We crawl through life like worms. We break every commandment with the ease of a summer rain. Love has become an obsolete sentiment. Faith has lost all nuance. Lying is our common vocabulary. We smile with faces distorted with hate. We desecrate every inch of nature and ravenously bite innocent animals with blood-stained palms. Good dissipates in the grandeur of evil. Wake up, the end is near. Thus ends Mr. John concludes his sermon and runs towards his red Ferrari, like the flames of hell.
Răzvan Dițescu
The two stood face to face at the spotless white table with their eyes fixed on the only object on it: the red button. Don't touch it, he said. Why not? Isn't that why it's there, she replied. There's nothing else, what's the point," she continued. Fine, press it, what does it matter, there's nothing to save anyway. She smiled bitterly. How ironic. Everything has already collapsed, but we still need a button to pretend that we decide the end. They pressed it together. A voice from thin air: Reboot in 3, 2, 1.
Carmen Moldovan
If he had any power, he would rewind time. In slow motion, he'd freeze frame and see everything in the few seconds he didn't see. He would have seen how the man's gesture of putting his hand in his pocket activated a terrible fear in him that the man was going to pull out a gun and kill them. Before moving to the next frame, the one where he pressed the red button, he would see the corner of the handkerchief sticking out of his pocket. Before the train stopped at that insane speed and crushed them all into a smoking mass of beasts.
(Translated by Teodora Anghelachi / 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.