It was my first day at work. My dad would be proud; I left the squalid ghetto, learnt, and now I'm behind the Small Loans counter. The first customer discreetly shows me a plastic gun. He hands me a note. This is a robbery. His hand shakes, alcoholic. I give him 100 lei. That's enough, go away. Next comes a young woman with a kid who's got a knife round his neck. Money. I watch her. Abandonment, desperation, hunger. I give her 200 lei. Go, get milk. In the evening, I close the cash register one million short without having pressed the red button. And I quit.
Marian Bircea
The Snow-White maid was raging with rage, she had dwarves on the brain[1], seven to be precise, for she had just found one of the red shirt buttons of the full time Prince, palace fireman, part time, in the boudoir of the stepmother, the Evil Queen, video chat model at the enchanted mirror. Scandalous fight, the storyteller was invoked, with all his deceased family for such a mess. The queen explained that she was a budget undercovăr with a degree in private and her second job was metrologist at the PSI[2] check of the pressure in the fire hose.
[1]This is the word-for-word translation for the Romanian expression a avea pitici pe creier which means to be crazy.
Răzvan Drăgoi
I pressed the button because I had become a convinced misanthropist. Mankind was the failed project of a weird God. Look at people. Look at what they do. Everything's first a weapon, then it becomes a microwave, a telephone or a vacuum cleaner. Look at the religions, all killing in the name of love, peace and a God they have nothing to do with. God exists, but not their God. Theirs is political, it's a weapon, not love. I pressed the red button. I drank to the health of mushrooms. I woke up. Relatively alive.
(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.