Ruined

Adina Drag
He always comes at the same time. He drags his boots across the floor and hits the bars with his baton. He grins. He lights a cigarette and blows the smoke toward me. If only I could disappear. What's up, philosopher? Do you like the air in here? If I answer, he crushes my ribs with his boot. If I stay silent, he hits me anyway. Why are you staring like that? Still thinking you are who you used to be? He hits me. He savors my pain, like an executioner delaying the blow. Some speak from experience, others from books. I stay silent from hell. From this rotting body.
 
 Ana Maria Dobre-Nir
He loses everything at the table. The last chip vanishes in silence. The man steps out into the night, his jacket fluttering in the salty wind. He climbs quietly onto the cliff above the lit switchbacks. Headlights from a car approach. He rises onto his toes, then falls with arms outstretched, like a cross of flesh. The air rips his shirt away, vertebrae crack, time stretches. A metallic sound, a screech of brakes. No one looks toward the sea anymore. Only the moon, unmoving. In the morning, tourists will photograph the cliff and step over the stain without asking a thing.
 
 Monica Bologa
To prove he trusted me, the man put a razor blade in my hand and told me he was letting me shave him. With a trembling hand, I began the operation. At first, I was nervous, but then, slowly, I grew bolder. I liked it so much that I wanted more. I continued with his head, chest, arms, legs. I nicked his ear a little, his lip, his heart. The man was left without a single hair on his body and without a single penny in his account. I shaved it all off. Yesterday, I left him. I can't be with a poor man.

 
(Translated by Larisa Marta Mreană / University of Bucharest, Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures, MTTLC, year II / Corrected by Silvia Petrescu, coordinator of the translations)