I was breathing the salty air while secretly caressing the scalpel. I don't know what made me choose her. The dark hair? Her azure eyes? Her red dress swaying in the wind? She seemed alone, helpless, an easy prey. I invited her to the bar. I barely went to the bathroom that the drinks were already on the table. While on the elevator for her room, the dizziness started. I fainted. Now I'm in this bed, crucified like in a bad movie. I can't move, nor scream, and she comes closer clasping the scalpel. Ioana and Maria were my friends, she whispers.
George Dometi
Darkness on the wet road. Fearful, through the shadowy brush, sniffing on the salt around it, hoping that it will find the opening, it runs as fast as possible. The marks take water from the mellow ground, making small ponds in which ants drown. Branches hit it from time to time, wounding it superficially. Drops of blood mixed with rain drops lie silently on green, tasty leaves. Two yellowish lights project it on the pavement. Nobody thinks about a mother badger waiting for its cub in vain.
Dana Popescu
I heard voices singing, but nobody was there. Was it maybe the ghost of my life, playing with the past? I look behind and I don't recognize my own footsteps: first there are the small ones, of a child. Then follow the big one, intertwined with the small ones, footsteps of a child playing but also footsteps of an adult following a path preset by another. I scream, but I don't recognize my own voice. I cry and I don't recognize the taste of my own tears, these are the tears and the voice of somebody else. Who am I, or rather, who have I become? The sea swallows my uncertainty, like a companion.
(Translated by Andreea Sorana Oltean / 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.