Nocticadia

by Keri Lake

I lurched for her arm to pull her up, but halted when, from her mouth, a long, skinny, fibrous creature slithered out past her lips and into the water. Three more tumbled after it–two from her nose. A scream shook out of me, and limbs frozen with horror, I watched as the worms wriggled over the tub’s porcelain floor and forged a path through the water to gather at the drain holes. At least two dozen more poured free, forcing her mouth and nostrils wide. More still after that. They all wriggled toward the plugged drain.

🤢😥

The story went that Bee had eventually come out of her room to find me passed out on the bathroom floor and Mom in the tub with her wrists slashed. She’d run back into her room and called Conner, and by the time he’d arrived, she was hiding under her bed shaking and muttering to herself.

Her poor little sis 😟

Sometime after Mom had died, the two of them went into some covert business together that Conner claimed was nothing more than selling scrap metal they’d scrounged. I didn’t buy that for one second, not since the time I’d watched the two of them beat the shit out of a guy in the back alley of our apartment. Any time I brought it up, though, an argument would ensue, always ending with Conner telling me to mind my own business. I didn’t like it, and I sure as hell didn’t like Angelo. The guy was a creep sundae with a rotten, moldy cherry.

“Little Lily cat,” he said, ignoring my question. “You’re not so little anymore, are you, kitten?” “Don’t call me that.” “Why’s it bother you? You got a boyfriend, or something?” The sound of his chuckle when I didn’t answer him grated on my nerves. “No. Of course you don’t have a boyfriend. Men are dicks, right?” “Pretty much.” “You ever touched one before? A dick, that is.”

🤢

Eyes riveted on my lips, he smiled, his breath reeking of beer and cigarettes. “Sometimes, I imagine your blood all over my cock, and it makes me hard.” Cold, black eyes shifted from my lips to my eyes, the smile on his face fading. “Does it bother you when I say that?” I bit the inside of my cheek to steady the trembling of my jaw. The guy scared the shit out of me, but I refused to admit that to him. Something told me he got off on fear.

Yeah, this is terrifying 😟

“If it weren’t for me, your old man would be drowning in bills right now. It’s me who keeps your sister in that fucking quack school. And who keeps you from having to sell your pretty little kitty ass on the streets to pay for college.”

Ugh, that's why he keeps a POS like that around. 😐

One palm still crushed my throat, while his cigarette-toting hand gripped my wrist, and he glanced downward. “Memento mori,” he read from the tattoo on my forearm. “You’re one of those dark bitches who fantasizes about death all the time, is that it?” That wasn’t it, at all. In fact, the tattoo was a reminder of humility, but what did the dumb ass know about that?

Finally free of his grip, I skittered as far away from him as I could, my body still trembling from the encounter. He stamped his cigarette into my dilapidated slice of pizza. Not that I’d have eaten it anyway, with my stomach roiling and acids burning my throat. Sneering back at me, he strode out of the room. Not a minute later, the door clicked, announcing his exit, and I let out an exhale.

unrelated objects–small treasures I’d collected over the past couple of years. Bones of a long-dead sparrow, the bright red feather of a cardinal, which my mother had always told me was a gift from the angels, a squirrel’s rib bone, and six of my baby teeth in a tiny, corked bottle. Beneath all that sat a picture of me and my mother from before her sickness had taken hold, one of Bee’s barrettes with a yellow- and white-stone bumblebee, odd coins and rocks I’d collected, and a crystal Glinda had given me for protection. Inside the box, I deposited the rosary, then closed it up and set it back on my top shelf.

I’d written a paper for my microbiology class. A case study. Although meant to be fiction, the assignment was to come up with a fictional disease, and I’d taken the opportunity to write about my mother’s illness. A purging of guilt, really, seeing as writing the events down helped me realize how screwed up it was that I’d been her main caregiver in those weeks before she’d died. She’d refused to see a doctor and remained adamant that I not take her to any hospital, no matter how bad it’d gotten.

Still, even if I’d only been sixteen at the time, I couldn’t help but feel a small bit of blame for her rapid decline. For not insisting that she’d had it checked out when things had begun to worsen and she’d begun seeing things that weren’t there. Especially if it could’ve saved her in the end.

picture my mother had painted years before she’d gotten sick. A scenic cliffside seascape, with an ancient-looking oak whose curved branches held a small swing. It’d always brought me a sense of peace–such a faraway place from the shitty apartment in the shitty city. I’d asked her once if she’d ever been there before. “In a dream,” she’d said.

