Pedals

Andra Toropoc
Sometimes in the evenings I was sent around the neighborhood to pick up Grandpa. I didn't like it, because he always found small conversations and a glass to empty. Then he'd put me on the handlebars and I'd look fearfully at his legs. When they stopped moving I'd scream and wake him out of the buzz. We'd trudge home and after she'd put us both to bed, Grandma would sit down at the old Singer sewing machine. She always had something to sew. I don't know if it was Grandpa's snoring or the rhythmic shuffling of Grandma's soles that put me to sleep first. Or maybe it was her whispering voice that unwound with the thread of her stories.
 
 Ana Ludușan
John the Madman stirs up the travel-soiled village roads and scared the chickens with his ATV. The women come out at the gates: damn you, aren't you tired of the mountain tracks? I'll have you! Then he turns on the radio and cranks up the manele^[1]. Women make prosphora and go to the priest. They ask him to scold John the Madman at the Sunday service, maybe he'll calm down. Then John the Madman takes priest's fence, seedlings and meadow down to the ground. So that the he knows who's the boss in that village.

 Adina Drag
It is almost midnight. I want it to be tomorrow already. I put the pedal to the metal until the dots on the highway melt into a luminous vein. The engine is revving up like a monster uncaged. I lit up a cigarette, but it smoked itself in the wind. Anyway, I want to quit. The city crumbles into thousands of sparks in the rearview mirror. I lit another cigarette and let it burn. I enter the tunnel. Brakes are useless now. I pass it, but it's catching up. Soon it will be tomorrow. You wait for me.

 
(Translated by Darius Baciu / University of Bucharest, Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures, MTTLC, year I / Corrected by Silvia Petrescu, coordinator of the translations)