Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    LampLight: Volume 6 Issue 1
    LampLight: Volume 6 Issue 1
    LampLight: Volume 6 Issue 1
    Ebook151 pages1 hour

    LampLight: Volume 6 Issue 1

    By Jacob Haddon

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    Damien Angelical Walters is our featured writer! Her story, All The Pretty Cages, is of outsiders and freedom. We talk to her about writing, her favorites and what is coming up next!

    J.T. Glover’s Article, Against Nature, discusses the shorter end of the horror genre.

    Fiction from:

    Marie Anderson
    Valerie Alexander
    Andrew Reichard
    Nate Southard

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherApokrupha LLC
    Release dateOct 20, 2017
    ISBN9781370170074
    LampLight: Volume 6 Issue 1

    Read more from Jacob Haddon

    Related to LampLight

    Related ebooks

    Horror Fiction For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Bill And The Tooth Fairy

      Mar 10, 2021

      Bill believed in the Tooth Fairy. Big deal, you’re thinking. Lots of kids believe in the Tooth Fairy. Well, Bill wasn’t a kid. He was twenty-eight years old. You don’t believe it. My girlfriend Mary Beth didn’t believe it, either. We were having dinn

      15 min read

    • Article

      The Library of Gromma

      Jul 10, 2023

      Zac was sweating and panting as he reached the top of the hill. The crooked beams of the library loomed over him. He dropped the buckets of water, swore at the few drops that spilled, and escaped the piercing morning sun in the shade of the library.

      22 min read

    • Article

      Dürer’s Journeys: Travels Of A Renaissance Artist Review – All Over The Place

      Nov 21, 2021

      Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528) was the most intrepid traveller in the history of art. From his home city of Nuremberg he crossed the Alps more than once in treacherous conditions, staying in icy mountain shelters. The ship on which he sailed for six days

      4 min read

    • Article

      Protagonists

      Jun 18, 2021

      Was the craft of fiction around desire and obstacle taught by men and for men, for men protagonists and men readers? Was fiction part of the patriarchy? Was the craft of fiction part of the patriarchy? The answers were all yes. The post Protagonists

      7 min read

    • Article

      Eleven Ways Of Looking At A Sunset

      Oct 19, 2018

      1. Cotton Mather, third-generation New England Puritan divine, wrote in his 1721 pamphlet India Christiana that “we have now seen the Sun Rising in the West.” Mather’s conceit was allegorical, yet an aspect of poetry’s power is its refusal to let you

      14 min read

    • Article

      About Al

      Aug 5, 2022

      About Al
      2 min read

    • Article

      Daring to Show My Dark Side

      Feb 12, 2024

      Daring to Show My Dark Side
      4 min read

    • Article

      French Connection

      Sep 10, 2022

      Sunlight opened my eyes. I smelled fresh croissants and heard car motors and whooshing bicycles flying past the café where I sat in a wicker chair at a small, round table. A petit coffee and a glass of water had been served by a clean-shaven waiter i

      4 min read

    • Article

      Nikki Haley Didn't Say Slavery Caused The Civil War. Now She's Facing Major Backlash

      Dec 28, 2023

      At a campaign event in New Hampshire Wednesday, the former S.C. governor didn't mention slavery as a cause of the Civil War, sparking controversy. Now she's walking back those comments.

      2 min read

    • Article

      The Constancy of Things

      Mar 1, 2022

      The first time Anna saw Salvatore, he asked if he could borrow her goggles. She was doing a few stretches on the pool deck, still wearing those goggles, when he approached. Something had fallen out of his swimsuit pocket, he said, and he needed to di

      24 min read

    • Article

      Creative Nonfiction

      Sep 1, 2020

      EDITOR Lee Gutkind MANAGING EDITOR Hattie Fletcher SENIOR EDITOR Chad Vogler ASSOCIATE EDITOR Jill Yeomans COORDINATING EDITOR Nichole Faina SECTION EDITOR Dinty W. Moore Exploring the Boundaries READERS Stephanie Bane Becky Bosshart Zoë Bossiere Bri

      1 min read

    • Article

      The Island (catullus 64)

      Mar 1, 2022

      Back then the evergreens tumbled downriverfrom the glaze-white runoff to the boot-stirred puddlesof amber young men who fulfilled our destiny,who clambered into ships, on horses, and in wagonspainting the newfound landscapes ours.Our calling was nobl

