Last night I ate the best veal roast. It was so tender I didn't even need a knife, I could just break the meat in strips with just a fork. We really enjoyed it and it seemed he won my trust again. Suspicions were dispelled. But all fell apart when he took me to his house and I saw the secular magnolia tree split open. The petals had fallen in strips at the trunk's bottom. That's when I knew I'd slice him with the knife I'd stolen from the restaurant. I just hope no one saw me.
Viorel Spinu
Magnolias. That's how we call them. They look just like the big, tender flowers on Earth. Colourful, round. And these are all the similarities. Here magnolias have fangs. Tiny thick fangs that turn a human being into a dry skeleton in less than a minute. Here the magnolias communicate with each other and form hounds hunting invaders. Us, that is. Humans. We're not here willingly. I have moments when I think maybe the atomic desert would be preferable. Magnolias don't grow in the desert.
Miruna Prescher-Spiridon
The black locusts have gone mad. It has been written about their naked walk through the sky. Odes to soul and exhibition. Magnolias have joned a little madness too. They bloomed in January. Wrinkled with life, too old and tired for this floral rebellion, the world was irritated. A magnolia's job is to be beautiful. In March. Nobody likes a January psycho. They cut down the early-blooming magnolias and provided an GEO: magnolias are only allowed to bloom in March. Not every tree knows how to go mad.
(Translated by Florina Georgiana Țîncu / 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.