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The Last Regeneration by Amir Lotfi

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Manhattan kingpin Leone needs an illegal operation to stay alive, but it may already be too late. Image generated with OpenAI I. The city never truly slept in 2059, but Leone Battaglia did - or tried to. The glow of Manhattan's skyline bled through the floor-to-ceiling glass of his fifty-third floor apartment, painting faint blue geometries across the ceiling. Somewhere below, delivery drones hummed their ceaseless routes between towers. Beside him, a woman whose name he had not asked breathed slowly in the dark. He had been asleep for perhaps two hours when it arrived. Not pain, exactly. Not at first. More like a pressure - a slow, insistent fist closing around something deep in the center of his chest. Leone had felt it enough times to know exactly what it was before his eyes had fully opened. He lay still for a moment in the blue dark, a heavyset man of fifty-six with a gray-streaked beard and the kind of face that had long ago stopped apologizing for anything. He stared at the...
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165 Days by Karl Hyppolite

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Mike gets into Duke University, but worries about the complications that might prevent him from carrying out his studies. Image generated with OpenAI Mike pulled his favorite hoodie off the hanger. Plain gray, soft at the sleeves, and stitched with the Duke logo. It was barely fifty-five degrees out - a cold snap by Miami standards - but that wasn't why he chose it. He sat on the bed and reached for his phone. Notifications buzzed across the screen - texts from Mateo, a Snap from Cynthia, an IG tag. But it was the notepad icon in the corner that pulled his eyes. 165 days left. He stared for a beat too long. Knock knock knock. "You're good, Mik?" he called. Mikayla cracked open the door. Eleven years old, sharp-tongued, and already pushing her way into grown business. She stepped inside, plopped onto her twin bed across the room, and crossed her legs. "You really going to that party?" "Yeah," Mike said. "First and last one, maybe." ...
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Spilt Milk by Ya Lan Chang

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Xueling takes her son Eliot home to Singapore, leaving Daddy back in Britain, and her feelings about motherhood come to a head when she runs into an ex. Image generated with OpenAI While strolling along the Singapore river towards Botero's Bird, Xueling is startled by a familiar figure. She stops, staring, as he saunters down the steps of UOB Plaza 1. It's been five years, and he's looking at his phone, but it's him: the swimmer's shoulders, the high forehead, the confident gait. He's striding towards her. He will see her if he looks up. Her feet harden into cement, her voice cowers in her throat. Of all the people to run into on her first trip home in five years. After so much has faded. After all this time. Before she can react, he glances up, right at her. He halts. Squints. And breaks into a smile. Quickening his pace, he says 'is it really you?' as he reaches her. She brushes away her fringe, but it remains stuck to her forehead. 'Hi. Yes, it...
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Lessons from a Delmarva Poultry Princess by Laura Huey Chamberlain

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Lisa is used to complying with her mother's expectations, until she meets Reilly, and things get more complicated. Image generated with OpenAI Nineteen years ago my mother - the former Miss Lenore Wilson of Laurel, Delaware - was the 1963 Miss Delmarva Poultry Princess, and this is what she has to say about being a beauty queen. No matter how flawless a woman might appear, Mother says, no matter how beautiful she might be, she's bound to have a run in her stocking, cellulite underneath her girdle, or some such imperfection you can always find if you look hard enough. Nowadays, Mother operates the New You! beauty parlor in the L-shaped attachment Daddy built onto the back of our house. Daddy is a volunteer firefighter and a Blue-Ribbon grower of laying hens, and he taught me the difference between the Virginia and the loblolly pine, both of which grow in the woods behind our chicken houses. But it's Mother's lessons on beauty and the fight against imperfection that ha...
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