Nocticadia: A Dark Academia Gothic Romance

Riding the subway after work sucked. Riding the subway after having seen my dead mother at work was downright unnerving. Although Jayda had urged me to leave an hour earlier than usual, I’d stayed a bit longer just so I didn’t saddle her with all the work.

I’d never bothered to mention the hallucination to her, even if she was more friend than coworker. And the times I did talk about my mother’s death, I never bothered to mention the black worms in her mouth, either.

Mostly because I had a bad feeling they weren’t real, either.

According to Bee’s dad, Conner, my mother had slit her wrists that night. 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.

The story had a plot hole, though. A void that’d never filled after years of trying to remember the details of that night. I couldn’t recall my mom having cut her wrists. Surely, I’d have mentally clocked such a gruesome sight in the timeline.

When I’d insisted that I’d seen the worms spill from her mouth, though, Conner had denied their presence and produced the coroner’s report. There, plain as day, her cause of death had stood out from every other gory detail: severe blood loss due to suicide. That was when I’d first spiraled into a dark place where I couldn’t trust myself. A place where reality and nightmares blurred.

I’d followed up with our family doctor a few months later to ask about the worms, and he’d pretty much argued with me, telling me he’d never heard of such a thing. Which made sense, I guessed, if I’d made them up. A number of Google searches had failed to produce anything about the worms, too, and every medical journal I’d read on parasites had lacked the complications and progression of symptoms that I’d noted throughout my mother’s illness.

I had no choice other than to accept that I’d imagined them. Trauma could do shitty things to a person’s head, after all.

By the time I finally left work, I felt like I’d run a mental marathon. Still didn’t entirely have my wits about me, which made the subway feel different tonight. Scarier.

At just after midnight, the only route open was the red line, and aside from smelling like piss, it was sparse. The only folks out and about were the junkies and bar-hoppers, a few of whom sat zoned out, or sleeping. Covington wasn’t the worst city in the country, but it certainly wasn’t the safest.

The potent stench of urine, stagnant with the July heat, was only a minor distraction, though, to the turbulence still churning in my head.

The problem was, I didn’t sleep much. A vicious cycle, really. I suffered horrible nightmares that kept me awake for more hours than the average person. It meant that I sometimes saw things. And sometimes, the things I saw made it hard to determine whether I was awake or asleep.

Eyes closed, I took deep breaths, clutching the rosary. When I finally opened them again, I caught the leering stare of an older man across the aisle from me. Had to be in his late forties, judging by the speckles of gray in his beard and hair. Pale white skin told me he didn’t get much sun. Only one other woman in the car, perhaps sixty, lay passed out in the corner. The other dozen scattered about the car were men.

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.

I released the rosary and slipped my hand into my pocket for the knife that I carried everywhere–even to bed. One I’d bought for myself a while back when I’d decided to work the night shift.

As if the older man sensed my unease, he lowered his gaze toward the pendant at my neck. Strung by a black-beaded chain, the ashes inside made up the purest form of my mother–all of the disease that killed her burned away. The urge to clutch it again, to protect my mother from his stares, tugged at me, but instead, I looked away, although I still felt the man’s gaze on me.

The voice overhead announced my stop was next. Relieved, I pushed up from my seat, and without looking at the guy, I hustled down the aisle as the train rolled to a stop. The moment the door opened, I dashed out onto the empty platform.

“Hey!” a raspy, gravelly voice called after me. “Hey, girl!”

Stupid drunks. I dealt with them at least three times a week, and I just wasn’t in the mood tonight.

I ignored him and kept on toward the staircase ahead, my whole body shaking, knuckles burning with the grip of my blade inside my pocket. A click of the button popped the blade open and offered a small bit of comfort where I could feel it press through the fabric against my thigh.

“Hey! Girl!” The voice was closer than before, but I didn’t dare turn to look at him. “Stop!”

Heart thundering in my chest, I ran for the stairs, and the moment I hit the first step, a firm grip of my arm jolted my muscles. Twisting around showed the man from the subway, and I swiped the blade out of my pocket, holding it with a trembling hand between us.

