The princess liked him. He was handsome on his white horse. He was brave, strong and clever. But she knew he was hiding something. So she put him to sleep one night and opened his chest. It looked like a library inside the man, with many shelves of books and drawers of quills, inkwells and pens. She rummaged through the drawers and behind the last one she found it. She hesitated a moment, then pressed it. The surroundings collapsed like a sandcastle and she found herself in a studio flat in Berceni pouring baked beans from a burnt saucepan to an unknown man.
Adina Colțea
A pearly, slightly smug little button woke up somewhere in the grass, lost and completely bewildered. All his life he had lived on his master's arm by the golden clock and slept with his mate in a dawn-coloured plush box. Nothing was the same and it was freezing cold. He felt himself slipping into depression when, carried by the wind, a slightly prudish handkerchief with long eyelashes fluttered beside him, whispering softly: Have you been waiting long? The button blushed, the handkerchief smiled, and the cold sighed and went away.
Dorin Vasile
It smelled of cabbage and onions in most blocks of flats. We'd sneak up the stairs, ring the doorbell and run. On the ninth floor was her door. She attracted me like a magnet. My finger still tingles. Sometimes she'd come right out, sometimes she'd keep us waiting. As we grew older, she stayed the same, like a forgotten photograph on the fridge. Who was she? Why didn't she grow old? We had no answers, we just kept ringing the doorbell, keeping some kind of childlike bond with her secret. After we stopped, the door stayed closed forever.
(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.