New Times

Ina Moldoveanu
Margareta was sitting on a stool reading a novel. Grey's Fifty Shades had filled her mind with all sorts of stirring thoughts, so much so that even the stool became wet with emotion. The world did a bizum application for her, by way of help. She was the only one left standing in the market begging, the rest were asking on the social media platform directly, without public exposure. An old man approached her with a two-euro coin. She turned him down. It's not like she's a supermarket trolley.
 
 Sanda Burță
She didn't love him, she married him because they were a bunch of sisters and her parents couldn't wait to get rid of their care. She was his good wife, she didn't murmur once, only at night, before she fell asleep, she felt a sort of numbness and her soul felt like water under a sheet of ice. She's a widow now, but she doesn't know how to live any other way. Yesterday she accidentally broke his favorite mug and she looked around in fright. That's when that crust slapped. He went to the cemetery, tore up the forget-me-nots and went off to enrol in driving school.

Roxana Catana Tarhon
Daddy, will you tell me the story about the teenager who lived in a leafy area with 7 people with pituitary dwarfism? Huh? I've never heard of that. Then the one about the semi-seafaring, semi-human entity. What a story that is. What about the one about the lumberjack who had a degenerative disease that made his nose grow when he told lies? Or the puppy with the locomotor disability? What do you guys read at that day-care by it doesn't sound at all familiar? I get it, Daddy, you're 25; but you're not up to date these days.

(Translated by Andreea Iulia Udroiu / University of Bucharest, Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures, MTTLC, year II / Corrected by Silvia Petrescu, coordinator of the translations)