Consiliul
Județean Cluj

România
100

Director fondator: Mircea Arman, 2015

Director fondator revista pe suport material: Ioan Slavici, 1884

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The Euphoric Hedgehog

 

The Euphoric Hedgehog

The euphoric hedgehog endowed with metallic spikes lives in a canister, rolling its way on the chosen route, using an enamel pedal, connected to its ear-drum through a disposable fork and a peppercorn. All day long, the hedgehog is busy to produce fresh blood, poured every two hours in an inflated surgery glove with glasses. Deposited there, the blood screams in horror, cursing, insulting, threatening with reports and investigations. Magnetic bombs explode from three different directions, the blood being, finally, drained through a shower head. The phenomenon repeats every couple of hours, causing the outrage of two laminated chipboard pigeonholes, strategically placed to report on the status quo. The pigeonholes are utterly dishonest, hiding two candid cameras, shaped as a fingerprint and a thumbtack on the upper and bottom shelf, which have ears and toes attached, for an effective camouflage.

The cameras collect data for the chief, Eaves Sarmago, master of the pluvial waters. Their descent is engineered and directed towards the ground, according to the mathematical statistics embroidered on the back of a giant silk worm. The worm transmits the information to the chief’s personal assistant, a balaur who has taken refuge in a pink porcelain toilet tank. The data is sent in kilograms, sometimes tones, through a mutant floor created out of woven straws, saliva, chicken breast cubes and cement powder. When the data is completely transferred, the balaur activates the alarm, a bicycle horn cloned with a sneeze, a yell and a mobile ringtone. The building starts shaking, the toilet tank coughing, spitting out unsmoked cigarettes, powdered grass, flour, donkey bellows and hoofs.

The walls move up and down, upsetting the ceiling, afraid it could change position with the despised floor, masticated by an ancient, alien, carnivore plant in the forsaken past. A headless toy soldier fires a gun, a squirrel perversely dusts the walls with its bushy tail, singing a patriotic song dedicated to blind mice, while the chandelier repeatedly utters its most secret desire, to land on the moon, cracking crunchy tiles on a half charbroiled tray. One day, the alarm got stuck and the thoughtless, overweight balaur had to make a personal phone call to her nanny. A string of rain drops refused to go through the eaves, claiming that it is discriminated. The balaur was reported to the official control body, being promised an exotic holiday in Tunis, after a brave exit under the floor.

 

The Microscopic Dinosaur

Dino was a microscopic dinosaur brought up in an obscure, tiny, ancient bottle, forgotten on a non-existent island. The island was supposed to be rectangular, shaped as a table, with very sharp corners, ornamented with Acacia thorns, crepe paper pockets and large stone snails. If it were real, it would have been estimated to find there quite vast fields cultivated with teeth and fangs of all sizes, to feed the poor vegetarian alligators preserved there since the biblical flood. They evaded from Noah’s Ark, afraid he would kindly, politely and absolutely incidentally subject them to genetic experiments, transforming them into protozoan parasites and molecular saws. That would have been completely heart-breaking for them. The two alligators, which forcibly formed a couple, named Aldee and Gottopr, almost died floating randomly on the diluvial waters, verbally and physically abused by buildings’ remains. On the last day, they were terribly shocked to be obscenely caressed by broken superior members of statues.

What was unbearable for them was to be gossiped by cadavers. Curiously, the corpses smelled good, as if immersed into French perfume. They had their eyes opened towards the sky, watching the triangular birds scratching their noses. The ante-diluvial avian endothermic vertebrates had round, spongy, black noses, out of which fake plastic tree roots emerged. The wings were placed instead of their feet and the eyes were situated on their bellies, moving around in regular circles, repeated continuously. The birds had to fly with their heads rigidly oriented upside down, screw-driven in great haste, just before the deluge started. The creation project was still a work in progress, precipitously interrupted by malefic forces. Some of them had their heads solidly attached to their bodies, most of them being left with the throat exposed to massive acid rainfall. Their rusty eyes, in variable degrees, wept in purple and red ink, symmetrically quantified, flowing in curves and hieroglyphs, watering the dental organic cultures.

The alligators’ congregation have a national anthem consisting in an endless series of hiccups, interrupted by sudden roars. The national coats of arms reproduces an egg crushed by a huge hammer, dropped down from the highest tower, at the same time. This episode dates back to the mythical times, when the ancestors considered common sense that the egg had sufficient time to hatch itself, liberating a fully grown, mature hen, before hitting the ground. This proves the fair play, the equality of chances and the total lack of discrimination, transferred into their national sport, the contest between the kind hearted hammer and the ungrateful egg. Even though the egg always ends broken, it is officially considered the winner, a title never contested. The crushed egg shells are praised and rewarded with a cracked bucketful of the best teeth harvest, during a violent earthquake, after squeezing a rubber lemon in a collective ceremony.

