Nocticadia: A Dark Academia Gothic Romance

With gloved hands, I lifted Barletta’s tongue. “Superior and inferior lip, as well as sublingual papilla, demonstrates vonyxsis,” I dictated into my phone. “Dentition is otherwise normal. Bilateral scleral icterus. Bilateral tapetum lucidum. Dry mucous membranes.” I placed my stethoscope against his back, listening for a moment, then moved it higher and across his spine to the other side. “Upper airway sounds are heard diffusely across all lung fields. Slight rattling, but non-productive cough. End dictation.”

“Dictation ended,” the robotic feminine voice answered back.

A horrific, yet distinct odor clung to the air–one reminiscent of death—which was typical in the infected. I didn’t have much explanation for it, seeing as humans weren’t the parasite’s natural host. Perhaps it served a purpose in its other victims.

“What’s vonyxsis?” Barletta asked, sitting calmly on his cot.

I turned his arm over, to a skinny, black map of veins in his wrist.

“That can’t be good. Fuck, what’s happenin?” He quickly turned his head away and coughed, shooting bright red spittle onto the concrete. “I’m so thirsty. I need water.”

“The amount of water I give you throughout the day is enough. I told you what’s happening, Mr. Barletta. These are all normal progressions of infection.”

“It’s not enough water. I’m getting cramps at night. Hallucinating. Shit’s worse than detox.”

It had only just begun.

I didn’t turn my back on him as I packed up my equipment and made my way toward the cell door.

While he didn’t seem to have much motivation for escape right then, that would inevitably change. Physical exams would become wrestling matches soon enough. Thankfully, guilt kept him in check for the most part, and it was a weakness I intended to play off for as long as his conscience mattered to him.

But it’d soon be a fleeting emotion.

“You’re not leavin’, are ya?” He ran his hand through his hair and frowned when he lowered his arm to see a clump of strands in his palm. Throat bobbing with a gulp, he tossed it away. “It’s so fuckin’ … quiet down here. I can’t stand the quiet.”

“I’ve some papers to grade.”

“Wait.” He lurched forward. “You were supposed to tell me some more of your story. Your childhood. Remember?”

I actually needed to get back to the lab, but I responded, “Very well.”

“You said, if the seizures reach your heart, you’ll have a heart attack. That ever happened?”

“Not quite cardiac arrest, no. But I did have quite a scare once.” I closed my eyes on the memory of that fateful day–the one that forever changed the course of my life.

“Her tits are sheer perfection,” Caedmon says with an air of awe in his voice, from where he sits crouched inside a small linen closet. “I cannot believe she hides them beneath those ugly fucking sweaters she wears.”

The closet adjacent to the women’s staff locker room holds a small carving–an eyeball hole that peers in at the perfect angle on of one of the staff showers. Story goes, some screwball maintenance guy put the hole there two years ago and got caught jacking off. He apparently never told anyone about the hole, though. Not that I’d ever personally peered through it. Still can’t stand closets. Not since that night.

Von Naerick Academy is a small prep school affiliated with our father’s alma mater, Dracadia University. Our family name affords us the kind of pardon few other students are offered, and the two of us exploit it to the utmost degree. At seventeen, we’ve gone through five other prep schools, each one offering a quiet exit to keep from marring our record. One more, and my father will probably have us sent off to some drug cartel farm in the heart of Mexico.

The hole, as everyone calls it, is one act of insubordination we can’t pass up, though. Caedmon and I are like tour guides for the depraved, leading small groups of underclassmen to our secret peep show. My brother has seen damn near every female teacher’s tits and ass, and is something of a self-professed expert on the topic.

One of the kids pushes at Caedmon for a peek, and with a smirk, I shake my head.

Not a beat later, my brother wails him in the face with his fist. The poor kid flies backward onto the concrete floor, groaning. Blood trickles from what will probably be a split lip.

“Next one who pushes, gets knocked out. Asshole.” With a nod toward the group, he asks, “Who’s next?”

Three boys cluster around him, but Caedmon chooses one. I stay in the hallway of the tunnel to keep a lookout and light up a smoke, waiting for each member of the group to get their peek. Fifteen minutes later, the boys file out, some dragging their feet with disappointment. Probably didn’t get much of a look, seeing as the teachers only shower for so long.

