Apoca Lypse Sink Ships

By Adam Wing

Explore the strange, the dark, and the unexpected (and on occasion, the ridiculous).

This anthology of weird tales will pull you into the hidden cracks and lost places of human experience. What waits beneath the surface? Who are we when the real and the impossible have become one?

What do we hide from the people around us? From ourselves?

Stories Include:

After the Seraphim
Earth’s greatest secret agent, in humanity’s direst moment, fails. The world pays the price, and she is left with an impossible choice: help the perpetrators of the worst mass murder of all time, or sabotage our species’ future on Earth. Can she find another option? A balance between the two? Can she live with these monsters without losing her own humanity? Or alone without doing the same?

Pretty-Boy Fast
Freddy Fast has never been defeated. He’s never even been hit. But how good is he? Can he beat ten men in a row? Fifty? A hundred? Find out as he faces his greatest challenge yet.

The Other Man in the Bathroom
On an exhausting red-eye flight across the Atlantic, James encounters an unexpected, and inexplicable, visitor. What is this impossible being before him, and what does it want with him? Can he trust it? Faced with a frightening dilemma, will James have the courage to act? Every choice has consequences. What will be they for James? And for those around him...

Last Place on Earth
Her life isn’t what she thought it would be. Running away is all she could think to do. But what is this train on which she’s found herself? And why doesn’t it seem to be stopping?

DEEP-FU
An engineering firm has constructed the perfect fighting robot. To test it, they’ve set up televised match against the Legendary Master of an ancient kung fu school. When a wrench is thrown in the works the morning of the fight, the company scrambles figure out a way to pull it off without anyone noticing.

Sweetie
Guest author, Diana Pearson explores the final moments of her father’s life, from his perspective. Greet the darkness in a confluence of hallucinations, memories and reality—confusion, fear and love—anxiety and blissful serenity.

And more...

• Language: English
• Publisher: Adam Wing
• Release date: Nov 29, 2018
• ISBN: 9781999518714

Book preview

—————

ALONE in the arrivals lounge.

Straight-backed in her chair she sat, hands folded neatly on her lap. She held herself as still as possible; too much movement, she feared, would set unwanted wrinkles into her outfit. She had spent the morning—and a good part of the afternoon—hunting through more department stores than she cared to count, searching rack after rack for just the right look. A silk cardigan—dun-coloured and so fine you would almost call it sheer—draped her shoulders, partially concealing splashes of cherry and green from the figure-sculpting wrap beneath it. A pearl-hued skirt drifted down her thighs, crisp, narrow pleats hiding the contentious bulges of her hips and her rear. It hung at rest now, but when she walked in it … oh, how it flowed! Like waves on white sand. She felt like some sort of beautiful ghost in it. Or a girl in a dream. Her hair was set in curls and tied in a ribbon—green to match her top—with a single mutinous ringlet permitted to hang down playfully in the front. And her shoes—her shoes!—elegant wonders, heeled with an open toe. Held together with netting of thin leather straps, seemingly against all the laws of physics.

A heart-shaped pendant on a near-invisible gold chain around her neck was the only jewelry she wore. Her wedding ring lay abandoned at the bottom of her purse, somewhere between an empty pack of cigarettes and her phone charger.

The man she had come to meet was not her husband. The man she had come to meet was, in every way that mattered, the opposite of her husband. Where he was plain and what she liked to describe as ‘dowdy’, her husband was stylish and handsome; where he was short, her husband was tall; where he was kind, her husband was only ever cruel. Where she loved the man for whom she now waited, she despised the man to whom she had once vowed to be true.

It had not always been so. Once her husband had been sweet. Gentle. He had always known just what to say or do to make her happy. As if he could step into her mind and walk around, combing through her thoughts and feelings. That was before they were married. But he changed. In their first years as man and wife, she watched him become ever more severe, demanding and suspicious. He provided for their lifestyle, he told her, and that was what mattered. He made her life possible so she had to respect him. As time drew on, the term ‘respect’ came with more and more expectations. And if ever she failed to meet his expectations … well, ‘frightening’ did not quite describe it. On the not-too-infrequent occasions she actually angered him, he was downright terrifying. He always seemed to know just what to say or do to hurt, scare or bully her into submission. Again, as if he could step into her mind.