      9 min read

    • Article

      Mant Bares

      Aug 18, 2021

      Mant Bares
      2 min read

    • Article

      The New Meaning of Tattoos

      Nov 2, 2023

      The New Meaning of Tattoos
      6 min read

    • Article

      An Archaeological Inquest

      Sep 1, 2022

      An Archaeological Inquest
      7 min read

    • Article

      Poetics Of Uncertainty

      May 1, 2022

      KATE A poem I keep returning to in your book [Path of Totality] is “Urine Season.” It ends with the lines: “Some will say this is not a poem for them. But I say it’s a poem for anyone who ever expected anything.” “Urine Season” is about the loss of y

      9 min read

    • Article

      Rants & Raves

      Jul 14, 2021

      ➝ Revisiting Star Trek: Enterprise – who said it was boring? I’m really enjoying it! ➝ Why did I think the Fear Street movies were made for kids? They’re definitely not. ➝ Masters Of The Universe: Revelation is a great continuation of the series, but

      1 min read

    • Article

      From ESTRANGEMENT

      May 1, 2022

      From ESTRANGEMENT
      4 min read

    • Article

      'Apsara Engine' Doesn't Break The Graphic Novel Rules — It Ignores Them

      Apr 18, 2020

      Bishakh Som's new comics collection is uncanny and hard to categorize — science-fictiony, mythic and humanistic, without making any particular assumptions about where humans as a species are going.

      3 min read

    • Article

      Poetic Asides

      Apr 11, 2022

      The séadna is an Irish quatrain (or four-line stanza) form that packs a lot of rules in a concise area. The séadna can be tricky to write, but it has an intrinsically pleasing sound when it follows all the rules. Here are the guidelines: • Quatrains

      1 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for LampLight

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      LampLight - Jacob Haddon

      Apokrupha

      All Rights Reserved

      LampLight

      A Quarterly Magazine of Dark Fiction

      Volume 6

      Issue 1

      September 2017

      Published by Apokrupha

      Jacob Haddon, Editor

      Catherine Grant, Assistant Editor

      Paula Snyder, Masthead Design

      All stories copyright respective author, 2017

      ISSN: 2169-2122

      lamplightmagazine.com

      apokrupha.com

      Table of Contents

      Featured Writer - Damien Angelica Walters

      All the Pretty Cages

      Interview with Jeff Heimbuch

      Fiction

      Small Town Immortals - Valerie Alexander

      Ordinary Darkness - Andrew Reichard

      The New One - Marie Anderson

      A Bucket Of Teeth - Nate Southard

      Article

      Against Nature - J. T. Glover

      LampLight Classics

      The Eyes - Edith Wharton

      Writer Bios

      Subscriptions and Submissions

      * * *

      All the Pretty Cages

      Damien Angelica Walters

      I was five when I first heard the term avian, but I didn’t understand what—who—it meant until the year I turned ten. Even then, I didn’t fully understand, not in the way I do now. I only knew that avian meant different and that different meant wrong.

      At night, I would run my fingers along the thick ridges of scar tissue on my back. The scars meant I wasn’t different, wasn’t wrong. Inevitably, one hand would stray to my neck, wondering what it would feel like to have vocal chords, to speak, wondering what the scars on the inside felt like.

      For your own good, my mother said once, when I was brave enough to write down the word Why? So you could fit in. Now go be a good girl and play.

      For years I thought I was the only one. I was wrong.

      But I was also right.

      * * *

      The avian on the ground by my feet was crouched on a tree branch when I shot her, but it doesn’t look like she broke anything in the fall. No one would care if she did, and I wouldn’t get in trouble, but I try not to be cruel. It isn’t her fault that she’s an avian; it isn’t my fault that I have to bring her in.

      The tranquilizer dart sticks out of her left shoulder like a pushpin on a map. I am here, it says. I was here would be a better choice.

      She’s definitely a flyaway; younger, too, than most of them. Maybe that explains why she wasn’t hiding behind the leaves, wasn’t hiding at all. I walk around the trees, looking up, even though there’s no need. Flyaways are always alone.

      Her clothes are well-made, albeit dirty, and I wonder if her parents are out looking for her. I wonder what made her want to escape, to try her luck in the outside world. I wonder the same about all of them; they have to know they won’t make it. But I don’t have a voice to ask them and they don’t have a language I can understand and in the end, it doesn’t matter.

      The avian weighs next to nothing; I could balance her on one hip, like a parent with a toddler. As I load her into the cage in the back of my van, I tuck her wings in so they don’t get damaged. There’s no need—she won’t have them for much longer—but it makes me feel better.

      * * *

      The driveway to the school reminds me of a snake—long, black, and sinuous—and it threads through a heavily wooded area. The isolation is why we don’t normally get protestors like some of the other schools.