“I suggest you let me go. Now.”

He did, at the same time lifting my canvas bag up. “You left this.”

Eyes flicking to the bag and back to him, I stood dumbfounded. The tension in my muscles loosened, and I let out a shaky breath. I snatched up the bag, tucking the blade back into my pocket. “Thanks.”

The man’s bushy brow winged up. “Stay safe.”

At that, he hobbled off, back toward the platform.

Once out of sight, I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. Get it together, Lilia.

The flashing marquee sign of the Luminet Theater cast a bright light across the sidewalk, as I made my way down Prather Street to the unremarkable door just past the theater’s entrance. The apartment complex where I’d basically grown up most of my life, situated above the theater, had been built in the early twenties, when theater was booming in the city. The building itself was something of a landmark in Covington–the place where the first known serial killer in Massachusetts had left his victim, a well-known actress back then, carved up in her dressing room. In spite of its infamy and history, the building hadn’t been well-kept over the years. Just wasn’t enough money to properly restore it, I guessed.

I climbed the narrow staircase, their tired bones creaking under my boots. Not even the heavy scent of mold and mothballs could erase the odor of piss still clogging my nose. When I finally reached the apartment, the sound of voices sent a pulsing dread through me, particularly when I recognized one of them belonging to Conner’s friend, Angelo. He’d shown up about four years ago and stuck around like an ugly mole on my ass–the kind with a cancerous core.

“I don’t know, man. Those guys have ties to the cartel,” Connor said through the door. “I got my daughter to think about.”

My mom had gotten in touch with Connor for Bee, mostly, before she’d passed. For the first two years of Bee’s life, he’d lived with us, until Mom had kicked him out and he’d ended up in New York, living with roommates in some crappy neighborhood. A couple years before mom got sick, he’d agreed to move back in with us, to help out and attempt to establish a relationship with his daughter. Considering I wasn’t an adult at the time she died, we would’ve probably gotten thrown into foster care, since my mom didn’t have any family that I knew of. Conner was an absolute jerk at times, but at least he’d kept us together, for the most part.

“It’s a fucking grand. Look around,” Angelo spat back. “You’re not exactly living the high life here.”

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.

Frowning, I entered the small apartment and found Angelo kicked back in one of the kitchen chairs, while Connor chugged a beer beside him.

Conner straightened, likely surprised to see me home a half-hour earlier than usual. “Hey, Lil, what’s going on?” Just a few years shy of forty, Conner was a mess, with his grease-stained hands and shirts courtesy of the auto shop where he’d worked the last six years.

His friend, on the other hand, came a bit tidier, but carried an odor that reminded me of freshly churned dirt mixed with a hardware store.

As he sipped his beer, Angelo’s beady black eyes tracked me to the opposite corner of the room, where I kept my distance.

“Had a maintenance issue at work.” Glancing between Connor and Angelo, I pulled my bag up higher onto my arm. “Found a dead rat in one of the restrooms.”

“Nice.” Conner snorted and downed another long swill.

“Surprised you didn’t bring it home for dinner,” Angelo said, his lip only half curved with a smile.

“Had I known you were going to be here, I would have.”

His lip twitched. Angelo didn’t like to be challenged, particularly if it made him look like a fool. “Think your daddy needs to do something about that smart mouth of yours.” The implication in his words had me swallowing back my repulsion.

“Easy.” Conner, obtuse as ever, gave a light kick to Angelo’s chair just as the brute raised his beer to his mouth. Fluid splashed out onto his lap, and the murderous glance he sent Conner seemed to have my stepdad shifting on his feet. “You don’t have to be a dick.”

“Manners is a foreign language to assholes,” I blurted before I could stop myself. Unfortunately, Conner didn’t have the balls to stand up to his friend if he retaliated, so spouting off at the mouth wasn’t exactly wise on my part.

Angelo sailed a scathing glare my way, but didn’t bother to say anything more, thankfully.

