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11th District, 13th District by Zary Fekete

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In Budapest, a teacher visits the home of one of his students and is struck by the contrasts in his city. Image generated with OpenAI The 11th district has wide streets and trees so tall they nearly cover the tram wires. When we walk to the schools to talk about the virus and the blood, the air smells like lime blossoms. Balázs is a student who listens; he wears a sweater that is too thin for November, and he sits in the front row. He doesn't say much, but he looks at the diagrams of the cells with a focused, quiet intensity. Veins branch blue and red across the projector screen while the other students whisper to one another or stare out the windows toward the street below. Balázs watches as if the body is something he himself might someday need to repair. One day I see him at the fruit stand near my house. He is stacking apples, making sure the bruised ones are at the bottom. The owner of the stand is my acquaintance; he tells me Balázs is a good worker, that a colleague gave him...
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Possible Purposes of Plastic Buttons by Joanne Merriam

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A woman is so preoccupied with her dying husband that an alien invasion fails to make much of an impression. Image generated with OpenAI I was at the hospital when the aliens landed. I'd made up my face that morning, but I'd eaten since then, and cried, and laid my cheek against his. I wiped my face naked with wet tissues and rubbed it with my bare hands, something soothing about the gesture despite everything. At the hospital, other patients often said they were bone-tired, and the metaphor of the phrase had lost all meaning for me in literalness, but I was. And nerve-tired and sinew-tired and lung-tired. Pericardium-tired. The muscles in my palms were sore where I'd squeezed his hands for hours, and my calves ached, and my lower back didn't bear thinking about. I hadn't slept since the morning before, and I thought I'd have a sandwich and then get some sleep on the cot in his room and maybe, if I were very lucky, I would die in my sleep and not have to watch...
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Prospects by Scott Pomfret

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Careful, frugal, boring tax lawyer Jeremy is baffled at how he has attracted a beautiful Lebanese boyfriend half his age. Image generated with OpenAI Jeremy was old. Jeremy was out past his bedtime. There was no chance in hell this gorgeous, willowy, bearded twenty-something maybe-Lebanese dervish with the percussive laugh could possibly have any interest in acquiring the digits of a chubby forty-nine-year-old corporate tax attorney spastically shuffling all alone in the southwest corner of Club Fascination. Jeremy had trouble remembering his number. He had trouble spelling his name. To the dervish, watching Jeremy fumble with his cell was probably like watching an animal lacking opposable thumbs manipulating a pair of pliers. Humiliated, Jeremy returned the phone. The dervish glanced at what Jeremy had entered. He flashed a thousand-watt smile. "See ya later, Jeremy ." "Wait! Wait! What's your name?" The dervish vanished. Shirtless dancers converged on the ...
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The Last War by Elese Mathis

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During a world-ending nuclear war, Emma is trapped as a servant in a luxuriously appointed bunker. Image generated with OpenAI Emma wanted so much to shut off the television, but this wasn't her house. Mrs. Thompson binged post-apocalyptic films night and day, even if no one was in the room to watch them. When the Last War was all anyone ever talked about, the last thing Emma wanted to see or hear were movies about the end of the world. She slapped the floor with her soaked mop and raked it back and forth. The sloshing couldn't drown out the wails of the movie characters fleeing from bloodthirsty aliens. Emma stopped mopping. It was strange. People said this war would mark the end of everything, and yet, instead of her life ending in chaos and screams, here she was, serving Mrs. Thompson and her series of never-ending parties. It wasn't exactly what she expected. Mrs. Thompson's six-inch heels clacked against the freshly mopped floor as she marched into the fo...
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