Today is a wasteland. Life's like relationships that start with Suck It and end with Eat It. Horror movie. A huge house. Haunted only by women who say: I'm fine. So is the city I live in. A dismal paradox. The trolley schedule proves that time is an illusion. They never come when you want them to, but never at the time written on the rusty signs. Empty stations. Shelters whose windows are covered with election posters. With Elena. Back when they were still men. I'm the only one without a transplant.
Alina Ilie
He gathered up all his unbidden thoughts, blew them with longing and twirled his golden wand until they all went into a dizzying whirl. In a few moments, the veil of delusions materialized into particles that gathered in a spiral. With the movements of a mad conductor, the sorcerer began to weep with regret, and the floating tears wrapped the coils with motherly care. Suddenly the whirlpool bent down and thousands of strands like sand rained down on the thoughtless woman's body. This is how absences of life healed, he told her.
Monica Ciurea
You know that feeling when you go traveling and then there's something, you don't know what, that you forget? It had taken hold, it had taken over, it was permanent. I sometimes found it crucified on the edge of a bridge, on the lip of a cliff, in front of a train, taking the place of the suicidal man without identity suspended between worlds. At other times it lay staring at the ceiling, its ear pinned back for hours on end, and then you could tell it had found a mass grave because it had few thoughts left to listen to. What does death taste like, especially when it begins?
(Translated by Andreea Cristina Moise / 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.