Nicolae Popescu
Mari blinks behind her glasses, she's glued to the desktop screen. Ionica, I've been setting my sights on getting married for the past eleven years. I have 56 files of men I've gone out with: zodiac sign, education, psycho profile, what poems he reads. Each one I've seen at most once. What am I doing wrong? I'm an accountant, I'm 43, I live with my mommy, I don't miss SH sales. How did you do it, Ionica? I asked the fool to have sex, he said yes and we've been married for 17 years. Forget the damn poetry and ask that to the blind dude you're seeing today.
Dan Banu
Dad, it's coming, the boy shouted, but his father smacked him in the back of the head which made him knock his nose against the stove. This time it's really coming, he smiled, but the man thundered. Go get your mother lye to wash the floor. The kid didn't even get out of sight when he heard the whistle. He saw it coming down the road in a cloud of dust, scaring the animals in the courtyards. A huge steel thing shooting flames from its nostrils. He tried to leave through the gate, but a man in a cap, suit and iron buttons demanded his ticket. The kid hasn't appeared since.
Monica Bologa
Every night he catches his mother staring at the moon. She's always sad, and more and more quiet. The child has begun to collect money in a little ceramic pig. The first money he got from his grandparents. Now he collects change almost daily from the glass bowl where his mother deliberately puts the coins. Before bedtime he shakes the piggy bank; he likes the metallic sound as of bells. What do you want to buy with your money, his mother asked him one day, a toy? No. I want to get a spaceship to go to the moon.
(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.