LampLight: Volume 10 Issue 2

By E. Catherine Tobler

December 2021

Edited by E. Catherine Tobler.

Fiction from Jordan Kurella, Mandira Pattnaik, Lora Gray, Louis Evans, Andrew Kozma, Vivek Santhosh, Tonya Walter

• Language: English
• Publisher: Apokrupha LLC
• Release date: Dec 10, 2021

E. Catherine Tobler

E. Catherine Tobler's work has been nominated for the Sturgeon Award. Her short fiction has appeared in Clarkesworld, Lightspeed, and others.

Book preview

Apokrupha

All Rights Reserved

LampLight

A Quarterly Magazine of Dark Fiction

Volume 10

Issue 2

December 2021

Published by Apokrupha

E. Catherine Tobler, Editor

Jacob Haddon, Editor-in-exile

Paula Snyder, Masthead Design

All stories copyright respective author, 2021

ISSN: 2169-2122

lamplightmagazine.com

apokrupha.com

Table of Contents

Fiction

You Are Not Connected to The Server - Tonya Walter

The Devil’s Tree - Vivek Santhosh

No More Bad Dreams - Louis Evans

In the Kingdom of Ghosts - Andrew Kozma

All the Sea Churns and Returns - Mandira Pattnaik

Silphidae - Lora Gray

The Warsong of Berra and Irrit - Jordan Kurella

LampLight Classics

The Invisible Girl - Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

Writer Bios

* * *

You Are Not Connected to The Server

Tonya Walter

It’s a Tuesday, when your internet fails. You remember this later only because Tuesdays were team meeting days and when you realized you would not be able to attend the group chat, you sent a text message to your boss, which also failed. You panicked, but in that normal, everyday sort of way. On a scale from heartburn to gazing into hell’s fiery abyss, your panic was most definitely closer to the heartburn end of the spectrum, because you didn’t know any better. You learn.

You learn that turning it off and then on again is not the answer. Over the next few weeks, you’ll learn this every day. It becomes ritualistic, like morning prayers.

Unplug the Router. Count to ten. Plug it in.

Amen.

Unanswered prayers. All of them.

But this comes later. Right now, you are trying to figure out how to tell your boss you won’t be coming to the virtual meeting. You pull up your contacts on your phone and find her number, but you’re met with silence. No busy signal, no automated message. The staircase of bars in the corner of the screen is gone and the Wi-Fi waves are dark. You put on real pants and walk down to the corner store because it looks like they haven’t updated their window advertisements since the 80s and so they must have a landline phone.

Emad, the owner, says they do, but it isn’t working. He tells you this without looking away from the tiny television sitting beside the register. He’s flipping through the channels, but everything is out. Every single station. Outside, you hear the first discontented murmurs. Passersby are tapping on phone screens, stopping each other on the street, shaking their heads.

You go home. The elevator is stalled. You climb fifteen flights of garbage-juice and urine-covered stairs up to your apartment. You take a quick shower, not realizing it will be your last, and eat a microwave dinner. With no social media or movie streaming services to keep you awake, you pass out face down on your couch.

While you sleep, the world outside devolves into a surreal nightmare.

The screams wake you. Outside, Emad’s corner store is going up in flames. People swarm like ants. A taxi rams the fire hydrant outside, sending a pillar of water straight into the air. Your call to 911 doesn’t go through. Below, the ants waste no time. They have the fire out in about thirty minutes. It’s only then, when you can no longer make out the tiny ants or the Yellow Cab that you realize the street lights are dark.

Your lights, your refrigerator, your second-hand microwave, they’re all dead. The power is out. You thumb through your contacts until you find Mom, and hit the call button.

Nothing.

It’s just after four in the morning. The sun will be up soon.

When it rises, so do all the people. Your neighborhood streets are busier than you’ve ever seen them. Shoulder to shoulder, people cram together like they’re in Times Fucking Square, only instead of gawking at the mega screen, they’re pointing at the still smoldering remnants of Emad’s corner store. A few people snap pictures with their cell phones, but conspicuously few. You’re all conserving what little power you have left.

The trains don’t run. Neither do the city buses. Traffic is jammed on every road coming into and out of the city, a frustrated cabbie tells you.

I’ve moved maybe fifty feet in the last hour. I’m not even taking any fares, I just want to get home. It’s like everybody’s running, but they don’t know where! Suburbanites are running to the city, and we’re all trying to get out. It’s chaos.

On your way home, you see a woman with two young girls sitting on a stoop.

I bet it’s them Chinese, she says. Knocked down some satellites or somethin’. Your phone work?

You shake your head and she nods, knowingly.

Don’t no one’s phone work.

When you reach your building, you climb the fifteen flights of stairs to find your water is off.

You unplug the Router. You count to ten. You plug the Router in again.

You are not connected to the Server.

When your phone finally dies, the reality of your situation hits home. Your power isn’t coming back. This must be hitting home for a lot of people. Below your window, two swarms of ants collide in the street. You hear their screams and, minutes that feel like hours later, you see the still, crumpled bodies of the ants that didn’t survive.

A cop shows up but they, too, are devoured by ants.

There are these episodes of violence, separated by long stretches of eerie silence. The neighbors who didn’t flee the city keep to themselves, and their numbers seem to be dwindling. Every day, there are fewer people on the streets. At night,