Elena Fermuș
Who would still care about stray cats on the side of the road when everyone is searching for something sensational? That's what Aunt Florica saw on Facebook; she'd made an account too, to keep up with the world. She'd be on Messenger with her sisters, or posting pictures along with a simple ad: donating cool cats. She had about a hundred, and she had only managed to give away two, mainly by forcing it on people. One day, by accident, she spilled green paint on one. The rest was poetry. New pictures, new ad: selling Martian cats. Soon all her friends had profile pictures with green cats. New Romanian sensations.
Eduard Țone
Every time he climbed the mountain, he stopped at the top, enthusiastic, sweaty, excited, engaged, crazed, deified, tainted, purified, sublimated, and in love, and released his meow with that green gaze that defined in a feline way the dance of endorphins swirling around his ears. Climb after climb, a mad Sisyphus, hooked on eternal love. But one cloudy day, the mountain turned red, strikingly red, crushing the indefinable logic of his love. He stopped, puzzled, and let out a frustrated meow: Mars? What the heck, wasn't I on Venus?
Andra Toropoc
and he lands on the hot rooftop, only our neighbour on the eighth floor living under it. The Tigress, as she's called around the block, has gathered many love stories with one man or another. They would move in with her, live in the heat of love, and then each would leave her, sooner or later. Now she's alone and miserable, and her reputation only resurfaces on certain starry nights, when she hides on the balcony and sings Fly Me to the moon. She purrs the melody softly but punctuates it with sobbing gasps like roars of pain.
(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.