This business brought me nothing but trouble. Luckily, I caught it in time and decided to fail my favourite subject. Whenever I got called to answer, I'd be quiet as a millpond. Now the boys pay attention to me. I'm one of them, they take me fishing, football and the pubs. Dolfi even promised me that one day he'd take me to Ursula Roscovana. I've solved the problem. I filled the sheet with formulas. I hear the professor is getting his phd. He says his thesis is about the relationship between energy, mass and the speed of light.
Costi Gălățanu
My friend, the journalist, had been an extremely cheerful child, always up to something. It seemes that all his cheerfulness and optimism had been exhausted in his childhood. I was his only friend left, everyone else shunned him. He told me that he was dreaming of killing himself, but lacked the courage. I turned him down when he asked me to assist him. Furious, he told me I wasn't a true friend. He went to Syria, war correspondent. When his beheading was broadcast live, I knew he had found real friends. A dream come true.
Arthur Ianoși
The weight of the wedge and the blood under his gnawed fingernails reminded him of the morning they had dragged him and his sister out of under the bed, only to have them watch their parents shot in front of the house. They'd loaded them into separate trucks. The last he'd heard Olesia. He had her face in his mind, her blonde curls framing her blue eyes and that smile that melted away all his sadness. He looked out the window and saw another group leaving for the showers. That's when he saw Olek running towards the barbed wire and the bullet piercing through his skull.
(Translated by Adela Neacșu / University of Bucharest, Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures, MTTLC, year I / Corrected by Silvia Petrescu, coordinator of the translations)
Versiunea în română a acestui text se poate citi aici, în rubrica Ficțiuni Reale.