Chapter Text
a soul in tension that's learning to fly
.
There's no sensation to compare with this
Suspended animation, A state of bliss
//
Sadie dies on a Tuesday.
It isn’t unexpected, exactly, because Sadie has been sick for a while now. But even so Carmilla finds that she is entirely unprepared for the onslaught of feelings she experiences when Lafontaine knocks on her door Wednesday morning with the news that Sadie has passed away in her sleep.
“But, why?” Is the only thing that comes out of her mouth, “why?”
Lafontaine just shakes their head, and Carmilla spends the rest of her day sitting alone on her couch, wondering why bad things happen to good people.
Because Sadie was a good person. She was the best person, in Carmilla opinion, because Sadie genuinely cared about everyone. She didn’t mind the constant questions that Carmilla asked, and she listened when Carmilla got excited about something. Sadie was the kind of person that Carmilla wished she could be, and now she was gone and Carmilla’s chest hurts in a way that it never had before. Like a hole has been ripped through her chest, even though she is still perfectly whole physically.
And she still couldn’t figure out why.
Why did this happen? Why now? Why did it have to be Sadie?
Sadie dies on a Tuesday, and the following Monday Carmilla stands next to the open casket, wondering why it is she can’t cry.
Everyone else is crying, and everyone else is sad and telling stories and holding each other, murmuring comforting words into each other’s embrace. Carmilla sits with her hands folded in her lap, eyes trained on the open casket where Sadie is laying peacefully.
It is hard to believe that that is how she is going to stay. That Carmilla will never walk across the hall and be greeted with her warm hugs and welcoming smile. She will never sit on the grass by the playground, listening to Sadie’s stories. Sadie will never laugh or smile or cry or eat Christmas dinner with her, and it is hard to comprehend because there is so much more Carmilla wants to do with Sadie.
They haven’t gone to the aquarium together, and Carmilla still hasn’t learnt the recipe to Sadie’s fudge brownies. Everything seems so unfinished, like there is still more to be done.
But maybe it isn’t Sadie’s life that is unfinished. Carmilla has, after all, heard about Sadie’s adventures. Has heard about her trip across Europe after she finished high school, and her affair with an English gentlemen when she was in her twenties. Sadie had loved and lost and seen her children grow up and love and lose as well. She had seen her grandchildren born.
Sadie had lived a good life, Carmilla thinks, and as she watches the casket get lowered into the ground she looks towards LaFontaine. They have tear marks down their face, but there is an air of acceptance about them that makes Carmilla all the more sure that Sadie had not lived an unfished life. It was her time to go, and it is sad and Carmilla is going to miss the older woman’s presence in the apartment complex, but Sadie wouldn’t want her to be sad for long.
So Carmilla goes back to her apartment, and before she goes to bed that night she looks out the kitchen window at the spot on the grass she used to sit on with Sadie, and she promises herself that next Saturday she will go down and have a picnic like they used to do together.
Because even though Sadie’s time on earth has ended, Carmilla’s is still going and she has a lot left to do.
+++
“I still have a lot left to do...”
It becomes a sort of mantra in the months following Sadie’s death, and maybe that is a good thing because it means that Carmilla is actively trying to pursue the things that she wants in her life as opposed to simply letting things happen whether she wants them to or not. It is as though Sadie dying has opened a door for Carmilla that she hasn’t realised had been shut in the first place.
She has spent a great deal of her life letting things happen to her. Sure, she had applied for jobs and pursued her interests in college from an academic perspective, but as far as the social aspects were concerned Carmilla has never felt a need for them. She wasn’t so much a partygoer in college as the loud noises and large crowds made her nervous, and she enjoyed the familiarity that routine came with so she never spontaneously did anything.
A great deal of the life experiences she had been a part of was not so much pursued as accidently accumulated. And that was enough, for a long time. She never really thought she needed or wanted anything further.
Carmilla enjoys her life. It is familiar and fulfilling, for the most part.
So why is it that she suddenly feels as though something is missing?
+++
Eighteen days after Sadie’s funeral, Carmilla goes to visit Mark Hollis.
He welcomes her in as he always does, and Carmilla sits down at the table and waits for Mark to come out of the kitchen with two mugs of coffee and a plate of biscuits because that’s what they always did when Carmilla came to visit.
When he’s seated on the opposite side of the table, Carmilla picks up her biscuit and takes a bite before blowing on her coffee and taking a sip. “How are you?”
Mark smiles at her, picking up his coffee mug and holding it in both hands. “I’m doing well.”
“How’s Laura?”
The smile falls slightly, and Carmilla frowns because she doesn’t know much about reading facial expressions but she knows enough to know that a faltering smile means that something isn’t good.
“What happened?”
Mark sighs, and places the mug back on the table, staring into it before looking back up to meet Carmilla’s gaze.
“She’s uh, been having some issues at work.”
Carmilla frowns. “Why?”
Mark stares at her with pursed lips and an unreadable expression on his face, and Carmilla counts the seconds in her head (twenty-two), before Mark sighs again, shaking his head.
“Are you sure you want to know?”
“Why would I ask if I didn’t want to know? Is Laura okay?”
There’s another pause. This time slightly shorter (twelve), before Mark is picking up his coffee mug again and staring at Carmilla over the top of it.
“Danny has been uh…causing some issues.”
The rush of anger that shoots through Carmilla is unusual, and she jolts in her seat and her hand hits the mug. She isn’t aware that the mug had tipped and the liquid had spilt over her hand until she is pulled away from the table and led to the kitchen.
