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In exact proportion, as I loved any person or persons more than others, & would have sacrificed my Life for them, were they sure to be most barbarously mistreated by silence, absence, or breach of promise… And yet all these vices are so opposite to my nature, that but for this free-agency-annihilating Poison, I verily believe that I should have suffered myself to have been cut to pieces rather than have committed any one of them.
–Samuel Taylor Coleridge, writing to John Morgan, 1814
*
Carmilla carries herself like a queen. Or, rather, like a countess. Her pretty face is drained and gaunt, but she stands up straight in her black dress, her dark hair falling down her back in a thick braid and her hand resting on the tip of her cane like a knight might rest a hand on a sheathed sword. She smiles, but without any politeness, as though simply relishing the chance to bare her teeth. She opens her lips to speak. “One large hot chocolate, if you please.” She turns her head to her companion. “And you?”
Beside her at the counter, Dr. Jekyll squints up at the menu board. “Um… a small black coffee, I think.”
Carmilla rolls her eyes. “And a small black coffee for the venerable doctor.”
Jekyll waits until she moves the few feet to the order pick-up area and pays the bill, the Countess distinctly averting her gaze.
*
“So,” starts Carmilla, seated at a table in the corner of the all-night coffee bar. “You were awfully quiet back there. What did you think of your first meeting?”
Jekyll wraps his hands around the hot cardboard of his cup. To take surface level physical stock of the pair, he would seem in far better shape than his younger associate, but despite his richer complexion his face lacks any of her vivacity. His expression barely moves as he talks. “It seems a perfectly inoffensive way to spend an hour.”
Carmilla arches a brow. “My, doctor, you do not mince your words.”
His hands clench ever so slightly tighter around the cup. “I would think that a young lady of such noble birth would understand politeness.”
“Young lady? I’ll have you know that I am more than three times your age.”
He blinks at her for a moment, his mild offense being supplanted by surprise. “You do not look it.”
“Now that is not a very polite thing to say to an aged lady of such noble birth.”
“Yes.” He shakes his head slightly, as if to dislodge the state of mind. “My apologies. How do you like the meetings?”
Her face pinches, though not necessarily maliciously, and she relaxes in her chair. “I asked you first, and I’d like a proper answer before I give you mine.”
The sounds of chatter and cutlery against porcelain echo dimly in the all-night cafe, and Jekyll tries to remind himself that it is unlikely for any of the other patrons to be eavesdropping on their conversation. He takes a sip or two of his coffee and winces at the bitterness each time. “I think it is very admirable for those people to get up and tell everyone the whole stories of their lives.”
Carmilla waits a beat. “But?”
“But… I don’t understand how we’re all meant to just sit there and give polite applause to people telling us about how they lied, cheated, and stole from innocent people. I simply do not think that is conducive to reforming the spirit.”
She takes a drink from her chocolate and plays that statement over her mind like the sugar over her tongue. “That’s not really what it’s for, I don’t think. I must confess, I do not derive much value from it myself, but I am led to believe that it is more… meant to serve as a source of inspiration. ‘If I fell so far and managed to right myself, then surely you can, too.’” She pauses for a moment. “There’s the transparency, as well. Our sort tend to be liars, so some find it cathartic to put the whole unvarnished truth out there and not be punished for it. You might want to try it and see how it feels.”
“I rather think the unvarnished truth of what he did deserves punishment,” he mumbles, looking at the tabletop.
She frowns. “He?”
Jekyll stares at his reflection in the surface of his coffee. Slowly, he says, “The unvarnished truth of what I did.” Carmilla moves as if to speak, but he doesn’t let her. “Your turn. What do you think of the group?”
She smirks. “Fair enough. On the theme of transparency, I have been attending for about eighteen months and it doesn’t particularly suit me. This group is very emphatic on an abstinence-only approach, which is not compatible with my particular delicacy of health. There are other groups with different ethoses that I might find more agreeable, but this one is closest to where I live, and if I’m–” a smile rolls over her lips, settling into a self-satisfied grin– “drinking in moderation, shall we say, then I tend to lack the physical fortitude that would give me the luxury of choosing between a nearer or a farther event.” With a spiderweb-pale hand, she gestures demonstrably at where her cane leans against the table. “It may work perfectly well for you, but to be quite honest I only come to meet people; the prescribed ‘recovery’ process does nothing for me.”
Jekyll blinks. “But you’re a vampire.”
“How observant of you.”
“You–” he struggles to put words to a train of thought that he reckons should be obvious. “How can you speak about your own ‘delicacy of health’ when you, you–Do you not kill people?”
She remains infuriatingly languid. “Not recently, though quite prolifically in the past.”
“Do you not care?”
“Not especially; if I’m not doing it anymore then I do not see much point in attempting to manufacture guilt over a problem that has already been solved.”
“Evidently it has not been solved if you continue to drink from people.”
She does not move, but something in her body language sharpens. Her dark eyes flash and she breathes heavily, deliberately. Eventually, she again speaks. “Like all living creatures, my nature demands that I feed. In my current arrangement, I commit no harms without the free and informed consent from all parties involved, and if I can acquire said consent then I fail to see why I should have to sacrifice my life in the name of moral purity.”
