Two days ago, a twelve-year-old child disappeared from his home. The news are always a lie. I didn't disappear, I ran away from home. Twelve years is too little for all I've lived. Home is too mild for all I've endured. I'm only wanted by those I run from. And they don't even want to find me. They just want to give the country the slip that I'm gone. The twelve-year-old was found at the children's home in Beiuș city. The children's home is not a home. It's much better than being at home.
Arthur Ianoși
There had been almost two years since Aunt Alecu had left the house. Agoraphobia had set in immediately after the death of the man who had stood by her side for thirty years. The children no longer visited her either. I saw her every day, when I came home from work, on the second floor, nicely dressed, framed by the pvc holster, spinning like that towards nowhere. I'd bought her some tea from the drugstore. I waved her upstairs. I stayed with her for an hour. That's how I found out what was going on in the neighbouring blocks. That's also how I found out Adda liked me.
George Dometi
What are you doing, God's man, with your beer in your left hand and the remote in the other? You were too hungover to pick up your Bible, your four-square and come to church? That young man's a mug. Yeah. But it's not my fault God made Saturday night before Sunday morning. And what are you looking at? That alien. What alien? The one that got a bunch of loudmouths after him because he was doing all kinds of stuff and the authorities tried to arrest him. And? Andis supposed that one of the guys following him betrayed him for 30 bucks.
(Translated by Alina-Dorina Nicolae / 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.