My Mișulică is head over heels in love after ten years of marriage. For about a month now, he's been overwhelming me with attention and an unbelievable tenderness. He must have entered a good zodiac sign, I tell myself, delighted by how affectionate he's been. The sweet boy wakes up an hour early to drive me to work and waits for me when I finish. My colleagues are green with envy. Only Flori, my neighbour from across the hall, remains my most genuine friend. Thoughtful and caring, she returned the reading glasses that Mișu lost this morning. She says they must have fallen off in the crowd on the bus.
George Cosmin Borș
It all started with an itch. A stinging sensation in the corner of my eye. I used my free hand to scratch it. The area was damp, irritated, and I was sure it had turned red. I think it's a foreign object, a metal ball. I can feel it moving perversely under my eyelid. I widen my eye and slip my fingernail underneath. I rotate my eyeball. Oh no, it's gone to the back-I'm afraid it'll reach my brain. As I fumble with my eye, a few sparks land on my cheeks. What the hell? I should probably stop welding. I should've at least worn my glasses.
George Dometi
It's a sad yet delicious intoxication to lie under the bed. I imagine I'm in a grave. The room is dark and silent at this hour. Everyone else is gone. It's a solitary act, carried out in obscurity, without sound or images, a shadow of the nothingness that awaits me. I see no solution to quiet this calling. The nearsightedness of this world forces me to stumble blindly without any direction. So, my foot strikes the plank that holds up the bed. Suicide is the power that man always has within reach. Or is it?
(Translated by Laurențiu-Gabriel Niculae / 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.