Nocticadia

by Keri Lake

“The wealthy possess an insatiable appetite for the rare and priceless. They stare because you’re the only thing worth staring at.”

Calling her beautiful was like calling the sun lukewarm. She’d blazed like the hottest part of a flame in that dress. And fuck me, I’d felt the heat.

“And so the moth befriended the flame.”

It went against everything I was. Everything I believed. And yet, it was everything.

Love was also a sickness. An incurable disease. The kind that crawled inside the muscles and bones, and persisted long after death.