From the countertop beside him, Connor reached for a paper plate that held a single slice of pizza. “Saved some dinner for you, Lil, if you’re hungry.” He tossed the plate onto the table, across from Angelo, the impact knocking the cheese off to the side in such a way that the sight of it withered my appetite.

Not that I’d have eaten much, anyway. Not when those worms played on repeat inside my head.

The phone rang, interrupting Angelo’s death stare, and Connor answered. After a few clipped yeps, he hung up. “Fuck! Those fucking birds! Callahan’s bitching about the shit all over the cement again.”

My mother’s birds. Large cages on the apartment’s roof housed about twenty different birds—pigeons and sparrows, mostly. Our neighbor, Winnie, a friend of my mom’s who lived down the hall from us, had offered to care for them after Mom passed, but she wasn’t always good about cleaning up after them. “I’m sorry. It’s been a busy week, I’ll clean it.”

“Nah, it’s all right. She wants me to check her kitchen sink, too, I guess.” In addition to working at the auto shop up the street, Connor had been appointed the unofficial fixer for the apartment complex, for which we got a hundred dollar break on rent. “Be right back,” he said, and set his beer on the counter before slipping past me.

Seemed like the widow Callahan had been calling him frequently lately, and I’d have had to have been comatose not to see something was going on between them. Not that I cared, except that I hated being left alone with Angelo.

Once gone, Angelo lit up, the scent of cheap cigarettes filling the room.

“There’s no smoking in here.”

The corner of his lips curved upward in a sickeningly sly grin. “Come put it out. I dare you.”

Rolling my eyes, I stepped past him toward the sink for a glass of water, seeing as my throat had suddenly gone bone dry. I would’ve gone straight to my room, but I was afraid he’d follow me there. It was better to be closer to the kitchen knives. “Why are you here this late?” I glanced back, and catching him looking at my ass, a wave of acid climbed my throat. I tipped back the glass of water, drowning the urge to call him out on it.

“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.”

Shaking my head, I set the glass on the sink. I’d officially surpassed my patience level. When I turned to leave, though, he was standing behind me, caging me against the counter.

“Pretty girl like you. Seems like you’d have touched a whole lot of dicks by now.”

I pushed off the sink to step past him, but he pressed his body against me, sending off alarms in my head. “Let me go, you fucking freak,” I gritted past clenched teeth and wriggled my arm from his grasp.

Sharp-nailed fingers gouged my throat, and I froze, grinding my teeth in anger, as he leaned into me, as if he’d dare kiss me.

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.

The knife. The knife sat in my pocket, but as badly as I shook, I’d have probably dropped the damn thing before I even got to cut him with it. “If you don’t let me go, right now, I’ll fucking scream.”

“I’ll fucking scream,” he mocked. “So, scream. You think anyone in this neighborhood gives a shit?” He took a drag of his cigarette and blew it in my face.

Lips sealed, I twisted as much as his grip would allow, refusing to breathe it in.

“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.”

After my mother had died, Bee’s mental health deteriorated rapidly. She’d sank into the kind of depression that had me checking on her throughout the night and calling the school during the day. My therapist had suggested a boarding school—Bright Horizons, centered around mental health—and offered to evaluate her for admission. Bee had passed with flying colors and even managed to get a small bit of financial assistance to cover some of the cost of her tuition. Connor and I split the rest–an unwilling contribution on his part, seeing as he thought mental illness was a bunch of bullshit. The asshole actually had the nerve to say that to me once, and I swore it took a stampede of willpower not to haul off and smack him.

I couldn’t risk his anger, though. I needed him to cover part of her tuition, so pissing him off wasn’t an option. It was the reason I stayed in the cramped apartment over the theater, working a shit night job and taking the bare minimum classes each semester at community college.

And dealing with Angelo, of course.

“You better not be roping us into the cartel.” Bold words on my part, and I regretted them the moment I’d said them.

Teeth bared, he squeezed my throat harder, the pressure amplifying the rapid pulse in my neck. Not enough to completely close off my windpipe, just enough to scare the shit out of me that he could’ve. “You think you’re so fucking smart, don’t you? What promising little scientist scrubs shit stains in toilets? Huh? Huh?”

