Laura Stanciu
The information has arrived. The mission begins in three months. The best soldiers have been selected. They are training intensively. Eight hours of training per day have been set: aerobic and anaerobic effort. Their resistance to sleep, hunger, and concentration under extreme conditions is being tested. We are collaborating with a team of doctors, biologists, and parapsychologists, ready for a unique experience. In the end, we'll have a foundational study for future actions. One hundred and two field mice are ready to stop the invasion of the Martian cats.
Monica Ciurea
It's evening. They're in the kitchen. Chatting away. We're sitting quietly in the bedroom. We're playing Titirobil[1]. Dad's eating pickles. My brother is spinning the spinner. Mom is laughing loudly. I'm stuffing a marble up my nose. Dad's in a tank top. The marble won't come out. My brother is crying. Mom appears. I say I have a marble in my nose. I wake up on Dad's shoulder, upside down. He's running. He's panting. He keeps saying, Breathe through your mouth, Kitty. I see sidewalks, streets, concrete, hospital floors. You have nine lives, Kitty, says the doctor. We send the marble back to Mars. Dad shakes his hands.
Adina Drag
And then I saw her. It was March, and out of the darkness, a barn of light was growing. She turned her head first. The wind stirred on the stubbly field like a prickly beard. I felt a rough tongue on my hand and a heart beating more fiercely than my own. Through the clouds devouring one another, a reddish moon could be glimpsed. She arched her spine and stretched out freely beside me. 'Relax a bit, for heaven's sake. You humans, so strange. I know a story about cats that live on another world. Want me to tell you?
(Translated by Cristina Ioana Bontea / 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.