Dear coțofan49, you should pay more attention to punctuation. I've read your contributions with great pleasure, and they are full of angelic lyricism and patriotic emphasis. But the comma, mister, the comma, why do you ignore it and treat it with so much disgust and indifference? We should bow reverently, with respect and admiration before and behind it, for we all descend from it, like the Dacians from Trajan's column and like the Thracians from wherever they might descend. Probably from Martians or other obscure zodiac signs. Băluț, editor-in-chief.
Ionuț Tuhoarcă
He was an assistant professor. An up-and-coming standout. You will go places; you must work hard. He repeated himself every day at the bedlam. His mother died two weeks later after he got out. He remained with his father, taken care of by a distant profit-seeking relative. Alcohol and drugs became his dear friends. Life, an ugly dream. You will go places; you must dream. They found him dead one morning. Cockroaches were slowly crawling over his numb body. Another subject of gossip.
Andra Toropoc
Are you sleeping, can you hear me? I'm sentenced to do my homework, and a new episode of Oblio comes through the walls. I lean out the window; the kids are playing tag outside the building, and I'm planning my fourth-floor escape again. In my secret agenda, I sketched the bedsheet ladder; in books, it seems easy, but I'm afraid that my knots may not come out that strong. I hear footsteps in the hallway and stuff everything into the closet, scatter open notebooks on the desk, and put the agenda among the pages of Cutezătorii[1]. I'll write tomorrow about today.
[1] Cutezătorii was a weekly magazine for children and teenagers during the communist period in Romania.
(Translated by Bogdan Macarie / 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.