I can’t remember how old I was when I first read Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu’s Gothic novella, Carmilla. I couldn’t have been older than thirteen, because that was the year I obsessively researched vampires for the footnote-filled paper that would allow me to graduate from middle school and enter high school. In my memory, Carmilla is just always there, a defining piece of my inner vampire mythos. In rereading it recently, I was struck by how much it read like a dark, hothouse fairy tale. I absolutely adore the language—all the hot lips and languid, gloating eyes—that made me fall in love with vampires in the first place. I always wondered what the story would have been like from Carmilla’s point of view, though, so in this story, I decided to try to puzzle it out.