His bare feet turned green, his whole body was numb. He took a deep breath and fell to the ground. Suddenly, on the shore he saw a carcass on which hungry vultures were feasting, tearing apart hunks of flesh, fighting and hissing. He grabbed this writhing thought with his nails and cast it aside. No, his future won't be like this. He leaped to his feet. He raised his arms and, with the frenzy of wicked fairies, continued the dance, drawing arabesques across the infinite plain that had turned red under the cloak of dusk.
Bogdan Mihai Bati
The grown man says that you can reach the stars only by rocket. The child thinks differently, so he raises the bar. Have you tried bouncy shoes? Or maybe a hot air balloon? Do you have floating socks? Or those climbing stairs? Why not use a plane that takes off straight up? Or a blue elevator to the sky that starts at sunset? What do you call all of these? I call them star mobiles and I recommend a whole family journey. And where will you take your star mobile to? I'd like to take it to my star, to which I haven't given a name.
Horațiu Dudău
She flinched. As if the elbow on which he rested his head on the dirty table were to pass through the white plastic, scratched by the nails of time in an attempt to stop herself and began a never-ending fall into the daily dirt of hastily washed glasses on which the DNA of the losers who often come to the bar remains forever, like an immortal punishment for those who once were stars in the making, with a childish smile that was later cut off by the guillotine of reality, improvised in a wrong decision.
(Translated by Cristina-Andreea Dobre / 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.