Elena Fermuș
Some aunt died, poor thing, thanks God that He had taken her, and I was alone at the wake. According to the custom. At night. But she was not the one I needed to watch, where the hell could she go, but the cats that kept wandering around there. My mom filled my head with thousands of worries, lest one of them walked in on the dead, or she would turn into a ghoul. I stood on the threshold. I won't let you get in here. The cats, in the queue, curious. At some point I saw a little mouse on my aunt's forehead. The cats saw it too. Only they knew if they caught it. I'm outta here.
Carmen-Ecaterina Ciobâcă
We know each other from other lives. Ever since I used to curl up like a ball, gathering the sun of Egypt in me, and she order the slaves to make a statue of me. Then she was the empress of the Byzantine Empire and mother of a sultan, a poetess in love with another woman, Amazonian virgin burned at the stake, a courtesan at whose feet the knights would fall in blind admiration, a young lady who scandalized the world by getting on a bike in pants, a prime-minister. Now I am purring on her knees, while she and her sisters are planning the CCL revolution: childless cat ladies.
Veronica Baciu
She woke up with the same hunger which had tired her all day. The sun fell on her yellowish fur and covered her in a protective hallow. She had dreamt that she was again in the house from Zaporizhzhia and the master spoiled her with all sorts of things, and her little one was caressing her in the salon. She had loved Mașenka. Through her eyes she had seen the world for the first time. She could feel even now her parfume in her nostrils. But all this happened in the past. She looked around and began to search through the ruins. Something moves briefly under the debris. A jump made with precision made her momentarily happy.
(Translated by Ana Maria Mitruș / 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.