Another topic suggested by the secret service. First, because there are no horses. I wrote the preface in Chechen to a treatise on checkmate and there you have it written down clearly: there are no horses, only bishops. Secondly, which horsemen are you referring to, dear admins, could it be the horsemen that have been smoking the grass of the so-called horses for 35 years? Headless[1]. There you hit the nail on the head. The head was ripped off, patriot as it was, since it wanted to turn the country into a holy shawarma with all the ingredients on planet earth. But God and the airlines are up there and they can see you. And the robe? How much is the robe?
You never know what life is about until you die. That's what us cowboys say. We survive everything. Except for survival itself. It seems complicated and it really is. You kill so that you don't get killed and you end up scalping your own head. And that is because each bullet that slays redskin tears a hole that burns an even brighter shade of crimson in the soul of the one who pulls the trigger. All psychiatrists on the prairie know this. But we won't admit it. Not until the evidence takes our scalp, then our heads and eventually spits in our faces: look at all the black boils you have on your soul.
Cristina Daniela Dumitru-Pascal
I was only a child when mother died. Dad raised me. Work, me. Home, me. No one else, no other woman. I could hear him talking in his sleep. He dreamt about her. They were on the carousel where they had met. He would recount his day to her. He'd ask her for advice. He listened to her. I was in college when Auntie Ana, the neighbor, entered the picture. And dad was smiling. Again. And the nights were quiet. You aren't dreaming about her anymore, I told him. She has started to fade away, he replied. First her hair, then her eyes, her head, an arm, a leg. Have you forgotten her? No, I haven't. She told me she didn't need me anymore.
(Translated by Alina-Alexandra Șovar / 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.