Nocticadia

by Keri Lake

Honestly, it wouldn’t have surprised me if the guy had ties to Anonymous, the way he so swiftly got shit done.

Anonymous isn't an official organization, lol. There's no leader or set ethos. Any single person or group who does a hacking operation can call themselves Anonymous. It's just a placeholder for when you want to keep your identity a secret, just like "This poem was written anonymously."

Unfortunately for him, there was nothing left in me to appeal to, only a bottomless hollow in which to cast his useless tears. My heart was a graveyard. A cold and starving apathy entombed within slumbering bones.

I endured an hour of lecture and absorbed nothing. The phone lay beside me the whole time, taunting me to click on the site and look at how many nauseating views had accumulated in that amount of time.

Is she really letting this cut into her education? Nobody would have any idea it was her. So the biggest reason to be afraid is moot.

The tokens I’d accumulated sat at about nine-hundred thirty-five dollars, but I hesitated to hit the transfer button. What if that made the video populate again? No. Leave it alone.

Why would it do that? *How* would it do that? People have such little understanding of technology. 😆 Honestly, she's being a baby about this. Her sister *needs* the money, otherwise the kid is dropped with a useless "caregiver" who will inevitably leave her alone with his predator friend who he owes money to.

“For one who seems to have a good handle on neuroparasitology, perhaps you find the class a bore,” he suggested. “Absolutely not. I find your lectures riveting.” Again, his lips curved, higher that time. Without warning, he tossed me an apple that I hadn’t noticed him carrying. “In case you get hungry later. Good afternoon, Miss Vespertine.” With that, he strode off into the courtyard.

Why'd he give her an apple? Lol My knee-jerk reaction, that I know is 99.9% unlikely, is it's code—like "you can be the teacher's pet". But what if the apple is worm-ridden and he wants to infect her? 🤨 Maybe he just wants her to eat because he noticed she hasn't been, and the apple is the easiest hand-over item.

“You wouldn’t have to worry about that. The dress would be my treat. My thanks for saving me from having to go with Kendall.” Having to go with Kendall? Not like she wasn’t beautiful, and she definitely fawned over the guy. Not exactly a chore to ask her. “There’s a whole campus, Spencer. And candlelight sounds a little too … intimate.” “I promise it won’t be. Please. I’m willing to beg, if that’s what it’ll take.”

Why is he so set on her? Because she doesn't respond the way others would? Maybe her lack of enthusiasm is the very thing driving him forward, and he would lose interest if she was responsive.

“Is that a threat?” “Yes.” One step forward backed me against the shelf behind me, and he threw out his hand, creating something of a cage. “You have no idea who you’re fucking with.” I’d been cornered by men before, terrified of them, but that wasn’t the case with Professor Bramwell. This almost felt like an invitation. A dare. Heart pounding in my chest, I gave a defiant tip of my chin. “Who am I fucking with?” His gaze fell to my lips in a way that felt too intimate. Too riveted to mistake the thoughts that must’ve been churning in his head right then. “It’s fascinating how you can be so meek and bold at the same time.”

“The problem? Have you seen her?” Damned near every night when I closed my eyes, but I didn’t bother to say that aloud. “She’s a spitting image of her mother!” “A number of children are.” “Quit fucking mocking me, Devryck!” He slammed his fist against my desk,

Since he’d confirmed my suspicions about her mother’s participation in Crixson, I couldn’t wrap my head around the odds of it. Fate must’ve hit the crack pipe again, the way it kept reminding me how much of an absolute prick my father had been in life.

"The crack pipe"? What? This is an odd and edgy description I wouldn't expect an academic to have. A classist, yes, but not someone in his position.

It wasn’t the exaltation for what my research had the potential to achieve that I sought.

Oof, this sentence should be constructed clearer.

Asian guy with pink hair, a young woman with short black pixie hair and tawny skin, and a collection of piercings in her ears, nose, lip and eyebrow. And Briceson, who tipped back a fifth of what I recognized as Jack Daniels.

She's falling in with the punks...! viva le revolucion

Beside me sat a steaming mug of the black rock tea I’d gotten from the apothecary in town.

Oo, maybe that root is going to be important somehow.

From the foot of the garment bag, she grabbed a black leather case, which she opened. Inside, lay a beautiful diamond starflower choker, with diamond leaves between each flower, and a set of diamond earrings to match.