Without warning, a ghost of the bitter taste of poison passes over Jekyll’s tongue. He sees the handle of Carmilla’s cane and feels the shape of a similar implement in his hand, snapping in two as it breaks under pressure. Yet here he is. “Once more, my apologies,” he says.
She continues to glare until, as suddenly as her mood had come on, it lifts, and she is once again nonchalant. “Of course. But I think you should learn to hold your tongue if you plan to acquaint yourself with more people like us. Not everyone is quite so forgiving as I.”
He nods curtly and, before he can restrain himself, spits out, “I am not a stranger to killing, either.”
Carmilla takes another drink of her chocolate. “Many are not.”
Again, that is not his line of thinking, but he cannot get his thoughts to leave his tongue. He tries again, the words just barely passing through his lips like a wisp of smoke. “I poisoned myself with cyanide and it failed to take. That is why I’m here.”
“…Ah.”
“I–” No , he cannot submit to decorum, he must say what he thinks. “I am not a good person and I never have been. I played pretend and managed my vices well enough for most of my life, and then, a few years ago, I suddenly found a way to turn off my conscience. With a bit of chemical help from my medical supplies, I could feel good for the first time in my memory and actually enjoy being the fullest extent of who I am, and I felt the most profound flood of relief that a man has ever experienced.”
Carmilla gives him a moment to continue for himself, and when he does not, says, “And then you hurt someone.”
“Yes.” Deep breaths. “But it wasn’t even that that made me try to… put a permanent end to it. I tried quitting a few times at first and it never stuck, every time I relapsed into my habits the toll it took–no, not the toll, I became worse. I lost all ability to control myself and knew my life was about to break in two with no way to stop it, so I elected to break myself first. But that didn’t stick either.”
“Congratulations on pulling through.” She keeps her voice low and even. “I know that many people think of suicide as something uniquely shameful, but there are several members of our group with comparable histories–”
“No, that’s not, that is not what I’m trying to say, I…” He downs the rest of his coffee with enough speed that he doesn’t taste it. “I am half a monster, and experience has taught me many times that I do not have the strength to kill that part of me. The tighter I grip, the worse the fall. I don’t think I can sustain this.”
“Then the solution seems apparent to me: stop gripping so tightly.”
“But I don’t work like that, there is no ‘moderation’ for me.”
“Don’t be ridiculous, I assume there was some middle point between fanatical Calvinism and all-out murder. What were those ‘vices’ you were so ashamed of in the first place?”
Listening to the room sounds of the cafe. No one is listening, he is sure of it. But even so. “I do not like to talk of it. It’s undignified.”
“I promise that however depraved you feel yourself to be, I am acquainted with someone far worse, and in all likelihood it is me. There is no sin that could lower my opinion of you.”
God on high, it won’t leave his tongue.
“Dr. Jekyll?”
He appeases himself with an allusion. “Let it be enough for me to say that I took a house in Soho.”
“Right. I take your meaning.” Jekyll stares at his hands, but he hears her drain her cup and place it back down. Then, he hears a sharp breath. “If it helps to hear, I started coming to meetings because my girlfriend found out I was draining her.”
He does not move to look at her face, but he watches the absence of her reflection in the polished wood of the tabletop.
“Her father tried to kill me when he discovered the true nature of my intentions towards his daughter, and she, um, quite rightly said she would never see me again unless I sorted myself out. It is true that I do not harbor much regret for the fate of most of my victims, but… I do care for her. So I sorted myself out. And, ironically, it’s, it’s only because she now lets me feed from her that I can stop myself from draining others.”
Finally, Jekyll lifts his head to frown at her.
She chuckles and leans in by a few degrees. “I was taken aback as well, but she offered. It turns out it wasn’t the drinking itself that she couldn’t stand, it was the lying and the taking more than she could afford to give. For the first few weeks of the new arrangement, she would hold a stake to my chest as I fed just in case I wouldn’t let go, which was… but she eventually built up enough trust in me to stop. And neither of us has died yet.
“Before, I used to have to move town every few months, I couldn’t tell anyone who I really was, every second I knew that discovery of my true self would draw hatred from everyone I held dearest, and I, I would not be able to control myself like I do currently if I did not have someone who cared for me as she does. I have shown her, in exacting detail, the absolute worst parts of myself, and she is still willing to have me because she did not discount the value of the rest of me.” She swallows. “So. I know that there are ways to live without killing the half of yourself that is the monster.”
All at once, Jekyll is aware that he is sitting with a teenager. A teenager who has been alive for centuries, but a teenager nonetheless.
“In truth, I feel that thinking of oneself as in halves is the first mistake. I use the same hands to dress her wounds now as I did to hold her down while I entranced her.”
Jekyll smiles to himself. “I have had particular trouble with that concept.”
“Many do.” She readjusts her posture so her back is once again straight. “Somewhere in that monologue was some applicable advice, I hope.”
“I wager there was.”
“Excellent.” She makes a show of checking a watch that she does not have. “I need to make my exit, if I do not take care then the sun has a tendency to sneak up upon me.” She stands and grabs her cane. “And please, if I pay the bill next time then at least do me the decency of ordering something you actually like.”