There stood a beggar in the shadow of the statue. In exchange for a coin, you would get a story about distant lands where everything was green, where birds sang, and where joyful children bathed in the cold waters of the river. Fiddlesticks, said the sunburned passersby; blasphemy, said the priests. Water does not flow on sand. Water is a gift from the gods and can only be found at the temple. Only the land of the unique Quesht is green. Where is this world? a scholar asked one evening. There, said the old man, pointing to the starry sky. The third star from Hūr.
Roxana Catana Tarhon
The strangest invention presented at this Salon was called man-man. It's a kind of blouse, actually half a sleeve, with Velcro at the top, which extends into a glove. It can be made from linen or-fasten your saftey belt-plastic foil. It has two versions: for the right hand, available in Great Britain, and for the left, in the rest of the world. Here's the inventor: Good day, where did this idea come from? Well, dear lady, I'm a truck driver, and this frankenfashion comes in handy during the summer so I don't get sunburned on just one arm.
Cristina Daniela Dumitru-Pascal
She got out of bed. She dressed and left. She left him sleeping. She didn't turn her head, didn't breathe; she wanted to get as far away as possible. That's what she had wished for, and yet she felt like a prostitute. At home, she vomited all the love out of her. Bits of food, threads of happiness, and even some scraps of hope forgotten within the first two minutes. Hate still stiffened the words on her lips that held the kiss of Judas. She began to clean the bathroom, taking revenge on the bronze faucets just as she had done with the father who had never wanted her. Through direct contact.
(Translated by Bogdan Macarie / 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.