All the diamonds are weird. Is the designer going all out because Spencer said money is no object?

The dress held such a darkly alluring appeal that, when paired with the diamonds, made it almost seductive in itself. Way too much for a friendly date with Spencer. Way too much.

Ah, I see. Author wants protag making everyone thirsty, but mostly the asshole teacher who lusts after her.

Moaning, Barletta backed himself to the wall again. “Fuck! Fuck!” “Tell me how you got those cuts on your skin.” “Are you crazy?” A cross between a sob and laughter reverberated off the walls. “You put them there! You crazy son of a bitch!” He dug his fingers into his forearm, scratching and scraping, until the first red drops appeared. “Just like you put the worms in me. It was you!”

His brother is still alive! Can't wait to find out why he's sneaking around.

I hated the fucking dog and pony show of academic funding. Why the rich couldn’t quietly hand over their money without the need for caviar and banal conversation was beyond me.

The moment he turned around, though, it was too late. Our eyes locked. A chill wound down my spine as I took in the expression on his face. Not an exchange between student and professor, but like two strangers. Intentional and intense. I wanted to crawl inside myself and become invisible, for the way his gaze devoured me.

“There are so many of them. Where did they come from?” “Purchased from a breeder here on Dracadia. The university’s penance for using them to study Noctisoma. Dracadia is the only place these moths call home, so their numbers could deplete, if we’re not careful.” “They’re the organism’s natural host, though, aren’t they?” “Yes. But not every moth is doomed to be infected. Only the curious ones.”

Threats! Lovely.

“To be honest, I feel a little out of place here.” I glanced around, catching the stares of a few guests–men and women. “It feels like everyone knows I’m dirt poor.” “You think they’re staring at you because you’re poor?” He buried a smirk in his drink and tipped back a long swill that emptied the glass. His jaw flexed with the clenching of his teeth as he swallowed. “The wealthy possess an insatiable appetite for the rare and priceless. They stare because you’re the only thing worth staring at.”

“Ah. Yes. The night you gave Spencer a black eye?” I frowned. “I didn’t lay a hand on your son.” “He insists that you were the one wearing the ceremonial garb and that he caught you without the mask. He said you punched him in the face and knocked him out cold. He has a lovely black eye to mark the occasion.”

His brother again—Caedmon!

“Everyone at that table could damn near feel what was going on between the two of you.”

He stares a lot and everyone can see it. Spencer saw it before, and now everyone else does. Dude is being stupidly transparent about his obsession.

“You don’t find this grotesque?” he asked, staring off at his wall of trophies. “Yes, of course, but that’s what makes it fascinating. I want to learn based on that curiosity.” “You are a curiosity in yourself, Miss Vespertine.”

Across from me, Professor Bramwell sat with his back to me, peering into a microscope. “May I ask a question?” “That is a phrase that will echo in death,” he said, not bothering to look up, and I smiled.

His tongue swept across his lips as he slid the panties over my ankles and tossed them away. “Panties are for the modest,” he said with an air of disgust.

“It isn’t about that, Lilia. Stop being foolish and emotional. They’ll tear you apart to keep me here. Do you understand that? That is what I mean when I say my work is too important. They will make you look like an impoverished whore, to spare my good name.” “So, what? They think that, anyway, don’t they? Don’t you?”

Eyes locked on his, I reached up the hem of my skirt and pulled down my panties, slipping them over my ankles. I balled them in my palm and stuffed them into the pocket of his slacks, next to the hard length that brushed the edge of my thumb. “Panties are for the modest,” I said, and turned for the door.

Ha!

The sooner I handed the report over to Lippincott, the more time I could buy. After all, the toxin wasn’t perfect. I’d still had a few jitters and the inability to control my body temperature. It also gave the feeling of crawling skin, which I’d noticed more profoundly when Lilia had left. And the sex drive.

I like that there's a canonical reason for his high libido. He's not just an older men acting like a sex-nuts young man by default.

Furious, I fell into my seat, unlatching my belt as I had done so many times before, rubbing myself raw to feed that insatiable monster that clawed at my insides, desperate and hungry. Is this what you want? Will you let me fucking work, if I do this?