She’d possessed the beauty of an untamed flame, destructive and wild. My whole life, I’d been told that I was a spitting image of her. I’d never had the chance to be wild and untamed, though. Always felt more like the flame in those electric fireplaces—a fake contained by glass, without much potential to do anything. Life had shackled me the moment she’d gotten sick, and somehow, I just couldn’t break from those chains.

“It was my paper that decided admission?” “I’d be willing to bet on it. As I said, it was quite impressive and demonstrates the breadth of your understanding. Of a number of topics, really–parasitology, as well as physiology and research.” He pushed up from his chair and grabbed a photo from the bookshelf behind him. He stared at it a moment before placing it on the desk. On it, a much younger version of him stood before an aging stone building, with pointed spires that reminded me of Notre Dame Cathedral. “I can tell you from personal experience, once you attend Dracadia, you will not want to leave.”

The enormous building I’d seen in Professor Wilkins’ picture sat on a steep cliff, as if the foundation itself had been built into the rock formation. It looked to be centuries old, with its lichen-covered stones and intricately carved masonry rarely seen nowadays. A stone wall separated the campus from the surrounding woods, and what looked like a small town sat in the foothills of the cliff. The campus reminded me of something out of Dead Poets Society. Rich with tradition, opportunity. A dream. One too far out of reach for me.

Dracadian Gazette, dated only a few weeks ago, whose headline read: Homeless Woman Assaults Provost With Intent To Kill. It went on to describe a woman believed to be named Andrea Kepling, who’d been living in one of the abandoned houses on the island and had broken into the home of a Dr. Lippincott, the Provost of Dracadia University. Armed with a pickaxe, she’d accused him of putting worms in her belly, according to Lippincott’s wife, who’d witnessed the attack.

I didn’t even have to count to know there was at least a thousand dollars inside. My heart kicked up. The sting of tears burned my nose, and I shook my head. “I told Danica about you getting accepted into school.” Danica was our lead manager for the department, with whom I'd always had a decent relationship, so it didn’t trouble me that Jayda had told her. “Anyway, she rallied all the docs and nurses to pitch in for some extra cash. About a thousand and some change.” Enough to cover two months of Bee’s tuition. My cut, anyway. Plus a little extra. It’d give me a head start, let me find a job and possibly save up a couple more months.

Aw ❤️‍🩹

The alcoholism was obvious. What I hadn’t known at the time was that the man had abused his wife and sons–his youngest, to the point of his having fallen comatose. Wanted by police, he was on the run for an entire lifetime of crimes for which he’d never paid the piper. Perhaps that should’ve been good cause to turn him over to authorities, to act the hero for once in my godforsaken life. Heroics were boring.

Oh damn. A shady MMC the narrative acknowledges is a bad person, instead of trying to make excuses for. Interesting.

Eyes closed, I took deep breaths, focusing on the relief. The loosening of tension and slackening of clenched teeth. Seconds later, it diminished, and I fell onto my palms, catching my breath. Cold wet stones dampened my knees through the slacks and the balmy air cooled the sweat across my skin. The headaches had gotten worse in recent months, and often struck without warning. A worrisome evolution.

The pitch-black tunnels, untouched by light for centuries, had led us to the dark, abandoned cells. Long-forgotten prisons that still held the decayed bones of whomever had been unfortunate enough to dwell there. I’d since installed lighting throughout the tunnels, but even in the thick of summer, the ancient passageway casted an unnerving chill.

“Wh-wh-who are you?” I plucked a piece of lint from my black slacks and offered a small but insincere smile. “Professor Bramwell, which is entirely irrelevant.”

No—not lint picking 🙈

Lowering my gaze, I smiled and eased back in my chair again. “Oh. I wasn’t asking your permission, Mr. Barletta. You see, the whiskey you just chugged contains thousands of tiny eggs, each of them encased in a wonderful spore-like outer shell that protects it from the ethanol. In two days, those eggs will be embryonated as they settle into your very nutrient-rich liver. The larvae will continue to grow inside of you and, in another six days, will hatch from their eggs. That’s when the real fun begins.”

😨

sharp strike of pain hit either side of my head, and eyes screwed shut, I let out a grunt, rubbing the heel of my palm where the agony damn near vibrated my skull. Whatever Barletta said to me after fizzled to an annoying blur of sound, until it came back into sharp focus, and I opened my eyes. A short episode that time, thankfully.

I’d never been outside of Massachusetts before.

I keep forgetting they're in Massachusetts. The setting felt more NYC to me, from the way everyone talks.