“Sorry. Sorry. Sorry.” She repeats, as Mark runs the cold water over her hand. “Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry.”
From a distance, she hears Mark say that it’s okay, but all Carmilla knows is the spilt coffee and the cold water rushing over her hand.
Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry…
+++
She doesn’t visit Mark for exactly three months after that incident.
+++
When she was a child, Carmilla’s mother had put her in therapy.
At the time, Carmilla didn’t really understand why she didn’t enjoy the experience, because everyone was telling her that, “it’s for your own good, sweetie” and, “this will help you be normal”
The therapist that her mother hired was an older woman named Betsy, and Carmilla saw her three times a week on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays at 4pm.
Betsy worked in a small office in the same building as the family doctor, and Carmilla really hated the room she worked out of because everything was yellow. Everything except the hugged cushioned chairs that were brown, and the room as a whole just made her eyes hurt and gave her a headache.
She endured it, though, because she thought that was what she was supposed to do. She was supposed to go see Betsy at 4pm on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays at 4pm, and she was supposed to get better.
The thing Carmilla came to understand in the years after Betsy was that there was nothing wrong with her in the first place.
Betsy was working under the assumption that Carmilla needed fixing. That Carmilla was somehow broken. Betsy was working under the assumption that Carmilla needed to function in a certain way so that she appeared “normal” – whatever that meant. And the more Carmilla grew to become independent – to find her place in the world – the more she came to understand that there was nothing about her that needed fixing. She wasn’t – and isn’t – broken.
Betsy was wrong, in that regard, just as she was wrong about nearly everything she worked with Carmilla on, and Carmilla sometimes wonders what she would be like if her mother had never forced her to go and see Betsy at all.
Maybe, she thinks, she’d be less scared about what others think of her.
Dr Fieldman is nothing like Betsy, which is probably why Carmilla likes him so much.
He isn’t patronising, and he doesn’t work out of an office with yellow walls and brown couches, and when he talks to Carmilla, she feels as though he is being really honest with her.
When she talks to him, she feels as though he’s actually listening.
Like he actually cares.
Which is why Carmilla tells him about her feeling as though her life is unfinished.
“Well of course it is,” Dr. Fieldman replies, “you’re still very young.”
“I wish to do more,” Carmilla replies, “I wish to do more. To be more. I want to be able to look back on my life and feels as though I’ve accomplished something.”
Dr Fieldman studies her for a minute. Carmilla knows because she counted it in her head. When he does answer, he cocks his head to the right and looks at Carmilla with knitted eyebrows, an expression Carmilla had come to understand meant he was confused. “Do you feel as though you are not accomplishing anything right now?”
Carmilla shakes her head.
“Why is that?”
“I’m not doing anything. I have my routine, and it’s safe and I know what to expect and it gets me through the day. But if I continue with this routine, by the time I die I won’t have any stories to tell. The people who know me will say that I lived my life in the same routine from the time I graduated college until I died, and I don’t want that. I want people to look back at my life, and see that I’ve done things. That I’ve experienced things. I want to be able to look back and know that I haven’t lived my life with the same routine each day. I want something more.”
He nods his head, and Carmilla waits for him to reply, feeling her chest rise and fall heavily and her heart thumbing like a weight in her chest. Her fingertips tingle, and she wonders if this is what it feels like to be excited. To feel anticipation.
“Well,” Dr Fieldman says, uncrossing his legs and leaning forward in his chair. Carmilla leans forward too, but she’s not entirely sure why. It seems as though her body is working on autopilot today, but she finds that she doesn’t necessarily mind. “You have several options.”
Carmilla nods when he pauses, and when she doesn’t respond he continues.
“Many people, when they feel as though they’ve hit a rut in their life, make a change in their career.”
“I like my job,” Carmilla says. It’s true. She does enjoy her job, and it works for her and she don’t really feel like that’s the thing that isn’t right in your life.
Dr. Fieldman nods. “Well, we’ve talked extensively about your love life, and I don’t feel as though mixing that up at the moment is a particularly good thing to do right now. Have you considered travelling?”
“Travelling?”
He nods, and Carmilla frown because travelling has never really been something she’s spent a great deal of time doing. She went away for college, but she came right back again when she got a job offer, and she hasn’t really ever been one for weekend road trips or sight seeing.
“Not really.”
“Many people find travelling is a good way to get life experience. Students, particularly, go after high school or college. Cultural immersion, and getting to see different countries, that sort of thing.” He smiles, and you simply nod. “You don’t have to go international. Maybe start with a small road trip, or even a weekend in a different city. See what works for you.”
Carmilla nods in response.
+++
Joseph thinks that it’s a great idea, going travelling, when Carmilla tells him over dinner the following Friday.
Dinner with Joseph and James on Friday nights have become a regular occurrence, and Carmilla finds she doesn’t mind it so much because she likes James, and her father and her have been getting to know each other again and sometimes she feels as though things have gone back to way they were when she was five and he was swinging her onto his shoulders in the backyard.
“You could go over the summer. James and I have been talking about his post-graduation plans, the two of you could go together.”
Carmilla looks at James, and he smiles at her, nodding.
“Where would we go?”
Their father shrugs, and Carmilla turn to look at James again who is frowning slightly and she wonders if he’s changed his mind already. But then his face lights up and he grins at her with an excited gleam in his eye.
“How about Europe?”
//
Can't keep my eyes from the circling skies
Tongue tied and twisted Just an earth bound misfit I