It took five centuries to wait for the perfect seismic activity, compulsory for the teeth to be convinced they are ripened, thus consenting to be deracinated, terribly trampled down, cursed and powdered with baseball bats. In normal conditions, when not involved in the national sport, the teeth are harvested when freshly chopped, fried, neither too hot, nor too cold, breathing through small pores produced by worms in their membrane, covered by yummy, breaded, golden crust. The teeth are expected to say a prayer, thanking the eaters for eating them, wholeheartedly, while being chewed with the nails and thrusted inside the stomachs, hanging outside the alligators’ chest, as deflated balls. Someone else has to witness the situation, usually the eater’s partner, who is honoured to punch the anatomical ball, before and after the swallow.

The winning egg lying pulverized on the ground is, usually, given a post it paper note with a name, a date, an hour and a room to go to and wait for further instructions. If it really wanted to, it was supposed the egg could put itself together in a fraction of a second, totally positive and without remorse, heading automatically towards that direction. If not, it was more than obvious that the egg refused the prize. The eggs never raise to the nation’s expectations, becoming the public enemy. Some alligators even pick up atomic remains, shaking them with mice rictuses, hen claws, dog hair and cow moos, convinced that this potion brings fortune and everlasting happiness.

Once upon a time, something unbelievable happened, a teeth lot refused to be eaten, causing the outrage of the entire population. The teeth sat almost naked in the sunshine, drinking Margaritas, tickling each other with a stainless steel needle. They even created their own political party, ideology and religion, based on the idea of puking every night at twelve o’clock sharp, standing on their heads. The main belief was in the broken spine of a geological monster, preserved segmented in a huge bottomless drawer. When they realized the sacred relics are gone, they decreed a universal holiday, authenticated by an official communique, stating that the spine had been claimed by a manic-depressive Cretaceous creature.

A Happy mooing cow

The Happy Mooing Cow couldn’t stop laughing with an enormous mouth, she got a new job as a secretary in an institution. The night before reporting for duty, she dreamt about how she would sit down, all day long, on an ergonomic chair, with the udder up in the air, enamelling her four hoofs with pinkish, bubbling hearts. The hearts lifted her above the desk, bumping the horns against the ceiling, piercing it in two equal points. The two holes were completed by other punctures, till a collection of perforations was produced, allowing the rain to fall inside.

The Happy Mooing Cow woke up early in the morning, ate all she had deposited in her fridge: four loaves of bread (very white, white, brown, wholegrain), five boxes of highly fat cheese spread, two salamis, two kilograms of smoked bacon, twenty poached eggs, ten bars of chocolate, a bucketful of coffee sweetened with six handfuls of refined sugar, emulsified with three cans of double whipped cream. She belched ten times, letting horrifying sounds out of her overblown belly, scaring the passers-by on the street. However, it was not enough, she needed more, reason for she started pouring a storm of tears, producing a domestic flood. The salty teardrops reached her udder, causing a nasty irritation and a weird walk, with the legs obliquely spread aside.

Arriving at the premises, she was fingerprinted, photographed, searched for lice, had the udder verified, where the committee discovered the rash. The leader of the committee, a robust horse named The Whoopee Doo Stallion, declared her adequate for the activity, mainly due to her stoutness. She was round, her upper and lower members resembling big, stuffed sausages, ready to be engulfed by a hungry hyena. The new secretary was installed in a narrow hallway connecting the management offices, in a profile position, where she could easily be seen through the glassy door. The Happy Mooing Cow was very proud of her office, which, actually, was just a passage to and from the other rooms used by the management to make the best decisions for the institution.

They all had to squeeze by the secretary, rubbing against her huge body which filled all the hallway. In a few days, the overweight cow developed a neurosis, prompting her to eat even more food than before. To supply her room-sized refrigerator, the cow needed more money and regular salary raises. Permanently refused and postponed with fake promises, the cow felt oppressed and turned bitter, mischievous, scheming and exceedingly envious. A suspicious email was sent once, prompting in-depth investigations. She reported to the management that she observed a pervert Mr. Fox peeping on her when processing data with the udder swaying down. She told the accused the claim would stop if he paid a generous sum of money. Ten thousand pounds leaked out of Mr. Fox’s possession into her account, one thousand per month retained from his wages. Soon, the secretary gained the reputation of an exploiting, injudicious cow, hated by everybody, including herself, who could not stand the idea of looking into the mirror to see her chubby body. Instead, she maintained illusions of a rare beauty, picturing herself into her mind as a desirable, slim, beautiful woman.

Each illusion was marked with a new series of punctures in the ceiling, till it disappeared completely. Visitors coming to enquire at the management office were surprised to notice a vast, windy, dark gulf above their heads. The employees never cared to worry about the ceiling’s complete absence, they got used to seeing it, bit by bit, and it appeared customary to them. The first big trouble arose when the Happy Mooing Cow fell in love with a muddy pig, who nurtured temporary feelings for a brown miniature schnauzer. One of the managers fell for an athletic deer, while the other one developed an obsession for a younger stud, searching for cheap thrills and easy prey consumed smoked, as pastrami. Profoundly unhappy in their love lives, they all enlisted for an exotic religious sect.

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