Cristina Caliman
Tina sits on the hospital fire escape and is sad. Today the doctor is getting married, and she is alone here with the memories. On this staircase she met him. They went out for a cigarette and he smiled at her. He asked her name in a warm voice. A week later, they met again for a cigarette and he touched her gently. Later he kissed her. He made promises of eternal love and marriage and she, the nurse, believed them. Today he's someone else's groom. Tina sighed heavily and left to change a sick man. Doctors stick with doctors, she thought.
Gheorghiță Mircea
The theory of hazard doesn't say that a flutter of a butterfly's wing in the Amazon can create a libido storm in the neighbourhood. But it did. Since the women left for Italy, only she remained who had such an openness to love that she could sustain the libido of the remaining men after the steelworks closed and the town died. That night, one by one, panicked at the sound of the doorbell, we lined up naked on the fire escape that was missing its last 20 feet. Last came the husband; he was so drunk that he had forgotten a lit cigarette.
Ionuț Morariu
Steel butterflies and metal beetles have been swarming the city. They flew day and night. Filled with wonder, then fear, people sought to unravel the mystery. It wasn't hard. On a fire escape, the boy performed the miracle in full view of everyone. In his hands, a few pins and the jagged wheels of an old clock became a ladybird, a wasp or a firefly. How do you bring them to life, they asked him. Nothing could be simpler. I tell them what your Father told you. I have made you in my own image. Then I kiss their souls.
(Translated by Cătălina Colibaba / University of Bucharest, Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures, MTTLC, year II / Corrected by Silvia Petrescu, coordinator of the translations)
Versiunea în română a acestui text se poate citi aici, în rubrica Ficțiuni Reale.