Nocticadia

by Keri Lake

“I don’t know what the hell the last person in here ate, but that does not smell healthy. So, I’m gonna leave all these latrines to you,”

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.”

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?

Without a doubt, Lilia Vespertine was going to be a massive headache. But she was my headache.

“Jayda, I’m not showing up to class looking like Britney Spears circa nineteen ninety-eight. This is college, for fucks sake. No one wears knee-high socks.”

“Allow me to caution you, Miss Vespertine. You are a confused moth dancing about a wild flame. Blind to the incomprehensible danger of your curiosities.”

My curiosity had been piqued. The walls of this place held dark secrets, past skeletons, that I intended to exhume with a sledgehammer.

“Stay out of trouble, Curious Moth,”

They stare because you’re the only thing worth staring at.”

“My, you are a wicked little moth.”

“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.”

“I’m not fucking you tonight. But I am going to dine on this obnoxiously wet pussy, and I’m going to enjoy every moment of knowing I’m the only man who’s ever tasted you.”

“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.”

“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.”

“No, I can’t look at you right now because I’m crawling out of my skin wanting to touch you.”

“And if you think, for one second, I’m letting you jog around here in the dark in those tiny fucking shorts, looking like a midnight snack, you’ve grossly undere...

“Let’s just call it what it was–one amazing night. One I hope you remember with the same relentless longing and anger and ache that I feel every time I look at you. It fucking hurts to know that I can’t have you, Lilia. I lose in that respect. But that is the tragic reality in all of this. What we did that night cannot be repeated. Understand?”

“I can assure you, this isn’t going to last a minute and a half. I’m not some adolescent boy who comes the moment his dick gets wet. I’m a man who fucks hard and thoroughly enjoys the torment of delayed gratification. You’re going to be sore. And I really fucking hope you want this, Lilia, because you’re going to hate me when it’s over.”

“I don’t think I’ll be able to stay away from you after this. But let me be very clear,” he gritted through clenched teeth as his hand gripped my throat. “I don’t share. If anyone else so much as looks at this pussy, I’ll take pleasure in dissecting him, starting with his eyeballs.”

“Jealousy is a callow schoolboy’s emotion that ends in hard feelings and bloody noses. What I feel for you, Miss Vespertine, would destroy lives.”

“You’re the fever in my veins,” he said through clenched teeth, as he drove into me with furious determination. “An incurable madness I can’t shake. Fucking you is the only thing that keeps me sane, Lilia.”

“No. No quiet sounds from you. I want to hear you fucking scream. You’re in the throes of fire now, Little Moth. Show me how much it burns.”

“You are a merciless vision of perfection.”

“You’re a sick man, Doctor Death.” I wrapped my arms around his neck, careful to avoid his shoulder, and pulled him in for a kiss. “Positively crazy, I think.”

“I am. Crazy enough to admit that I would’ve killed every person in that room a moment ago. I’d have killed Lippincott, Gilchrist—my own brother, if he’d laid a hand on you.”

“Why does the forbidden have to be so fucking sweet?”

“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.”

“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 love you. And I don’t think I can stop loving you.”

“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.”

“Don’t ever hesitate to touch me, Lilia. You’re the only one who can. 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.”

It was in that moment, I believed him when he said he belonged to me. Like a vast ocean claimed by a single grain of sand. My dark sea. The mystifying depths that both captivated and terrified me.

I’d come to learn that at the heart of life was suffering, and pain was an inevitable consequence of love. A slow gnawing ache that began the moment we dared to admit what it was. The shadow behind every adoring glance. The anguish that punctuated those fleeting moments of peace.

Love was also a sickness. An incurable disease. The kind that crawled inside the muscles and bones, and persisted long after death.

Mortui vivos docent. The dead teach the living.

He taught me passion and courage, and to seize what I wanted by the teeth. And in return, I taught him to feel again.