Free Jews vs Zombies by Daniel Polansky, Adam Roberts, Sarah Lotz, Ofir Touché Gafla, Rena Rossner, Shimon Adaf, Benjamin Rosenbaum, Anna Tambour

Jimmy became a silent, lurking presence. Still Zackary clung to life, my mother generously sending me almost hourly updates on his condition. ‘He ate almost a whole bowl of my soup, and a slice of bread. It’s a miracle!’
    It’s been five years since Zackary Lowenstein’s miraculous recovery. He’s still going strong, as are Estelle and the rest of the old people. Jimmy’s not doing so well. He turned to the bottle, his wife left him, and he was retrenched from his job. He’s been forced to move into Benchley Heights, and some days you can see him, a stooped greyish figure, wheeling his uncle along the beachfront.
    More than once, Jimmy has cornered me in the lobby. ‘Figured it out, Nate,’ he slurs, his breath laced with Bells, forgetting that he’s said it all before. ‘Rachel’s aunt’s emphysema should have killed her years ago. Then there’s Uncle Zack and Estelle with her liver cancer. Not to mention the others… They’re all so fucking old, Nate. I’m beginning to think… Nate, they’re not going to die. They’re never going to die. It’s a punishment. A punishment from God. We’re being punished, Nate. You, me, all of us.’
    ‘That’s ridiculous.’
    ‘Is it?’ His bloodshot eyes filled with tears, and I had to look away. ‘Is it, Nate?’
    The building itself remains much as it ever was. We Friday People still slog our way through the rush-hour traffic to Sea Point every week, although we rarely meet for a sneaky cigarette these days. We’re all older, greyer, more worn down. I’m still clinging to my job by my fingernails, and my mother still calls, daily. ‘Ninety-one, my boy, but I feel like I could go on forever.’

WISEMAN’S
TERROR TALES
    ANNA TAMBOUR
    Irving Wiseman’s uncle Leo dropped some magazines on Irving’s bed. ‘Enough dreaming,’ he said, pulling the book from his nephew’s hands and placing it on the bureau. He would have liked to toss it, but it was a book, and even more than that, a library book.
    ‘You gotta make a living,’ he said.
    Irving sighed, but rolled over and laid the magazines out before him on his bedspread like cards in a game.
    ‘You got talent,’ said Leo. ‘You must have. So they’re showing it, no?’ He pointed like some professor in the movies at the middle magazine.
    The right breast of the woman in the underwired but otherwise unstructured pink brassiere stared at the 17-year-old. It wasn’t just the woman’s youth that perked those breasts, Irving knew. His uncle had told him that 64% of women, once they hit the age of 20, already have bosoms that not only fail the pencil-test, but are as perky as easy-over-light fried eggs. This woman’s bazoongas were held up in their most flattering form, high as they could go. Irving didn’t know but guessed that the reason was those arms pulled up by wrists clamped into cuffs on that chain pulled over the swing-bar by the scientist’s assistant.
    Leo stabbed that cover – Marvel Tales, May 1940 – with his pipe. Ashes fell on the assistant’s manic frown. ‘What have you to tell me?’
    Irving opened his mouth, looking ready to recite, or yawn.
    ‘No, that’s too easy,’ said Leo. ‘What does that remind you of? And this is no bordello. What you lying down for?’
    Irving sat up and ran his hand through his thick curls. ‘The other pink job.’
    ‘And when are they not pink?’
    ‘When they’re red or chartreuse or – ’
    ‘If you can’t piece these together, just how you think – ’
    The boy took off his glasses and pinched his nose, an odd gesture considering that without his horn-rims, he looked like Michelangelo’s son of stone. ‘Long blade of paper-guillotine in action of cutting a brunette in half. All right already. False underwire of round cotton-waste piping, non-adjustable rayon-satin ribbon straps, one-inch separator of same connecting bandeaux-style shallow unshaped cups. Suitable for women with no body who think they don’t need fill. A Twenties