Nocticadia: A Dark Academia Gothic Romance

What had started out as an inquiry into how much of a pain in the ass my new student was going to be had left me intrigued. A cursory search proved Lilia to be both smart and athletic, seen in a school announcement for Covington High that listed her as Valedictorian for her class and an All-State Champ for track and field. I was curious to know more, though.

I hadn’t yet bothered to read the paper she’d written on the fictional parasite that’d apparently landed her a spot in my class, but in an effort to learn more about the girl, I’d had Lippincott’s secretary send me her file. I casually scanned over her case study, and as I read the progression of symptoms, I sat forward in my chair, frowning at what I read.

Aversion to light. Intense thirst. Glow to the eyes. Episodes of paranoia.

She noted a butterfly tattoo just below the patient’s navel that they’d claimed a small hand would poke through. Strange delusional visions that were common with the infected.

Even the timeline of events was spot on for Noctisoma.

While her knowledge of the organism seemed to be lacking, rightly so as not much had been published about it, I found her observations of the physiology interesting. In my reading, I hadn’t noticed any mention of a rather significant symptom in her paper–vonyxsis. The darkening of red blood cells in the latter stages was due to extreme depletion of oxygen, caused by a protein the worms produced. In the patient she detailed, she had noticed fever and muscle fatigue, and had consequently administered a tissue salt known as ferrum phos–an oxygen carrier cell salt that would have destroyed the protein’s byproduct. In doing so, she had completely averted vonyxsis and possibly prolonged her patient’s lifespan by another couple of weeks.

Impressive.

The occasional patient infected with the parasite had been known to pop up from time to time, but were often isolated cases, and only on the island. Physicians on the mainland, unaware of the parasite as a human pathogen, never made the connection. How the girl had come across such a case was the mystery of it all. Suspicion from Wilkins, her former professor, suggested that the patient in the study had been her mother, since she hadn’t bothered to identify them.

I pulled up my computer and typed her name in the search bar.

An obituary for a woman named Francesca Vespertine popped up, where Lilia had been listed as a living relative, along with her half-sister, Beatrix. No picture. No other information.

With her mother’s name, I logged into my PathNet account, which gave me unlimited access to coroner and autopsy reports, so long as they were properly filed. A quick search brought up Francesca’s file, and a skim of the coroner’s report revealed that she’d committed suicide in the bathtub. Slit her wrists, apparently, a finding that wasn’t consistent with Noctisoma patients. In my experience, the infected had a strong sense of self-preservation up until the parasite was ready to eject, resulting in drowning more often than not. However, the autopsy also didn’t list any of the other telling pathology, either.

I’d have thought the coroner’s report and Lilia’s case study were two separate people, based on that, except that I scanned down, noting that same butterfly tattoo covered in small lacerations, where she’d undoubtedly clawed at it. I didn’t recognize the coroner’s name, but if the patient had suffered all the symptoms that Lilia had detailed, then he’d omitted obvious signs that would’ve been present in autopsy. Most notably, the bone striations and liver decomposition.

The finding left me wondering if he’d altered the report.

If that was the case, he must have done so to cover something up.

A thought that left me puzzling over who Francesca Vespertine was and how she’d become infected.

Hopefully, Lippincott would remain lazy about reading the case study, or investigating Lilia’s mother. I certainly had no intentions of sharing my findings with him. The girl had just earned a spot on my list of curiosities, making her secret safe. For a while, anyway.

My cellphone buzzed beside me, and I turned to see Langmore’s number flashing across the screen. Frowning, I answered it.

“Dr. Bramwell, excuse the interruption, but I just received a call from Dr. Gilchrist, requesting that I have Miss Vespertine promptly removed from your class and accompanying lab.”

“On what basis?”

“She claims that she’s not equipped to handle your curriculum, and that she hasn’t taken the required pre-req. I personally felt she had a good handle on the subject matter, but I apologize for overstepping. Before I move forward, I just wanted to get your thoughts.”

Get my thoughts. I wanted to laugh at that. The man was probably holding back a torrent of piss in his pants right now. “Yes, of course,” I responded cordially, biting back the anger that tautened my muscles. “Allow me to impart my thoughts. Dr. Gilchrist needs to keep her fucking nose out of my business. I approved Miss Vespertine’s enrollment. End of story. If Gilchrist has a problem, she can take it up with me. Directly.”

The woman wouldn’t have dared. It was a wonder she’d grown the balls to approach Langmore in the first place, unless she honestly thought I’d have not given a shit. Had it been any other student, that might’ve been the case. But something about this one had me intrigued enough to challenge the department Chair.

“Very well. I will uphold her enrollment and inform Dr. Gilchrist of your decision. I appreciate your time.”

“Yeah. Thanks.” At that, I hung up the phone, rattled that the woman would dare to go behind my back that way. Clearly, she still harbored animosity over what’d happened between the two of us. It was a snake move trying to have Lilia quietly removed from my class. The fucking audacity of it nettled me, and good on Langmore for having contacted me. Of course, I suspected he’d probably calculated the consequences of not doing so first. 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.