Once the boys have cleared out and begun their trek back to our dorms, Caedmon exits the closet, counting cash.

“Fifty bucks.” He hands off twenty five of it to me, and taking another drag of my smoke, I stuff the cash into my pocket. It’s not like either of us needs the cash, just gives us something to do. “Aren’t you even the least bit curious, Devryck?” He snags the cigarette from my fingers and takes a long drag.

“Of course I am. Not even a nice pair of tits is worth it, though.” Besides, I don’t need to watch them through a peephole. I’d already gotten intimate with Miss Chandler’s tits in the boathouse after row practice. The same day she confessed to wanting a threesome with my brother.

“He really fucked you up.”

“Anyway, we better head back. Caesar said, if I’m late to first hour again, he’s going to sever my hand and send the bones home to Father.”

Caesar is the guard Father hired to keep an eye on the two of us. Not a bodyguard, of course. The asshole is a former mafia soldier who only cares about his own ass. His only job is to make sure Caedmon and I stay out of trouble. Or, rather, out of Father’s hair.

“A man after our own father’s heart.” Caedmon grabs the knob of the closet to close the door, when a clacking sound, like shoes on concrete, echoes down the hall.

The two of us dart toward the curve in the hallway, toward the sound, and flatten ourselves against the wall, peering around the corner of it into another corridor.

Naked lightbulbs in rusty cages illuminate the long passage down which two figures stride toward us. Men we’ve never seen before, but both of them wear black suits, and in each of their hands is a gun.

“C’mon!” I whisper-yell to Caedmon, and yank him back. The door at the end of the hall is locked as always, a dead end, so we run in the other direction, back toward the closet.

The sound of footfalls grows louder. Any moment, the men will turn the corner and find us. Who knows who the hell they are, or what they want, but them finding us down here isn’t a good idea, either way.

At a hard yank of my arm, I turn to see Caedmon pulling me toward the closet.

I shake my head. I can’t. I won’t. “No! No!”

“We have nowhere to go, Devryck. C’mon!”

The footsteps close in on the corner.

Caedmon slaps his hand over my mouth and drags me into the closet with him. Panic stirs in my gut, winding upward like a tornado to my chest. I wheeze behind his hand for a breath, the small bit of air through my nose not nearly enough. Light thins as he closes the door, still holding me against him.

Until we’re bathed in darkness.

“I’m right here, Devryck,” he whispers in my ear. “Focus on my voice.”

Through shaky breaths, I close my eyes, my whole body trembling and stiff. The vague grip of his hand breaches the numbness that has my arms feeling ice cold and thick.

“You’re going to be okay. Nothing is going to happen. Focus on my voice, Dev.”

A stabbing pain strikes my skull, and I throw my hands up, knocking his arm away. I collapse to my knees. Warmth trickles down my thighs and pools onto the floor, leaking beneath the crack in the door. My muscles harden, a thousand tiny knots pulling beneath my skin.

Light blasts into the closet, and through a blur in my eyes, I stare up at both men. A blackness slinks in from the fringes, threatening to pull me under. Something jostles my body.

“Leave him alone!” Caedmon cries out.

A dark nightmare swallows me whole.

“He pissed himself!” an unfamiliar voice growls. “Take the other!”

An intense pain strikes my muscles, and I collapse to the floor into a wet puddle. Through a haze, I watch one of the men drag Caedmon away.

Hauled off by an arm to his throat, my brother stares back at me, eyes wide with fear. “You can’t leave him! He’s going to die! He’ll die!”

Impervious.

I open my mouth to scream the word. Nothing comes out.

“Impervious!” I finally cry out. “Impervious.”

Shoes step into view, and its then I realize the second man is standing over me. For a moment, I think he’s gonna drag me off with my brother. Instead, he draws back his fist and hammers it into my cheek, setting off an explosion of light that flares at the back of my eyes, the impact rattling my teeth.

My brother disappears behind a pitch black shield.

“What’s that mean? Impervious?” Barletta’s question ripped me out of the memory, dragging me back into the present.

“Impenetrable, essentially.”

“Who were they? Who took your brother?”

“At the time, I didn’t know.” I’d later learned they were ordered to take one of us. And because I’d pissed myself, they’d opted to take my brother.

“What happened to your brother?”

“We’ll save that bit for next time.”