The day was shorter, the weather colder, the backpack heavier, and he was getting weaker and weaker. He kept a cigarette in the breast pocket to smoke when the war was over. It had been there for a year already, and he didn't even know how he had managed to keep it intact. On the night between September and October, the clock struck midnight. He closed his eyes and fell into such a deep sleep that he didn't hear the sirens. They buried him just as they found him, with the cigarette still intact in his pocket and his eyes now open. For him, the war was over.
Alex Micu
Gathering chestnuts from the ground when you came back from school was such a joy. But the greatest pleasure was choosing the ones that still had their prickly shells and throwing them at Antonela and her sister. In the fall, the street behind the gardens turned into a mud pit, and the girls, almost barefoot, couldn't take the shortcut home anymore. I couldn't do anything, there were so many of them, and I was just one. But I had something they didn't have. Pocket money. I bought the blonde lousy girls some rubber boots from the Cooperative.
Octavia Buhociu
Since I can remember, I've always given flowers, following my grandmother's and mother's advice, from teachers to friends and girlfriends. But this month, I'm buying flowers for myself because no one has noticed that I deserve something too for all the sacrifices I made this summer, especially in this crazy heat. I need to forgive myself for not fighting a bit harder for myself and the priorities I've really trampled on. So, let's go for some yellow chrysanthemums, the garden ones, because they're tougher than the greenhouse ones.
(Translated by Eduard Mihai Uretu / 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.