It was a long time ago but I'll try to tell you as much as I know. It was the day of a big game. For two months I'd been alone, he'd been in camp, gone since the morning after the wedding. He wasn't answering his phone. I thought as the team's top scorer he was training hard. On Instagram he was different. Fancy parties. Wearing a trench coat, I went to the stadium. The game was on. As he was setting up for a pass that would most likely be a goal I threw my trench coat down and, stripped naked I dashed onto the pitch making my stroll around the stadium famous.
Ionuț Morariu
Danger lurks everywhere. It was the first lesson I received in the school of the lanista Postumus. But four years had passed since then. Four years in which Publius Manlius had won dozens of battles and the favour of all the matrons of the Aventine. But prudence was no longer the friend of the illustrious gladiator. Bathed in the blood of the defeated, he bathed in cheers when a pilum came from nowhere and pierced his breastplate. There, on the banks of the River Styx, he learnt the lesson that is taught nowhere. The show is made to devour its actors.
Adina Drag
After the black blood drained and the spirit came out of the bone, the man cut off the heifer's thighs, wrapped them in two layers of fat and fried them. The olive oil, with which the participants in the Games were also anointed, now burned in the sacred temple as in an eternal flame. Rich, poor, poets and sculptors had invaded Olympia. Some on foot or on donkey saddles, others on horseback or in carts. A shadow sprang when Pisidoras won. Her clothes clung to the stands and were ripped off, revealing a woman's body to the angry crowd.
(Translated by Andreea Cristina Moise / 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.