Nocticadia

by Keri Lake

With curious steps, I entered the moderately-sized office, where the scent of leather, polished wood, and old books mingled on the air along with the mouthwatering echoes of his cologne. If the lab was the heartbeat of his research, this room was the brain, given all of the medical and parasitology references that lined the bookshelves on each wall. Sketches of human anatomy lay scattered on the coffee table as I sauntered past it. My gaze fawned over the exquisitely carved, cherrywood desk gleaming in the dim light. Behind it, a vintage-looking record player in a wooden cabinet sat with the lid cocked open. And above that, on the wall hung a plaque with the Latin phrase: Mortui vivos docent. I recognized it from a forensics class I’d taken two semesters ago.