Deadly black tarantula – Héctor Ranea

Its being so long that people at Gentemorta, in Italy, dance to heal the poisoned ones from the deadly bite of the infamous spider named tarantula: The deadly black tarantula, as you probably had heard in the song. All the people in town dance feverously, tenaciously and that, so they say, will protect the attacked from the venom

Unfortunately, this strategy did not always work.

The people of Gentemorta, a dead town in Italy, have been dead for two centuries now. They continue to dance all right, but they are healing ghosts that did not heal anyone. You might join them in dance, they would welcome you, but you’d better look under your boot soles to find the black spider waiting for you. Only the dead dance free.

Héctor Ranea 

Stairways to heaven – Sergio Gaut vel Hartman

I dictate a short story using a voice recognition program. Some entity, perhaps an alien, even a mephitic creature, is using me to process his thoughts and turn them into literary ideas. It’s possible that he is being used by an extradimensional being, in turn manipulated by a Demiurge to whom God, urged by his own puppeteer, issues grieve all Mondays, irritated after a struggling week as Universes builder.

Translation: Héctor Ranea
Original tittle: Escalera al cielo
Publicación en español:
http://quimicamenteimpuro.blogspot.com/2011/04/escalera-al-cielo-sergio-gaut-vel.html

Sergio Gaut vel Hartman

Parricide – Ildiko Valeria Nassr

I always declared myself more inclined to the incest than to the parricide. I’d rather sleep with my parents than kill them. I’d rather live together with them than endure their absence. I abhor those who choose hunting parents. I’d rather be in witches’ covens than in massacres.
I did not marry anyone. I abandoned my parents in their bed and locked myself up in a library. I prefer my home’s quietness than the annoyance of a really poor sexuality followed by apologies and lamentations.Parents do grow old pretty fast.

Translation: Héctor Ranea
Original title: Parricidio
Publicación en español: Parricidio - Ildiko Valeria Nassr

Confusing night – Héctor Ranea

He stood up from the bed, slightly confused. He went to the bathroom and then he realized he would no longer sleep that night. He dressed up and went to his working table and put some music. He chose Mahler’s fourth symphony. The cat, Mahler’s lover itself, jumped into his lap so he caressed it mindlessly. He had a cup of coffee already at hand and took a book left by the middle sometime ago. At the distorted Waltz, he took note of each possible movement for the dancers in the next choreography he would undertake in the future, when he realized in a shudder that his cat had died years ago. Then he vanished in the music, again, almost like dancing.

Woman on the Moon – Javier O Trejo

Raquel Armstrong went to the Puna to work as the Elementary School teacher. The first impulsive enthusiasm was eroded by the solitude and shortages of all sorts. The fallow landscape, stone sown reminded her, her own deepest feelings. At night, with stars and moonlighting, she would got the balm that encouraged her to keep going on. The relief came to its maximum expression during the nights of full Moon. She then walked to the nearby lagoon and stayed for hours looking at the Moon’s reflection frozen in the water’s surface. She thought to climb to the Moon even if it were with Calvino’s staircases. One night, without knowing why, she plunged to the freezing waters to float over the image, and then she was the woman on the Moon.