      The guard lets me through the gate without word or wave and I drive to the loading dock on the side of the building. The building itself is a large, three-story brick rectangle surrounded by flower beds. It looks much like any school building until you notice the metal mesh in the windows and the enclosed courtyard in the back, enclosed on all sides and the top by metal fencing. Avians aren’t allowed outside until their wings are removed, but they can still climb and the flyaways always take a long time to assimilate.

      There’s no such thing as a voluntary; most are brought here by their parents when they realize they can’t keep them hidden any longer, by court-appointed officers, or by me.

      The avian condition is classified as a genetic anomaly, although scientists aren’t sure of its cause. Some blame environmental toxins, vaccines, or antibiotics used in factory farms. A few religious groups cling to the belief that the parents of avians are blessed by angels. In the early years, some claimed it all a media fabrication, because humans couldn’t possibly give birth to creatures more bird than human. Video evidence proved them wrong.

      The overhead door lifts and I unlock the van’s back door. The tranquilizer is wearing off and the flyaway fixes me with a gaze half-bleary, half-accusatory. I shove my hands in my pockets. Clear my throat. Two orderlies brush me aside and slide the cage out and the flyaway grabs the side, curling her fingernail talons through the holes, presses her face against the metal. I turn away, but not before I see the tears in her eyes, and I can’t shut out her keening wail—high-pitched, inhuman, wrong.

      * * *

      The van goes with me to my apartment, located a half-mile away from the school, but still on the grounds. There are three buildings with four apartments in each, the buildings set in a U with a central courtyard—not fenced-in. Only nine of the apartments are occupied now. School employees aren’t required to live on the grounds and most of them choose not to.

      Originally, they built the apartments for the avians, figuring they could live there and work at the school, but it didn’t quite work out that way. That was back before the activists and politicians got involved, back when parents were allowed to make the decisions, back when avians were fairly rare, back before the term avian was coined.

      After they graduate, most of the avians live in supervised group housing run by the state. The ones who can’t be trusted not to run stay permanently at the school. The ones who can’t be trusted to live at the school are sent to an institution in Colorado.

      I have my building, the right side of the U, all to myself and my apartment is on the top right. When I look out my side or back windows, all I see are trees.

      I don’t have to live under supervision, because technically I’m not an avian. But I can’t live on the outside either, because technically I’m not human.

      * * *

      I always feel a sense of peace when I walk into the public library. I come here once a week and every time, it’s the same. I feel at home here in a way I don’t feel anywhere else, even in my apartment. All the lives—fantastical and otherwise—in the pages, all the chances to be someone else, even if for only a little while.

      Even though I can’t live on the outside, the school allows me a modicum of freedom in exchange for the work I do. I’m lucky. I know they don’t have to.

      There’s a new librarian behind the desk; she’s younger than the previous one and her eyes narrow when she sees me. I swallow hard. I’m wearing baggy pants, an even baggier shirt, and heavy boots—the illusion of weight, of substance. She can’t possibly know I’m different, not just by looking, but I swear she does, and I feel her gaze following me until I disappear into one of the rows.

      I’m balancing three books in one hand and reaching for another when I hear someone else walk into the rows. In a flash, someone’s arm stretches in front of mine and pulls the book free. The librarian holds it out with an unreadable expression on her face.

      I take the book and write Thank you on the notepad I keep in my pocket. Most people assume I’m deaf and get embarrassed or uncomfortable, as if deafness is contagious, but her expression doesn’t change.

      As I walk away, I feel the weight of her gaze on my back.

      I didn’t know your kind could read, she says, her voice almost too low for me to hear.

      Almost.

      I keep my face still. So very still. But my fingers are trembling. If I had a voice, I’d tell her I wasn’t one of them, but it wouldn’t matter. She knows I’m not like her either.

      * * *

      The sun is just beginning to rise when I drive the van into a new housing development and park on one of the side streets. A neighbor called to report a possible flyaway in one of the unfinished houses, but I have a feeling it will be a false alarm because flyaways typically don’t roost in human-built structures. A regular human runaway maybe, and if so, there’s nothing I can do.

      But I have to check it out nonetheless. I load my gun with darts and put a small case of extras in my pocket. A year ago I had to shoot one three times before she went down; they kept her at the school long enough to remove her wings and vocal chords and then sent her to the institution. Everyone would’ve been better off if her parents had had the in utero genetic testing done and aborted her when the results came back, but she was born before the laws went into effect.

      I keep my steps light as I approach the house where the flyaway is supposed to be. Externally, the house looks almost complete, but when I step inside—the door makes hardly a sound—I see frames for the walls, an unfinished wood staircase, and not much else. It doesn’t take long to figure out that there’s no one

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1