With Defiance

"Father, I have sinned..."

Carmilla said. Her voice was low, slow, heavy, and almost perfectly flat. Except for one wavering note. Although she stood straight and tall, still and serious, there was one single tremble. Was it of anger? Or fear? Or both? Or something else?

"For I have loved a woman without fear..."

She finally confessed her innermost thought, her innermost sin, her innermost desire, and the smallest of smiles twitched at her lips.

"Loved her with all the fires of Hell burning inside me."

She said, voice breaking again. It was a brief stumble, but audible. She clutched at her chest, as though grasping at the strands of smoke she could feel burning through her ribs and wafting out of her skin. But it was strange, the fire was not entirely unpleasant. It burned hot in her belly, tongues of light licking upwards and searing her ribcage and tickling her heart. On some days, the fire melted it into oblivion, but on others, the flames only seemed to stoke it, each billowing puff of smoke causing it to beat just a bit harder, a bit faster, a bit longer... a bit stronger. The smoky warmth of affection was fueled by the sparking embers of passion and both of them were fed by the smoldering flames swirling below, bright and golden, shining and dancing even through her outer darkness. It was a raging inferno burning and soothing her heart in equal amounts.

"I have loved a woman with open palms,"

The young woman confessed, unthinkingly unfolding her hands and facing them upward to Heaven, but whether she was doing this to bear her guilt or to display her passionate pleasure was unknown both to her and the judge to whom she was speaking.

"Open legs.

"Rolling hips."

Carmilla closed her eyes, not in piety or pain, but memory. A warm and beautiful memory of the Girl. Those memories of warmth and cold, strength and vulnerability, peace and excitement, rhythm and rhyme, constancy and change, truth and privacy, day and night, bedroom and public, these paradoxes that fed off of one another in equal amounts, love fueling love fueling love. There was only one thing missing...

"And no apology..."

"Father, I have sinned,"

Carmilla repeated, but this time, the hollowness in her voice had turned into a calm, resigned, matter-of-fact tone. It was almost as flat, but it was not hollow. It was pitchless and unwavering, but definitely not emotionless. There was something there this time, stronger than before, although her words were spoken without a single tremble. Just simple fact. It was the strength of acceptance and acknowledgement.

"For I have shunned your churches,"

She looked around the empty, crumbling chapel in which she stood. Twice she had been here when her life was lost. The first was centuries ago, the other, not anywhere near as long, but both of the memories stung as fresh as yesterday. The wood was rotting, the doors were falling in, hinges rusted beyond recognition or salvation. The pews were the same, mold, insects and rodents living in what remained of the couches. Ivy covered the walls inside and out and crept across the cracked, caked tiles of the floor. God's mighty alter had faded into a slab of wood, old symbols whittled away not by the hand of a woodworker, but of Father Time himself. The golden cross and the holy pictures surrounding it were gone, whether stolen or simply removed was unknown to Carmilla, and she didn't care at all. The stain glass windows were all broken out, only shards around the edges still remaining, the Bibles and hymnals were all gone, the preacher's pulpit had fallen over long, long ago.

"And scorned your priests,"

She continued. Although none were present, Carmilla could still see the stuffy old white men in their stuffy old white robes of virtue. How she hated them! Mocked and scorned, despised and disdained them! And their stupid books that they toted. Their noses were always in the air, so how did they ever even read what was in those books that they lauded so highly? Or was it all so they could occasionally peer down from their high, stiff collars and scoff at what passed under their noses? Holy and untouchable, almost so distant that they were little more than myth to Carmilla.