Dorin Vasile
From her armchair, grandma calls us to watch TV. Parizer[1] Family is on. It's Pallizer, says the little one while running. We are all ears. Lords and ladies of good families wander about beneath the peacock's tail, and the music is wonderful. It's like we are there, in Victorian England. Daddy's snoring, he's going to work in the morning. Grandma says that these people never work. And then the chandelier sways, the walls crack with a terrifying noise, and everything mixes in the swirl of time until it becomes a pink paste.
[1] Parizer is the word for baloney in Romanian.
Florina Hegedüs
She brought him to babysit me when she had to work. I couldn't understand why my mother called him our poor relative, because I used to feel like a little princess when going with him on outings, in the park at playtime or at school every day. Many children looked at me with envy. With his rosy complexion and his coriander-scented clothes, he was always indulging me, he was so kind. With him by my side I got married. The day when he no longer came, I cried. My mother said that she'd take care of another child, because we had been struck by luck and she married Mr. Sibiu Salami.
Andra Toropoc
It's from the kisses as sweet as honey, what a stupid song, it's playing from a chick's phone on the streetcar. I want to scream, it's because of my grandma's mortadella, her special recipe with little white garlic islands instead of fat ones. I ate it, damn it, I had a date with my boyfriend and he's sensitive. As soon as I tried to kiss him, he turned yellow and kicked me out of his car, apparently the smell of pub still lingers on. The brakes jerk us from the traffic, the phone falls from that chick, a bad smell comes from me. I burp.
(Translated by Carmen Badea / 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.