Translation: Héctor Ranea

Caballah - Sergio Gaut vel Hartman

David Ben Yehuda was not crazy. He heard voices, but he was not crazy. He had tuned that sense up to such a point that he could detect the moment when a leaf, yellow and brittle, came off the oak and began its slow descent, being swung in the air, rocked by the wind.
That's why I say he was not crazy. He heard the horses long before they were visible on the hills, long before they crossed the river. He knew who the ones mounting them were and what they came for. And when he knew that, he ran and ran and entered the teacher's house, still running, touching the mezuzah only in his thought, and he stumbled on the seats and the people and he hit and knocked the rabbi down to the floor.
"Are you crazy?" said the teacher when he could stand up. He stared at the thin, ungraceful David, his favorite student, installed behind a stern smile. He knew that David was not crazy, but somehow he had to moderate the boy's arrests. Although this time, he knew immediately, it was not a minor topic. Naum Ben Simon could read David´s face as if it was a roll from the Torá, something very serious was happening, very serious.
"It's terrible," David babbled. "Count. Emich of Leisingen."
Some words are fire, they are acid, they are poison. No Jew from Renania ignored who Emich of Leisingen, the bandit Count, was. He and his men had raided the region many times. His gangs always took what they wanted, always in the bad way. But this time was worse. The rabbi saw the crosses gleaming in the David´s eyes, he sensed the smell of blood and he heard the moans; he had also been young and imprudent. But this time was another thing. The rumors had been around and everybody knew that the noblemen and knights were getting ready to recover Jerusalem. Their Jerusalem? Our Jerusalem! Will they maybe recover it for us? The rabbi looked at David again.
"Where will we go?" the teacher groaned. "They will be everywhere and they will say we have killed their Lord and we are guilty. There is no place to go."
It was David´s turn. He looked at the rabbi as if he didn't know him and he spit the five words almost with rage.
"Have you taught me lies?" He had grown up ten years in two minutes. David pointed at the books heaped on the table, filling the bookcases. "Are they all lies? Wisdom, just the excrements of a mangy dog? Cabbalah, just dreams and delusion?" He breathed deeply, as if he were drowning. "Have you been lying to me all this time?"
Naum Ben Simon understood David´s point and he replied with the only thing he could reply. "Things don't happen because you want it; God should want them to happen. He should inspire us. Is that what you´re talking about?"
"That is what I'm talking about," said David, and he grew ten years older. "Does God want us to be slaughtered, does he want the Count's gang to cut our throats and drink our blood?"
"If he allowed, that it would be his Will, and we should accept it." The rabbi looked at the ceiling, but David knew his eyes could see through the beams and the tiles.
"If he allowed me to get out of here," David said, furious, pressing his teeth, "it would be his Will, too."
"You won't," said the rabbi, exhausted.
David turned his back to him. Naum Ben Simon understood it was his duty to respect the boy's wish and he left the room, leaving him alone. He would not be the one to behead the boy's hope, even if there was no future for the Jews in Speyer.
The door closed and the sound of the rabbi's steps vanished in the corridor. David aged every year he still had left to reach wisdom and plunged into the pleats of knowledge. He allowed his fine ear to guide him to the crossroads where commands and proportions crackled; he smelled the figures and tasted the signs, letting himself go to the depths of the mechanism that gives ground to harmony in the whole universe, giving life to it. Finally, he saw it and felt it- there he was, absorbed, almost indifferent, playing with beings and suns. And he, David, the insignificant apprentice from Speyer, could come closer and locate his own marks. He would never know if he had deceived Him or if the Manipulator had simply allowed the intrusion.
But David opened his eyes and he was no longer in the rabbi's office, he was no longer in Speyer; his fine ear couldn't capture any movements from the Count's killers, who were coming to behead the Jews, sheltered by cross with no charity or compassion.
The evening had turned into bright morning. In the distance, behind the hills, he could see slender columns, smoke oozing out of them. He walked on to the summit and caught sight of the valley. It was a town, a strange town surrounded by a wall made of some thin, knitted metal. He sharpened his ear and he heard the voices. Screams and groans. Orders and requests. But he couldn't understand the words. They were just a faint resemblance of the language he used to speak. He began to walk down the hill and the shapes turned into people, mostly dressed in striped suits, although others, who looked sturdy and authoritarian, were wearing dark clothes and metal hats. David was not silly and he knew immediately that something was wrong in this place. He shook his head and he smiled. They could not be worse than Count Emich of Leisingen and his bandits. He started to walk faster and, with an unshakable determination, he headed toward the gate at the entrance, where someone had written, with big, strangely shaped letters and in recognizable German: "work will make you free."


Translated: Claudia De Bella.
Original tittle: Cabalah

About the Author: Sergio Gaut vel Hartman
       

I’m always late everywhere - Daniel Frini

I have a problem: my time machine is always late.

