Andreea Cristina Achim
I couldn't even look at her. I saw a black, colourless figure, faded somehow, like a shadow. I couldn't understand what was happening to me. Was I sick? I know she did it on purpose. She always sat by the window, but just enough so that the sun got in my eyes and I couldn't see her, only hear her. I'd hear how she whined, how everything I did was wrong. I already couldn't hear her anymore. Her words vanished like her face. She'd become a ghost and I a sun-blinded fool. Or was I perhaps blinded by love? Give me the cane to stand up, please.
Alex Caragian
He woke up with her smile on his lips. He bit the bottom one without opening his eyes. It trickled down his throat like oil. He was his own skin's sensory slave. So real and yet the sheets were so empty. The curtain was fluttering in the morning breeze; he had fallen asleep with the window open. He stepped onto the balcony naked and holding only a knife in his hand. He passed it over lips that earlier had been sizzling with kisses. We're all criminals on the inside. It's just that some of us don't always show it. Endings should be forbidden. But not today.
Adina Drag
No one was supposed to be there at that hour. The sun was shining from the south, and people had long since gotten tired of getting burnt. The wind blew lazily and stirred the leaves of the trees that hung over the world. A few mounds of houses drowned in oblivion and an old church with new plaster. That was all. The town was fast asleep. Even the waiter had not opened his eyes. He stumbled through the light as if it were dark. I was thirsty so I called to him, but he peeped and retreated into the shadows. The man at the next table smiled at me. He can't see you either, can he?
(Translated by Oana-Elena Dragnea / 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.