Nocticadia

by Keri Lake

“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.”

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

“And so the moth befriended the flame.”

“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.”

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

She was the warmth of the sun on a cold and rotting corpse. The first breath after a lifetime of death.

“These little things you do that mess with my head.” Hand raking through his hair, he paced. “There’s a violence in my blood. This rage that twists in my gut, and it makes me sick. I’m fucking sick when it comes to you. That I could even fathom breaking his neck

…”

You’re in the throes of fire now, Little Moth. Show me how much it burns.”

“I feel it, too,” he said, as if reading my mind. “It’s inside of me. Burning like a fever I can’t shake. It’s a spiteful, prideful anger that refuses to admit the truth.” “What truth?” I asked, my voice shaky. Nervous. “That I would kill for you without a beat of hesitation, or remorse. And yet, at the same time, I could be reduced to nothing more than a pile of ash without you. I’m weak for you, Lilia.”

“I have lived a lifetime in death–a cold existence in an endless void. Never feeling. Never knowing the warmth of touch. Every unfulfilling breath a suffocating reminder of how hollow I’d become. It wasn’t until you came along and cast the first ray of light that I felt a pulse of life. A pull that I couldn’t resist.”

It was you who dragged my heart from this insensate slumber. And it’s you for whom it beats now.” Sighing, he stroked his hand down my hair, brows pulled tight. “It’s a fucking wreckage, though. Scarred and caged by ravaged bones. But it belongs only to you.”

Mortui vivos docent. The dead teach the living.