I have wasted hours trying to make it work in the proper way (it’s not convenient to try to force the mechanism, as it was shown by the tragic Chichilo Sartori incident), but nothing seems to work.

I tried to find some equation that allows me to compensate the loosen mechanism (my hypotheses was that the further you go in time, either forward or backwards, the more delay you have, as a result), but there was just no case. I have taken it to Laucha Micheli’s repair shop —no better clockmaker than him—. I’ve consulted Manteca Acevedo, who knows a lot about quantic engines. I’ve corrected the tempions flow with an electromagnetic, long range bar, confined the electrostatic repulsion forces to limit the thermic velocity, inferred over the an/cat reaction in order to increase the passing energy; but it was worthless.

And the problem isn’t minor.

I became a traveller because it was the best way to join my two passions: on one side, I’m a kind of homemade scientist who is fascinated with building weird artifacts; on the other, I love anecdotic history’s episodes; so, when I found the instructions, I didn’t hesitate; I built the Machine and threw myself into the space-time, but there was no case.

Three or four times, I wanted to see how María Antonia Josepha Johanna von Habsburg-Lothringen lost her head, on Vendémiaire the twenty-fifth of the second year of the French Revolution, at eleven am, on Paris’ Revolution Square; and I always got there when the last curious were leaving away and Sanson, the executioner, cleans his guillotine. Once, I even arrived the night from the twenty-fifth to the twenty-sixth, and only found a drunken pissing one of the gallows legs.

I wanted to see Martin Luther King and his I have a dream on the twenty-eight, August, nineteen sixty-three, in front of the Lincoln’s monument, in Washington; but only found the stairs full of papers and dirty because of the thousands of people that had stepped on them; and a left behind group talking about how shocking the speech had been, as they walked away.

I tried to arrive between fourteen hours, twenty-five minutes and fifteen hours on thirtieth, April, nineteen forty-five, on the Reichstag’s roofs of Berlin and solve, once and for all, if it was Melitón Varlámovich Kantaria, or Mijaíl Petróvich Minin or Abdulchakim Ismailov, the soldier who made the red flag wave at the German Parliament’s portal; and see Yevgueni Jaldei immortalize the moment on a photograph (icon, if any, that marks the end of the Second World War); but didn’t even got there to see him putting his equipment away. It was five o’clock already, and the roof was empty, and there was no flag.

By the time I stepped the Curia of Pompeyo’s Theatre, in Rome, on the idus of March, in seven hundred and nine year at urbe condita; Bruto and the conspiratosr had already killed Julius Caesar.

I didn’t get to see Perón on the Rosada`s balcony, seventeenth, October, nineteen forty-five. The Fat Man bomb had already exploded in Nagasaki. There was no americans in Saigón. The military man didn’t let me enter Roswell’s Ground Zero. The Beatles helpers were putting the equipment’s, from the rooftop, away, at the Apple building. Mary Jane Kelly was already dead on her bed, and didn’t see traces of Jack the Ripper. The corpses of Benito Mussolini and his lover, Clara Petacci, were already hanged upside down at the service station on Piazza di Loreto. Lady Di’s car was wrecked to pieces in the tunnel, near the Sena, and surrounded by ambulances and police cars. There were nothing but chips from the bridge over the Kwai River. From Joan of Arch, there were only ashes and two or three embers aroused by a weak, north wind. Dempsey was going into the ring, after Firpo’s terrible right uppercut. Tunguska’s trees were already in flames and fallen. And, of course, the police had already circled Dalla’s Dealey Square, and taken JFK, deadly wounded, to Parkland’s Hospital.

There’s nothing to do. I’m always late everywhere, because of this jalopy that cost me over ten years of work, a money monstrosity, my marriage, my children hatred, and my friends and family’s condemn.