I clawed at his fingers, refusing to let the gurgling fear show on my face. 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?

“Let. Me. Go.”

Angelo chuckled and released my jaw.

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.

Keep it together.

After tossing the pizza in the trash, I kept on toward my bedroom. Once inside, I slammed the door shut and pressed my forehead to the surface, letting the adrenaline from that fucked-up encounter with Angelo settle as I fought tears.

I hated him. Hated that Conner trusted him around me. Hated how weak I felt in his presence. How vulnerable.

Through deep breaths, I calmed the thrumming of my heart. He’s gone. It’s okay.

On that note, I turned to my room–my sanctuary, brimming with books, candles, small apothecary jars filled with my favorite dried herbs and tissue salts, given to me by Glinda, the woman who owned the homeopathic store just up a block. A place I’d frequented when my mom had gotten sick.

I dropped my bags beside my bed on the way to my closet, where I drew down a small trinket box from the top shelf. Cracking it open revealed a number of 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. From there, I kicked off my shoes and plopped down on my bed, exhausted. I needed to get some sleep. After all, I had a meeting with my professor first thing in the morning.

Two weeks ago, 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.

Instead of detailing the suicide at the end, though, I wrote about the worms. Figured it wouldn’t hurt, seeing as they didn’t exist anyway. I referred to the disease in the paper as Blackworm Syndrome, and, apparently, that delightful little case study had earned me a meeting with my professor first thing in the morning, before class.

I hadn’t mentioned my mother’s name in the study. Hadn’t referred to her as my mother, either. She’d always been what I’d considered ruthlessly protective of her privacy. 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.

Across the room, over my makeshift desk of stacked wooden crates and plywood, hung a 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.

A somber ache bloomed in my chest as I plucked a picture pinned to the wall beside my bed, of my mom, me and Bee, taken about two years before my mom got sick. My mother had always had a radiance about her, but even more so that day, as the sun shone down through the almost burgundy locks of her hair. 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.

While Bee had inherited some of her traits, too, she seemed to have gotten a lot more of Conner’s features. Where mine and my mother’s eyes were bright bluish green, hers were hazel, like her father’s. Unlike Bee, I’d never met my father. According to my mother, he was a deadbeat, so I never had much interest.

Also different to me, over Bee’s right eye was a bump, a dermoid cyst that she’d been born with–one that had been a source of insecurity for her since she was old enough to attend school, where her asshole classmates had poked fun at it. Unfortunately, my mother had never been able to afford to have it removed, so it still deformed her eye a bit, though she didn’t seem quite as troubled about it these days.

As I stared down at my small, but broken family, a snaking dread twisted and writhed inside of me.

Help me!

Mama, no!

Distant screams echoed through my thoughts, and eyes squeezed shut, I shook my head.

No, no. Don’t look at it. Don’t look.

The blackness seeped back into the corner of my mind, and I exhaled a shaky breath, opening my eyes again. A slight tremble in my hand shook the picture as I slowed my breathing.

Relax. It’s gone.

I pinned the photo back to my wall, and from beneath the bed, fetched out one of the black restraints I kept hidden there–a literal BDSM wrist restraint that I’d had to buy at a sex toy shop a while back. After securing one end to the metal frame of my bed, I paused for a moment, making sure Angelo hadn’t decided to return for more harassment. Nothing but the quiet sounds of the apartment–the hum of the air conditioning unit in the living room window, the cars down Prather Street, and muffled music from the theater below filled the small room.

Reassured, I tucked my pocketknife beneath my pillow and secured the restraint’s other end to my wrist. Just Velcro, so if necessary, I could release myself quickly. It was about the only effective thing to keep me from sleepwalking, even if it might not have been the safest. I’d tried the medication route once, but without insurance, that was no longer an option. And given the number of times I’d found myself standing outside of the apartment, I figured I needed to do something. As strange as it may have been, the restraint worked, and I only had to do one side, as the tugging and clanking against the metal usually woke me up. Good thing, too.

I had a feeling I was in for a restless night.