Lilia. Her name was a dirty scalpel plunged deep inside my chest, past crumbling bones and decayed flesh. It pierced the only organ I vowed could never be touched again and infected me with insufferable greed. I wanted the pain of it. The impossibility. The absolute rapture of claiming her for myself. And therein hid the tragic reality of just how tempting she’d become—if fucking her meant an eternity in hell, I’d welcome damnation with a goddamn smile.

Bramwell stood at the front of the lecture hall, describing chemotactic behavior in Leishmania–a topic I suddenly didn’t care about–not sparing me a single glance. I would’ve been frustrated by that, if he hadn’t rubbed the back of his neck a few times, rubbed his jaw, and even loosened a button on his shirt at some point, which didn’t go unnoticed by the girl sitting in front of me. She snapped a picture of him with the caption, Yes Daddy Death, and had zoomed in on the front of his pants, to the obvious outline of a bulging hard-on.

He went to class with his *pants still bulging*?! That's sexual harassment to a whole room of people. Author—wtf? It's pretty bad when *Gothikana* is looking more rational than your book.

“You won’t even look at me. Now, you suddenly care?” Shaking my head, I turned in the direction of my dorm, but felt a tight grip of my arm. “What do you want, Lilia? Want me to proclaim my attraction and fuck you in front of the student body and administration? To let everyone know that I’m so bitterly obsessed with you, I’ve rubbed my dick raw since you left? Maybe I should apologize to the board this afternoon for a half-assed report, because my student’s pussy was all I could think about when I was writing it.”

I’d contemplated logging back into the porn site, just to claim the money I’d been too scared to collect, fearing that my video would’ve shown back up on the site. Did dignity matter at that point? I had ten bucks in my account. The coins I’d earned would’ve given me another few hundred, almost a thousand, if memory served me right.

She keeps saying she's scared the video will just show back up, but that's not how technology works. I get she's being paranoid out of fear, but it's so annoying, lol If she really cared about her sister more than herself, she would have had that money transfered into her account and sent it to the school already.

Perhaps I could come up with an arrangement to pay him back. Who was I kidding? It’d take a decade, or more, for that amount. Perhaps in sleep I’d formulate some kind of plan to make it work, because I sure as hell didn’t want to do something rash and emotional like throwing it back in his face when I really needed it.

Good. Is she finally going to start acting like someone who will do anything for her sister?

The check remained tucked away in my trinket box, hidden beneath my bed. I refused to cash it until I at least talked to Bramwell. Unfortunately, I hadn’t come up with much of a plan to pay him back that wouldn’t continue to put me behind with Bee.

Omg—so no, Lilia will *not* start acting like someone who will do anything for her sister. Every day that overdue tuition doesn't get paid is another day closer to her sister getting kicked out of school and having to live with a useless dad and see his sex pest criminal friend. It's honestly hard for me to feel any sympathy for Lilia. In fact, I'm side-eyeing her. Lilia never got the money from her sex work, making it all for nothing. Her embarrassment and paranoid fear took precedence over her sister's immediate *need for school payment*. Then, it barely occured to Lilia that crossing boundaries with Bramwell would cause him to drop her as an assistant, when it should have been a glaring siren in her mind.

For two days, I’d convinced myself it was wrong. That I didn’t deserve the cash. That the right thing to do was return the check politely and thank him for his kindness. And then I’d imagined his response–him calling me a fool and throwing out insults to anger me into cashing it.

Would he be wrong in calling her a fool? Seriously, this girl is being stupid. She knows what a piece of shit her sister's dad is and how he can't be trusted to be a proper father. It's disgusting and wrong that she has to be the adult, but those were the cards she was dealt and her sister *needs* her.

The conversation with Briceson consumed my head as I exited the Dragon’s Lair, having eaten nothing more than a piece of avocado toast and a latte that I’d charged to Bramwell’s card.

See, this is why I can't sympathize with this girl. She accepted the card to get food and coffee for *herself*, but won't use the money she rightfully earned with sex work, and then what she got from Bramwell – who was born with it and was never going to use it anyway – to make sure her sister can go back to getting daily snacks and drinks?

Vibrant red, oranges, and yellows colored the trees, as the full breadth of autumn had settled over the campus, and gray clouds hung heavy and thick in a sky that promised rain. The euphony of early morning birds lent a peaceful song to my walk, while an errant breeze stoked the scent of wet leaves.