Of course, I’ve tried a number of times, to go back to nineteen ninety-eight and prevent myself from this inconvenient, with the hope that, on those first steps, I’d find a proper solution, maybe obvious on the draft taken from Popular Mechanics Magazine, March edition; but, no matter what I do, I’m always there after I’ve closed my workshop and while, for sure, I’m sleeping on the bus, on a long trip back to my home, that last hour of the afternoon. I couldn’t even prevent myself to hold strong the handrail, the time the One-ninety-eight’s bus hit the brakes at the Brandsen and Quirno Costa corner, because of a taxi driver that crossed a red light; and gave me a fall and a back pain that lasted three weeks.

Original Title: Siempre llego tarde a todos lados.
Translator: Maximiliano Frini.

About the Author: Daniel Frini

The Keel – Héctor Ranea

The boys founded the keel of a fishing boat. It was rust red and seemed to be made of the same stuff as the venerable mummies. They unburied the keel to sell it to the town’s Naval Museum, managed by an old retired fisherman. He mumbled something that was inaudible and in bad mood he told the boys to leave the keel at the backyard and leave him soon. He paid the guys so they left the place. At night he got the thing to the harbor’s breakwater and threw it to the waves. He was tired at this keel of the ship he lost being a rookie fisherman’s captain to appear again and again.

Translation: HR

The Book - José Vicente Ortuño

"Mr. Wells," the stranger said, "I have something very important to tell you."
"I'm very busy, Mr...."
"Professor Polycarpus Uchronus," the man said. "I'm from the Polytechnical University of Valencia.
"I've never heard of that university," Herbert George Wells said as he tried to put further distance between himself and the strange character who had been following him.
"Well it's just that... well, the way I'd put it is," the professor stammered, "it's just that it doesn't exist yet."
"Ah, well!" Wells exclaimed. "Then send me a note when it is to built; I would be enchanted to deliver an inaugural address. Good-bye, good day."
"Allow me to tell you something," the professor insisted, "then I'll leave you in peace. I promise."
"All right," Wells conceded, tired. "Let us sit on this bench for a few minutes. Then I must return to work, you know."
"Thank you, Mr. Wells, I won't take any more of your precious time than necessary." Professor Ucronos laughed as though he had said something funny.
Once seated, the scientist from the future began to explain, "Look, Mr. Wells, I come from the future, from the Twenty-fifth Century. I happen to know that in 1895 you will publish a book entitled 'The Time Machine'. This novel will become the inspiration for generations of scientists.
"Really?" Wells said with an interested look.
"Of course. I myself, having read it as a child, became obsessed with attempting to construct a similar machine. Finally I succeeded, and I have come to meet the person responsible and to thank him."
Wells rose, smiling, and extended his hand to the visitor from the future.
"Thank you professor. I thank you for having bothered to come from so far... from the future. I will think of you as I write my novel," he said amiably, and he walked away with long strides.
Professor Ucronos, satisfied with having turned one of his dearest dreams into reality, returned to the 25th Century. Wrapped in an aura of scientific bliss, he sat down at his desk, on which he had left a copy of "The Time Machine". But his satisfaction turned to dismay as he examined it. The title had changed. The cover now read: Cooking recipes for refined persons.

Love story - Saurio

After several disencounters –when the one was looking for the other, the other was away looking for the one– finally the paths of Mohammed and the mountain crossed.

And although they had spent the last years looking for each other, neither knew what to say.

So each went their own way and lost any contact. Until they found each other on Facebook, several years after. They exchanged photos, caught up - she had a large mountain range, he a monotheistic religion - and agreed to meet for a coffee mid-way through their respective houses.

"I hope this time is different" both thought before leaving out.

Compelling argument – Sergio Gaut vel Hartman

“Do I know you from somewhere?” said my mirror image while I was shaving myself. “I think I do, I remember you perfectly well.”

“I don’t think so” I answered.

“I killed your twin brother then”.

“In that case you should called it suicide” I rebut.

“You’re mad, you’re delirious. I’ve killed him, I’m telling you.”

“If I’m crazy, then the hole in your chest ought to be created by my imagination”. My reflected image put a finger in the hole and took it clean.

