Almost 100

by Robert Runté

Her skin had become so translucent, I could see the flow through the veins stop whenever I held her hand.

Called to her bedside, I asked, “Why now?”

“Birthday,” the nurse explained. “Either it becomes a goal—hanging on for whoever they have left to turn up for their 100th, so they can depart surrounded by family—or they refuse to believe they could get that old, and pass a day or two before.”

“Your mom’s new worker reminded her, ‘You’re turning 100 next Tuesday.’ Just making conversation, but your mom put down her tea. So I knew: this weekend.”

Escape

by Doug Jacquier

You could resign, storm out in high dudgeon and let the cards fall where they may. You could fantasize about finding another job where your skills are finally appreciated and imagine submitting your resignation with an air of smugness. You could become unmanageable and take the fired escape. (Except there’s the money, your unemployable middle age, the mortgage and the kids and your partner’s anger and the looming wasteland of your irrelevance to your former colleagues.) Or you could accept that you built this escape-proof prison and raise birds to release through the bars, before they become like you.

Alice 2.0

by Susmita Ramani

When the package arrived, Walter wrestled off the lid…then gazed at its contents and sighed.

The replicant Alice looked like a poor imitation. Same height, build, and hair color…but he saw gleaming rivets, which felt disconcerting, like he’d dragged home some Frankenstein’s monster to replace his dead wife.

He carried it to the sofa and draped a blanket over it.

Ten days later, he got up the nerve to turn the key.

Her eyes fluttered open–slate blue, like Alice’s.

He gasped. “I…made your favorite, carbonara.” Then he felt foolish; she couldn’t eat.

But she smiled. “Lovely.”

It was.

Hope Towers

by G.J. Williams

Hope Towers. Inaptly named. And there’s a man who won’t move out of one of its third-floor apartments. How to make him see sense has replaced the weather as a talking point. He’ll be the song of the drunks yet. Category NETG: nowhere else to go, one of them. In short, one from whom there’s nothing to fear. Single male, middle-aged, keeps a cat. No comeback.