent refusal to afford me the least
ray of light.
It was all summed up in three very vague disclosures:
First-Her name was Carmilla.
Second-Her family was very ancient and noble.
Third-Her home lay in the direction of the west.
She would not tell me the name of her family, nor their armorial bearings,
nor the name of their estate, nor even that of the country they lived
in.
The fact is, as I understood from the account and from the vampiric
ritual taking place, Scar was bewitching/seducing Ivy, and the two
girls wanted nothing more than for Mikey and Mandy to leave---or at
least Mikey---and fall into bed, sucking and licking and biting each
others’ bodies from necks to tits to pussies to toes.
She used to place her pretty arms about my neck, draw
me to her, and laying her cheek to mine, murmur with her lips near
my ear, "Dearest, your little heart is wounded; think me not
cruel because I obey the irresistible law of my strength and weakness;
if your dear heart is wounded, my wild heart bleeds with yours.
And when she had spoken such a rhapsody, she would press
me more closely in her trembling embrace, and her lips in soft kisses
gently glow upon my cheek. I experienced a strange tumultuous excitement
that was pleasurable, ever and anon, mingled with a vague sense of
fear and disgust. I had no distinct thoughts about her while such
scenes lasted, but I was conscious of a love growing into adoration,
and also of abhorrence.
In the old account, young women in the villages neighboring Ivy’s
begin to die of a mysterious wasting illness, which coincides with
Carmilla’s arrival. Ivy’s father is concerned, but not
alarmed for his own daughter’s safety---not yet, anyway:
My father was out of spirits that evening. On coming in
he told us that there had been another case very similar to the two
fatal ones which had lately occurred. The sister of a young peasant
on his estate, only a mile away, was very ill, had been, as she described
it, attacked very nearly in the same way, and was now slowly but steadily
sinking.
"Doctors never did me any good," said Carmilla.
"Then you have been ill?" I asked.
"More ill than ever you were," she answered.
"Long ago?"
"Yes, a long time. I suffered from this very illness; but I forget
all but my pain and weakness, and they were not so bad as are suffered
in other diseases."
The mystery is finally revealed by an old crone in the village, but
poor, gradually weakening Ivy, in the throws of love with the beautiful,
sensual Carmilla, who has bewitched the entire household, takes no
heed of the tale.
"And now you can read quite plainly the name that
is written in the corner. It is not Marcia; it looks as if it was
done in gold. The name is Mircalla, Countess Karnstein, and this is
a little coronet over and underneath A.D. 1698. I am descended from
the Karnsteins; that is, mamma was."
"Ah!" said the lady, languidly, "so am I, I think,
a very long descent, very ancient. Are there any Karnsteins living
now?"
"None who bear the name, I believe. The family were ruined, I
believe, in some civil wars, long ago, but the ruins of the castle
are only about three miles away."
Ivy is in love, not at all healthy, but her senses are on fire. Carmilla,
on the other hand, is taking her pleasure with the girl at every opportunity,
late at night. Mandy could see Scar eyeing the deepening of the sky,
waiting for nightfall, and raw passion. Ivy wrote:
For some nights I slept profoundly; but still every morning
I felt the same lassitude, and a languor weighed upon me all day.
I felt myself a changed girl. A strange melancholy was stealing over
me, a melancholy that I would not have interrupted
Carmilla became more devoted to me than ever, and her strange paroxysms
of languid adoration more frequent. She used to gloat on me with increasing
ardour the more my strength and spirits waned. This always shocked
me like a momentary glare of insanity.
Without knowing it, I was now in a pretty advanced stage of the strangest
illness under which mortal ever suffered.
Sometime there came a sensation as if a hand was drawn softly along
my cheek and neck. Sometimes it was as if warm lips kissed me, and
longer and longer and more lovingly as they reached my throat, but
there the caress fixed itself. My heart beat faster, my breathing
rose and fell rapidly and full drawn; a sobbing, that rose into a
sense of strangulation, supervened, and turned into a dreadful convulsion,
in which my senses left me and I became unconscious.
It was now three weeks since the commencement of this unaccountable
state. My sufferings had, during the last week, told upon my appearance.
I had grown pale, my eyes were dilated and darkened underneath, and
the languor which I had long felt began to display itself in my countenance.
Carmilla was looking charmingly. Nothing could be more beautiful than
her tints.
Finally, the villagers call in a vampire hunter who takes Ivy and
her father to The Countess’ crypt, were Carmilla stands in the
shadows. In LeFanu’s tale, Carmilla is destroyed, but all who
know better also believe that Ivy warned her off and saved her life.
"I mean, to decapitate the monster," he answered,
with a fierce flush, and a stamp that echoed mournfully through the
hollow ruin, and his clenched hand was at the same moment raised,
as if it grasped the handle of an axe, while he shook it ferociously
in the air.
"What?" exclaimed my father, more than ever bewildered.
"To strike her head off."
"Cut her head off!"
Ivy is left with a vanished love and a great knowledge of vampires.
Now I see it coming alive in her eyes, craving her union with Scar.
Mikey just sees a hot photo shoot.
How they escape from their graves and return to them for
certain hours every day, without displacing the clay or leaving any
trace of disturbance in the state of the coffin or the cerements,
has always been admitted to be utterly inexplicable.
The amphibious existence of the vampire is sustained by daily renewed
slumber in the grave. Its horrible lust for living blood supplies
the vigour of its waking existence.
The vampire is prone to be fascinated with an engrossing vehemence,
resembling the passion of love, by particular persons. In pursuit
of these it will exercise inexhaustible patience and stratagem, for
access to a particular object may be obstructed in a hundred ways.
It will never desist until it has satiated its passion, and drained
the very life of its coveted victim.
Scar and Ivy take me aside and ask me to stay, but the life of the
undead is not right for me---not yet. If I change my mind, I know
many places to look, and would prefer a gentleman to perform the change.
Mikey and I drive back; he natters on about how the photos will look,
while I contemplate eternal life in blood and lust.
MANDY
Photos by Mikey
*'Carmilla'
appeared in four successive issues of The Dark Blue, vols. 2-3: Chapters
1-3 (December 1871); 4-6 (January 1872); 7-10 (February); 11-16 (March).