Nocticadia

by Keri Lake

My social anxiety came courtesy of my mother, who’d always shunned the notion that people were inherently good. In her eyes, everyone was a serial killer until proven otherwise, and somehow, a small bit of that paranoia had manifested in me over the years.

“What separates monsters from good men is only a matter of perspective. In your eyes, I’m a sick fuck for what I’ve done to you. But I, on the other hand, see you as a parasite.”

“Stay out of trouble, Curious Moth,” he said, as he strode for the door. Curious Moth. A nickname. A fitting one, too, given the fact that I had no intentions of avoiding the flame.

“That is the tragedy of women, isn’t it? We deny ourselves beauty for the sake of misleading men.”

“I love money, but wealth is exhausting. The look on your face when you first saw yourself in this dress is something I rarely see. I found it … gratifying.”

“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.”

Is this an allusion to Twilight?

“You’ve never touched the sea?” “I was always scared of it. The vastness. The power. The way it could sweep a person off their feet and carry them

miles away from shore. Then you’re alone and adrift in the middle of nowhere. With God knows what swimming beneath you.” I stared off, imagining the visual I’d had on the ferry ride. “Deep waters terrify me.”

“You’re a sickness inside of me that begs never to be cured. Infecting me with this unshakable craving for things I shouldn’t want.”

As toxic as it was, I relished this game between us, the push and pull, the stolen touches and delicious tension. I knew it was wrong. I knew what hell this would bring.

I both hated and craved the addicting way he’d hooked himself into my veins and fed me with this unbridled and reckless desire. It went against everything I was. Everything I believed. And yet, it was everything.

“And because I’m a selfish prick who has to live with the fact that I cannot have you to myself, I’m going to ruin you so that any boy who comes after me will leave you deeply unsatisfied, and you’ll be left fucking your own fingers, desperate to remember the time you had your professor’s face between your legs.”

like a gluttonous beast fattening itself on my pleasure.

“Here, I thought it was the moth who would succumb to the fire.”

noticing Achilles and Patroclus vigorously flapping their wings, their ends attached to one another. Mating. Achilles broke loose and almost looked like he stumbled away, before Patroclus returned again, wings flapping so fast and frantically,

Is this an allusion to Song of Achilles?