“Now you see. There is no such suicide, like I told you” It laughed.

“I am telling you it was a suicide!” And I dropped down dead.

Original Title: Lapidario

Translator: Héctor Ranea.

About the Author: Sergio Gaut vel Hartman

The Ballerina - René Aviles Fabíla

I am deeply in love with a ballerina. Her complexion is clear and pale, skin soft and smooth, legs beautiful, breasts small, her lips red and eyes as dark as her long, silken hair. Dressed in black, her slender body turns and dips to Tchaikovsky as it does to rock and roll. I do not know if she is aware of me, if she feels affection for me. She seems like an impenetrable enigma. She looks at me with sadness and never laughs, although at times she surrenders a smile barely sketched, when in the solitude of my home the string runs out and I return her to her crystal box.

Original Title: La bailarina.

Translator: Jamie Hershing

Taken from MINIFICTION

About the Author: René Avilés Fabila

Games of Seduction - Juan Romagnoli

Daniel’s friends consider him an expert in matters of seduction, something he boasts of widely (in his own words, the main secret to his method, his last resort, is to ignore his “victim” outright. He asserts that this behaviour is irresistible to beautiful women, who, such as they are, are extremely vain). On Saturday, as is their custom, his friends put him to the test.

They invite him to a gathering which a certain lady he does not know will attend. They take it for granted that Daniel will try to seduce her, taking recourse to his most prized tactic. They hope that, this time, he will fail.

The lady, warned in advance, anticipates the move. Once introduced, she ignores him flatly. To the amazement of his friends, Daniel, on the other hand, treats her with courtesy.

The lady, deeply offended, capitulates.

Original Titlel: Juegos de seducción

Translator: Jamie Hershing

Taken from: MINIFICTION

Qiangyan Wang - Daniel Frini

Chi’s granddaughter was beautiful. They called her Small Net to Catch Glances, and they say that when she blinked she caused typhoons in the China Sea. Everybody loved her. Only one man could make her tremble. Nobody possessed her, ever. The Tellers of Stories say she did not die. They say she faded into the snow one winter that lasted too long.

Original Title: Qiangyan Wang
Translator: Jamie Hershing

Taken from MINIFICTION

About the Author: Daniel Frini

Intruder - Alejandro Bentivoglio

I woke up in an unknown room. I say hello to my wife who shouts at me at the very moment she sees me. I prepare my breakfast, she calls the police. Soon the block is surrounded. I dress myself in clothes that don't look on me. When I go out I see patrols and dozens of policemen. They aim their guns at me. I tell them to be quiet. Nothing to worry about. It's not me, that's all.

Original Title: El intruso

Translator: Karina Alonso Dominguez

From the book "Dakota/Memorias de una Muñeca Inflable"

About the Author: Alejandro Bentivoglio

Of Greeks and Trojans – María del Pilar Jorge

While Greeks and Trojans were engaged in an extraordinary combat, the hollow wooden horse, already empty, having discovered Helen, became alive. Their glances crossed, Helen smiled to the horse and jumped its croup.

Menelaus is still searching for her, while Paris sweeps in mourn.

Original Title: Una de griegos y troyanos

Translator: Héctor Ranea

About the Author: María del Pilar Jorge

A Thousand Ways - Esteban Moscarda

When I dream I die. A thousand ways. With pain. Without pain. A red thunderclap strips me of skin. Herds of elephants trample me. Baroque music suffocates me. A two-year-old boy knifes me. A stray drunkard electrocutes me. I sink in a well of razor blades. I poison myself with priceless wine. A fly crushes me with one of its limbs. I bleed to death, in a battle, on the banks of the Ganges. And when I awaken I am born. Also a thousand ways.

Original Title: Mil maneras

Translator: James Hershing

Taken from: MINIFICTION

About the Author: Esteban Moscarda

Modern times – Giselle Aronson

While he choose to stay at his vast house, with his small life, his elegant car and the magnificent technological gadgets, she choose to fly away to fight her personal war, to defy aged plans on her, to turn annoying ghosts into dust and discard old fates that went from romantic to bizarre.

