She poked him laughing, then kissed the spot on his arm where she had poked him: tell me, but don't make any analysis, don't calculate mathematically the possibilities, don't think that so many others have promised it: will you give it to me? He smiled a last time, his heart breaking with grief for what was to come, but he said yes. Then he killed the whole colony and sprinkled over her blonde locks, as if playing, the lunar dust, like shaking a mistletoe branch at Christmas. He kissed her, dolefully. She's yours now, he said.
Arthur Ianoși
When I was little, but old enough to go out to play unsupervised, my mother used to tell me all the time, right on the doorstep, that if I went out with my clothes ironed I could run faster, and we'd negotiate like this, for about five minutes, until I'd give in, take them off and wait impatiently, in my underwear, trying to rush her on the excuse that the kids would make the team without me, she'd get mad, threaten to take the stars off the ceiling, I'd pretend to cry and it'd end with a kiss on the forehead. Oh, to experience that again.
Titela Durnea
They're neighbours. They live in a vanilla-flavoured Neapolitan neighbourhood, in a building near Via Toledo Street. Insomnia connects them. The frequency of their sleepless nights is equal to the phases of the moon. They take barbiturates. A lot of them. Zero effect. Just idling. Because their engines are burning up in desperate need of a nap. You see them going up and down the stairs. Good exercise for a living. They sometimes meet on the roof. They stare at the moon. The moon stares at them. Or at the black cat climbing nonchalantly on the rusty drainpipe. Meow.
(Translated by Andreea Georgiana Bogdan / 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.