Love and the scale don't get along. Not even when home is a brothel. But which path to choose. He had to put his lovers on the scale and then had to give up on one of them. Either Ana or Maria. It's impossible to make two swords fit in the same sheath. This is what the people said. That there was no old lady in the slum who did not warn him that these love affairs in a hurry end up with an overnight treatment at the hospital and sometimes with a trip to the morgue. But Nelu would respond no and no. He believed in the cards' caprice. For three days they would open unchanged. With love, with reason. With two dames in green.
Alex Caragian
Professor Sleep Tight drank the Good Night tea made of hawthorn and marjoram picked by himself in the moonlight and went to sleep in the bed in Camera Obscura. He put on his anti-insomnia nightcap, tasseled with a small bag stuffed with crumbled ears of grasses and opioids and afterwards he slapped himself twice with valerian powder. The bed consisted of two plates. In the second one, the nightdreams were collected and in the morning, he could weighthem. At the Camera's exit, the dreams would fall over, but not their weight.
Cecilia Fofiu
Exhausted, he abandons the dream of a successful career and builds for himself an adobe house, a roof made of thatch, a fountain sweep, a birdhouse, a corn crib and a vegetable garden. He closes everything with a chain link fence and finally feels free. He shaved his head looking in the rear-view mirror of the Ferrari and does yoga on the porch so often that the villagers make the sign of the cross in shock and the father recommends the purification of the place. Already a Buddhist, he knows to chant the mantra Om Mani Padme Hum which he posted on tiktok. Now he is a healing guru with female fans who adore him. He puts everything in balance. He certainly got famous.
(Translated by Irina Vild / 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.