My knees bounced incessantly as the train trundled forward. I turned toward the window, and waved as I watched Jayda pass me, like I was watching my old life slip away for the new one. I hadn’t even had time to let it sink into my head that I’d be attending an ivy league school. A respected university. Clawing at my own arm failed to break me out of the strange dream.

If she was only invited to be a test subject— 😐

The faded black map of veins, or vonyxsis, I’d noted on external examination served as the first clue. However, a few different parasitic toxins were known to cause the discoloration, so it didn’t necessarily confirm a case. The second clue was the putrid, dark colored fluids seeping from the incision. With how long she’d been stored, I’d have expected some fluid ejection, but not the profuse liquids that dripped into the catch basin under the examination table. And, fuck, that stench.

A Bombay cat I’d inherited after he’d somehow gotten into my lab, and I couldn’t, for the life of me, get rid of the damned thing. He kept the mice and rats away, though, so I’d decided to let the nosy little bastard stick around. “I see you decided to show up,” I said behind the mask and shield covering my face. “Almost started without you.”

Using the broad end of the knife, I shaved a small bit of the muscle from the bone, noting another defining characteristic of the parasite–bone striations. If I were to remove all of the muscle and flesh, her skeleton would undoubtedly be covered in faint black lines, like tiny fissures in the bones. Why, or how, the parasite managed such a thing remained a mystery.

😯

The head of the worm latched onto my glove, and though I felt nothing, the sight of it chomping onto my finger startled me, and I dropped it back into the decedent’s abdominal cavity. “Damn it!” The worm slid over the flap of skin, and down the edge of the examination table. I lurched for the floor drain just a few feet away, but before I could cover it with my shoe, the parasite slipped through the drain holes, and just like that, it was gone. Not even Bane, my cat, could get to it fast enough, as he sat pawing at the drain, clearly depressed for the missed opportunity.

🤢

I found what I was looking for in the prefrontal cortex–a pocket contained within a clear membranous sac wherein the purest toxin, aside from what could’ve been harvested from the liver about a week prior, remained perfectly encased. With a needle tip, I pipetted the fluid from inside and deposited it into a prepared test tube. I held up the bright purple fluid with its black marbled threads to the light. Might’ve been entirely too late to utilize anything, as she’d been dead for quite some time. Although I’d have gotten the best results within minutes of death, it was still worth hanging onto the sample. Perhaps whatever hell the woman had suffered in life, with her illness, might one day offer a sliver of promise in her death.

Clearly, the worm had evolved and I suspected it might’ve been due to repeated inoculation in humans—a hearty human liver certainly could’ve been reason enough to grow teeth.

Creepy. This book is delivering a genuinely unsettling and disgust-inducing atmosphere. 🫢

“I don’t suppose you have any liquor hiding in here somewhere?” he asked, brows winged up with a sickening hope. Of course I did. After all, one didn’t take a job working for high class assholes without something to numb the misery of it all. I reached down into the bottom drawer of my desk and grabbed a bottle of bourbon, along with two glasses. “Brace yourself, Devryck.” Lippincott was the only one who didn’t bother to address me by doctor, or professor. I hadn’t decided whether it was a friendly gesture or meant to be condescending.

Langmore might be trying to fast track these students behind my back, and if that’s the case, I intend to catch the weaselly bastard red-handed. Therefore, I’d like her to stay in your class. If you detect any monkey business with the asshole, report to me. I’ve got my reappointment coming up, and I don’t need any surprises.” “You’re asking me to babysit an undergrad.” The tone of my voice couldn’t have been more unenthusiastic. “Who is she?” “Lilia Vespertine. Perhaps you can take her on as an assistant–” “Absolutely not.” I took another sip of my whiskey, relishing the burn in my throat as I swallowed back the urge to punch him.

“Last I checked, all evidence of those women having participated in the study was eliminated.” It was sickening the way someone’s entire life could be turned into a lie. How easily one’s existence could be wiped out without question, or explanation. Every detail of the two who’d participated in the study and subsequently left had been thoroughly erased without a shred of consequence.

Unless I suddenly became a threat to the society, I’d suffer nothing more than a slap on the wrist. Lippincott, on the other hand, carried the weight of failure. Fortunately for him, I had other reasons riding my ass to stay motivated. Most notably, the fact that, at any moment, every muscle in my body could lock up and seize, including my heart, and throw me into cardiac arrest. So, yeah, I felt the pressure.

In the moon’s light, a thick fog hovered over the water, as I peered through the window toward the ocean in the distance. The ocean. I’d only seen it once as a teenager. As much as my sister and I always dreamed of going to the beach, my mother had always refused, opting instead for camping trips in the woods. As if my mother had feared the water.