She endured though. For love, she told herself, at least at first. Then out of fear. Then just habit. She learned to accept his cruelty. It was normal.

Then one April evening, when her husband was out of town for work, a friend of a friend came over to help her with her new computer. He was funny and kind; he made her laugh. She made him dinner to thank him. They drank wine and spoke intimate into the night. She felt no guilt at all when she slept with him. That was three years ago.

And here she was again, awaiting the man she loved, eager to fold herself in his arms, forget her otherwise cruel existence. So she sat in the empty airport, eyes attentive, fixed on the frosted glass doors where he would appear. And she waited.

And waited…

◦    ◦    ◦    ◦

THE man on the plane was in Row 37, Seat J. His name did not matter but it happened to be James. He had spent most of the flight trying—and failing—to sleep in his cramped starboard window seat. Behind the wing, he could never quite escape the rushing roar of the engines. Worse, the screen in the seatback in front of him looked to be the only one aboard that was broken. And no matter how he pressed the button or awkwardly pushed back with his shoulder, his chair refused to recline. So James sat, exhausted, upright and bored. His back ached, his ass was numb, and his phone was dead. Fiddling on his laptop, he watched the minutes creep by at the bottom of the screen. I shouldn’t have checked my charger, he thought for perhaps the hundredth time. I should have brought a book.

The cabin lights were off. Luminous yellow lines lit dim paths down the aisles. Reading lamps shone here and there up the cabin, but most passengers sat in darkness, heads lolling uneasily, breathing slow and even. James envied people’s ability to let go in the face of such discomfort. It was something he could never quite manage.

The trip had been a short one, though not in travel time. Detroit to New York. New York to London. A day of meetings, a presentation, three new clients. Then right back around home. He had slept maybe nine hours in the last four days. Yet his body insisted he remain awake. He closed his computer. Then his eyes. If I just relax, he thought, breathe deeply, sleep will come. It will come.

It did not.

Sighing, James opened his eyes. And his laptop. Knowing he would have nothing but time, he left himself plenty of work to do on the plane. He had finished it in an hour and a half. Opening a game of solitaire, he scrolled endlessly through the draw deck without playing a single card. Four more hours.

James turned off his computer, sliding it back into its case and under the seat in front of him. He lifted himself off the uncomfortable chair, wincing as the blood returned to his legs. A nudge to his sleeping neighbour—as small a nudge as he could manage—saw him squeezed back out into the aisle.

With a feline stretch, James moved up the cabin toward the bathrooms. Both toilets were vacant. He wedged himself into the closest and shut the door. Snook. As he slid the lock into place, the lights flickered on, offering only the briefest petulant buzz. A gaunt, unhappy face stared back at him in the mirror. Look who needs a nap, he mumbled to his reflection, rubbing his left temple. As he turned to the toilet, the floor shuddered. The metal bowl danced in front of him. Small target… What if they hit some real turbulence? The prospect was more than James wanted to think about. He lowered his pants and planted himself squarely on the cold plastic seat.

A light tinkle rose between James’s legs as he emptied his bladder. When he was finished, he sat for a minute, hunched on the little grey stoop. Hours in the spine-bending vice of his coach seat had transformed even a smelly airplane bathroom into a fine change of scenery. He did his best to ignore the sour stench of his own urine.

Damn, what did I eat?

The lights flickered again. Then they went out.

James froze. His heart beat against his chest. Nothing to be scared of, he assured himself. Just a minor issue with the lights. Though he could see nothing in the sudden darkness that surrounded him, he could still hear the roar of the engines and the soft rush of air in the ventilation system. No announcement came from the flight crew. No emergency. No catastrophic mechanical failure. Just a hiccup. As his pupils began to adjust he realized that a line of soft orange lights—so dim he initially failed noticed them—was set into the floor, slowly painting shapes and colours back into his vision. Soon he could make out most everything in the room. Even his own face in the mirror. He was about ready to go back to his seat now though.

As James leaned forward to stand, he thought he heard a voice whisper into his ear. Stay, it said to him.

What? James swung his head around. No one was in the bathroom with him. He was hearing things. God, he was tired! He started to rise again.

"Please, don’t get up."

James dropped hard back down onto the seat. "Is someone