Penelope archived the infinite knitted fabric, end his story with Ulysses and announced her relation with the pretender that best took care of her and more freedom proposed to her.

Lately, at Ithaca, women are a-changing’.

Original Title: Tiempos modernos

Translator: Héctor Ranea

About the Author: Giselle Aronson

Universe - Héctor Ranea

If Universes are infinite (which it’s not preposterous to theorize) there is a non vanishing chance that one of us would get the opportunity to transit from ours to another in the deep future. No one can assure that they would have any similarity between each other but, being infinite, it is thinkable that the wanderer could find Einstein talking to a crow to know about dark sky at night, and Poe solving Universal Gravitation. It isn’t a big difference, after all, given the interest Einstein had on crows, and that of Poe’s about our Universe.

Original Title: Universo

Translator: Héctor Ranea

About the Author: Héctor Ranea

Marriage life - Alejandro Bentivoglio

On the train I met a blonde girl who told me I was the man of her life. At first, I believed her words but later I saw that the train guard was getting closer and I realized she didn't have the train ticket. As any other gentleman would have done it, I paid for it. We didn't talk during the rest of the journey. When we got off the train, at the last station, I demanded divorce.

Original Title: Vida matrimonial

Translator: Karina Alonso Dominguez

From the book "Dakota/Memorias de una Muñeca Inflable"

About the Author: Alejandro Bentivoglio

Monsterland – Javier López

For several weeks chaos was developed after a series of phenomena.

Small but permanent tremors make big cracks evident in highways in and out of town, precluding its use. Some rivers were flooding by ceaseless rains, invading great areas, including kilometers of railroads, airports, comunication hubs. The same rain that make massive forests to grow gigantic, raising an impenetrable wall that shielded the city.

Before the authorities´ reaction, we were isolated, locked up inside with no way out of it. During the next weeks, the city began to devour us as it would be a gigantic monster, hungry and vindictive.

Original Title: Monstruópolis

Translator: Héctor Ranea

About the Author: Javier López

As I consider myself to be a good psychologist I decided to help him - Antonio Jesús Cruz

As soon as I saw him on the bridge with lost look and the confused face I knew he needed help. As I consider myself a good psychologist I decided to help him. I approached, offered him a cigarette and we spent long hours talking, leaning on the railing.

It was almost dawn when I pressed the trigger. I supported his body on my shoulder and fired for the second time to his head. Then, with a push I threw him to the river. I walked away with serene steps and with the satisfaction of the fulfilled duty. There is nothing that satisfies me more than helping the undecided suicides.

Original Title: Como me considero un buen psicólogo decidí socorrerlo.

Translator: Antonio Cruz

Taken from: Simbiosis (Spanish version)

Taken from: Ficciones argentinas (English version)

Navy blue - Claudio Biondino

He reached the bottom of the ocean and realized, horrified, that he was still alive. For the first time, the damned artificial gills had worked. Couldn´t he have drowned as the others?... Now the jailers would be hunting for him to continue with the painful experiments.

Original Title: Azul marino

Translator: Marcos Zocaro

About the Author: Claudio Biondino

Interplanetary parasites - Marcos Zocaro

With the two stars hiding below the volcanic horizon, the last of the flying insects initiates a dying and spiral descent to earth, stamping the end of all kind of life on the planet.Given this, the commander of the mothership congratulates the rest of the spaceships, thousands and thousands that populate the skies of this world on fire, by the success of the mission: all natural and energetic resources have been already consumed. Next, without losing more time, the leader of interplanetary parasites sets a new direction and a new target: the victim will be now Betelyun, a giant planet that orbit around the star Betelgeuse, a planet whose civilization may never be able to defended itself against the attack of the Human Empire.