“Dracadia was once a monastery,” Kendall said, staring out through the gondola window. “And an asylum, right?” “Yes. It has a rather dark history. But I’m sure that wouldn’t impress someone like you.” At that, I frowned, not quite catching her meaning. While a snarky comeback sat perched on the tip of my tongue, I didn’t want that on my first day, so instead, I turned back toward the window, and for the rest of the ride, I remained quiet as she prattled on about student life on campus.

Wft? "Someone like you"? What does that mean—someone *poor*?

Barletta stared off toward the center of his cell. “My old man was a hothead, too. Always flying off with his fist.” He tapped a finger against the side of his head. “Used to say my brain was made of stone, as many times as I got hit and got back up.” “You and I have nothing in common.” A pathetic shame darkened his eyes as he glanced at me and to the floor. “Yeah. I guess not.” He fidgeted for a moment, seemingly deep in thought. “My death … it’ll help someone?”

This characterization is so good 😯

He flinched and covered his face with his palms. Without the alcohol shielding him, I imagined his guilt was eating him alive faster than the worms hatching in his belly. “This is fucked, you know? The way I am … the way I feel. I could really turn shit around. Do better with my life.” “Yes, I suppose in some alternate universe you could’ve. Unfortunately for you, I found you first.”

It is so nice reading an *actually* morally grey MMC. Sarah J Maases of the world take note.

“I’m looking forward to learning more about the history of the school.” “Well, you’re in luck. It so happens to be a requirement for working in this department. It’s our duty to preserve the precious texts we managed to recover from Adderly’s ship. So, your job for the next week is to familiarize yourself with our history so that you might be a resource to others.”

“We’ll start here,” Kelvin said, gesturing to the many books in the room. “Leave any books that you read on the table. I’ll take care of them. It’s important they return to their proper places.” “Got it. I just … spend the couple hours I’m here reading?” “Yes, exactly.” I couldn’t have picked a more perfect job. Except maybe one that required sleeping.

Every exchange with Spencer just felt awkward and forced on my part. I’d barely been cordial with the poor guy. So, why the hell did he bother?

So many theories swirling in my mind. Maybe he's just a red herring—he's honestly just interested in knowing her?

Hands clasped together, she dared another step toward him, and the desperation in her tone had me shaking my head. “I promise it won’t happen again. Please give me another chance.” Another chance? Why she pined over the asshole was baffling and, as a fellow woman, painful to watch. I wanted to leap out from behind the seat and shake some sense into her.

🙃

“Excel,” I whispered to myself, emphasizing the word. “Ex-cel.” Had he known I was there when he’d said it? That I’d heard him? What was it about a man known to be brilliant but grouchy handing out a random compliment like a decadent piece of chocolate that I wanted to savor before it melted? He’s an asshole, the voice inside my head argued back. Don’t put too much into it. Yeah, he was. An exceptionally good-looking and smart asshole.

No, girl! Be strong 😆

“It’s what we call the Midnight Lab. A play on Noctisoma.” “Ah. Right. So why midnight?” “That’s when the parasites are most active.” Somehow, that made sense. I remembered in my mother’s illness that she’d always seemed to be most active at night. Wandering for food, or staying up watching TV. I once awoke to her eating raw hamburger and just about lost my mind. She’d always seemed to get weird cravings like that after we’d all gone to bed.

A quick hand covered it, and I turned to see Spencer standing beside me. “They’re sensitive to light.” As soon as he’d said the words, I looked back to see the glowing reflective eyes of a moth staring back at me, while it jabbed a long slender appendage that I guessed to be a proboscis through the mesh holes. It reminded me of the way my mother’s eyes had changed toward the latter stages of her illness, and the way she’d almost hiss when I’d turned the lights on in her room.

No one touched what belonged to me without repercussions. My class. My requirements. My student. Without a doubt, Lilia Vespertine was going to be a massive headache. But she was my headache.

He paused his abhorrent eating and stared off for a moment. “Fucking hell, every time you tell me about this thing, I get more freaked out. Is this gonna be like one of those Alien scenes, where it pops out of my chest?”

Relying on Conner was like praying for snow in Hell.

Ungrateful little pricks who only saw her as a set of toned legs and pussy. They had no idea the girl was brilliant and witty. Too damn smart for her age. Too damn beautiful to be seen as something so simple and entertaining.

How does *he* know she's witty? They didn't interact in depth enough for her to show that.