The Headless Horseman

Marian Bircea
She had taken this road many times, delighted that she could help her parents. She walked for bread, with the small change in her hand and the bag over her shoulder, knowing exactly what she had to do, how and how long to wait at the traffic light to cross the street on the green. She had stepped confidently onto the crosswalk when she was struck by a sports car, from which the speakers blared, tortured by the maximum volume of manele music. They wanted to disappear, but were stopped by another crashed vehicle. The police pulled the headless rider out of the car. An illiterate bomber, but one with a driver's license.

Sanda Vaideș
Under the Vault of Heaven, between the Infinite Columns of the World, surrounded by falling stars and burning celestial bodies, the four Horsemen of the Apocalypse had set their Horses loose by the shore of the Lake of Mercury. The horses seemed made of Majolica from the ancient kilns of China during the Xia dynasty, glowing in the light of the Night like the phantoms of the deceased. From between the two Mountains of Bones, the thunder of the Fifth horse's hooves rang out like a Bell of the End. The rider who came had no Head. He was the atrocious symbol of the Coming Times. A Robot.
 
 Aurelian Țolescu
With some ambition, knowledge, and many warm thoughts, I found myself as a young man in the position of the rider who could control any kind of imaginary or incarnated steed-whether in machinery, social, family, or professional relationships. I won every kind of race for about 25 years. When the generational shift and even family took my head, all the beautiful memories fell into the void, and since then I've been trying to rebuild my memory, attempting to connect my external hard drive to the heart that still beats peacefully with myself.

(Translated by Miruna Baicu / University of Bucharest, Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures, MTTLC, year I / Corrected by Silvia Petrescu, coordinator of the translations)