I sipped my overpriced latte to keep warm, looking like every other student hustling to class, the lid of my cup marked with the lipstick I’d made a point to wear. Because I wasn’t every other student. I was the one who’d given her professor a blow job and carried his check for five grand in her bag.

She is becoming insufferable. 😬

It was then that Professor Bramwell entered the class with that arrogant and dominant gait that made a girl’s ovaries ache.

Gotta say I absolutely loath descriptions like this, equating ovaries and lust in women.

Once out of the main corridor, he pushed me into the wall behind me. “My mother told me … something,” he whispered, his throat bobbing with a swallow, voice shaky. “Lippincott isn’t my father.”

He's Bramwell half-brother! Bramwell said he walked in on his dad and Mrs. Lippincott when he was a teenager.

He pushed off the wall, not bothering to uncross his arms. “Cash the fucking check.” The sharp tone in his voice swung my attention to the equally annoyed expression on his face. “Why? So you can look at me with pity? Call me pathetic?” “Why do you have to be so goddamn stubborn? You need the money. I’ll be just fine without it.” I silently tried to wrap my head around the thought that what would save me right then was nothing for him.

No, you won't be just fine. This girl is stubborn to the point of stupidity. Also, she should have known *all along* money is nothing to him. Poor people are highly aware of that about the rich. My god, this is annoying.

“I’ll pay you back.” “You won’t. You can’t.” “Then, tell me how I can repay you?” I folded the check in half, wondering what he’d do right then if I tore it to pieces in front of him. “I can’t just accept this. It isn’t right.” “Neither is intentionally letting yourself sink in quicksand. Focus on yourself for once. And eliminate the roadblocks that stand in your way.”

At night, we held trysts in the most obscure places. Sometimes, his lab, his office, the top of the clock tower, anywhere that was warm, hidden away from others, and lacked cameras.

These supposedly smart people are so stupid. Just keep it to his lab. Just because a place doesn't have a camera doesn't mean it's safe. Their danger kink is going to get them found out and ruin Lilia's future.

I knew that what I felt for him had evolved into something completely foreign. A beautiful complexity that was as pure and thrilling as it was forbidden. And in the wake of everything, the stresses that’d plagued me only weeks ago withered to calm.

Cool cool—Whatever. But did you *cash that check* and *send the money to your sister's school*? 😑

I paid off all of Bee’s tuition, which in turn eased some of the pressure on my relationship with Conner, and with that off my shoulders, I was able to focus on my studies, acing my exams.

Thank you! Jeez. 😮‍💨

At a knock on my door, I frowned, closing the book. A shock of surprise jolted me when I opened the door to Professor Gilchrist. “Miss Vespertine, may I come in?” I didn’t know why I suddenly felt like I was in one of those vampire movies, debating whether I should invite the demon of the night inside. Was it even normal for a professor to visit someone’s dorm? I’d never seen anyone else visited by a professor.

It's not just irregular, it's highly inappropriate.

back. “Miss Vespertine, I’ve been struggling with something for a while now. And I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s best to confess.” “Okay.” I bit the inside of my lip to hide my trepidation. “I know the woman in the study that you wrote was your mother.” She crossed the room, staring at the picture of me, Bee, and my mother. “The moment I saw you, it was as if I was looking right at her again.”

This calculating B! 😆 Gonna hit Bramwell where it hurts! Honestly, I can't even be mad. My *golf clap* for the level of scheming.

“One night, I was asked by Dr. Bramwell to stay after and input some data. It was as I was mindlessly typing away that I overheard your mother speaking with a certain doctor about his indiscretions leading to her dilemma.” Dilemma. In other words, me. A thick churning nausea roiled in my stomach, as I imagined the possibility that she might’ve been talking about Dr. Bramwell. Such a thing would’ve made Professor Bramwell my half-brother.

She reached into the pocket of her skirt and held up a computer chip. “This? It could end my career. Or worse. So, I need more than your crap promise to stay away from Devryck.” “What do you want?” “I want to know who the members of Anon Amos are.”

“Tell you what. You give me a name? I’ll tell you if you’re fucking your own brother.” I needed to know. I couldn’t stand not knowing. “Fine. Cat. Dark-haired girl. Piercings. She’s one of them.”

She just gave them up without a fight?!