On the path leading to the sea, a small, white, fairy-tale house, covered with red geraniums and a sign on the gate: Renting attic. Reliability required. I take two steps back to look up at the top floor. The sun and a patch of clear sky is reflected in the window. It's all I want. I ring the doorbell. I don't know how many stairs I count on my way up; it feels like a lifetime. Inside, a mattress, a chair, a table and a sunset, waiting to be invited in. I opened the window to let it in. Just us, in an attic by the shore, like two intertwined dreams.
George Dometi
The ball of fluff and dandelion fuzz rolled up to the window of the room below the roof. He looked out with hope into the garden. He wanted to see whether someone would come or not. He had put up the ad the day before and no one had come yet. He wondered if he had somehow forgotten to write down the address. But no sooner had he finished his train of thought than a scorching breeze, bringing with it a shadow of plastic, pushed him to the door. Is it for sale? she asked. No, the ball of debris replied, madly in love with the holey plastic bag.
Marius Stan
My attic has no roof. After more than a month of standing in the heat, a pickle barrel exploded and propelled the thin, galvanized steel into the sky. It was then that a couple of high school textbooks went flying, along with the collection of Cinema magazines, the military records and the report card from twelfth grade. "The Oracle" survived, as well as my notebook with messages, poems and addresses of the girls I kissed at camp. A few weeks later I discovered, under a box of yellowed letters, a Pepsi bottle cap from Costinești.
(Translated by Alina-Alexandra Șovar / 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.