Original Title: Parásitos interplanetarios

Translator: Marcos Zocaro

Taken from: Ficciones argentinas

About the Author: Marcos Zocaro

Pretty doll - Fernando Puga

She doubles the knees with a superlative elegance; without to let that her body lose the verticality. Certainly a studied movement, but so good learned, that with its naturalness, takes by surprise the handsome men that fix the eyes on her stylized figure.

With the little bag that she has just taken out of the box hooked up the poodle’s leash, she raises the excrement that the dog leaved on the sidewalk.

He’s a male poodle; the only one male that didn’t leave her after to know her a little.

Original Title: Muñeca

Translator: Fernando Puga

About the Author: Fernando Puga

The Last Supper (Director's Cut) - Saurio

When Jesus said the bread was His body he thought it was okay, a human sacrifice taken to the symbolic realm was a good idea.

When Jesus said that wine was His blood he hesitated, this didn't sound very kosher to be honest, but, let's face it, the Mosaic law was a bit absurd as food is concerned.

When He said the beer was His pee he felt it was tasteless joke, but, well, all of them were half drunk, and it is understood that in this condition one says nonsense, messiah or not.

It was when Jesus grabbed a glass of milk that Judas knew what he should do.

Original Title: La última cena

Translator: Saurio

About the Author: Saurio

Interrupted disaster - Sergio Gaut vel Hartman

The earthquake had been devastating. Thousands of buildings fallen down, flattening about tens of thousands people. Most of the survivors, frightened and freezing dead, didn’t wait that the tsunami’s greatest wave were something so terrifying and they weren’t capable to gain the hills to reach safety. But to these hills, isolated, surrounded by water, like evil and abandoned of the God’s hand islands, never arrived the help that they waited and the unfortunate victims of the disaster didn’t take a long time to suffer from two new calamities: illness and hunger…

"Aldo! That’s enough to mess that notebook and come to have the milk".

"Yes, mom".

Título original: Desastre interrumpido

Traducción: Fernando Puga

Sergio Gaut vel Hartman

Gusts and Blinks

Last supper - Carlos Feinstein

What is the height of corruption? Shouted the failed Messiah, because Judas had stolen the wine.

Missing - Sergio Gaut vel Hartman

For some years I lose all my friends. My other me usually finds them, but he never returned them to me.

Divine rebuke - Jorge X. Antares

Look what you've done with the flock! And the Pope, embarrassed, went to bed without dessert.

No vacancy – Héctor Ranea & Sergio Gaut vel Hartman

The Messiah did not find rooms to lodge in Jerusalem. Pilatus offered him one, only if he would agree to be crucified.

Lost and found - Javier López
I lost my sense of humor. I have been told that the one who found it spent several days laughing at me.

The shadow – Claudia Cortalezzi & Héctor Ranea

The idea sneaks my mirror out and moves it towards the darkness so nobody could find it.

The day before - Daniel Frini

—Look, Teuco, to the horse the Achaeans gave us.

—I don't like it Croesus. Why do you think in its flanks it's written: Check mate?

Chaos theory - Rafael Vázquez

God created just a butterfly. It flapped its wings and a Universe began to form. 

Primeval doubt - Daniel Frini & Nanim Rekacz

—Adan, husband of mine —said Eva—, What is an orgy?

—I don't know—said Adan, caressing the snake—. I only know what zoofily is.

Ministry of Truth - José Luis Zárate

Sometimes the best trees in the Ministry of Truth are not perceived in the forest in which we live.

Bouncing on two mirrors – Héctor Ranea

My best ideas occurred to me under the shower, but they flew away together with my image as soon as I threw a glance to the mirror.

The chair that don’t – Gilda Manso & Héctor Ranea

From the rocking chair I see the mother completely naked, so a question bites me: Could it be that I’m completely invisible?

Promise - Patricia Kieffer

He swore to his wife, that he would never leave her for another woman. And he kept. He left with Martin.

Delay - Carlos Feinstein & Sergio Gaut vel Hartman

They came, at last, but too late. The humans lived peacefully and waiting for them with weapons that they could not even imagine. The remains of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse were never found.

Regional Cooking – Javier López & Oriana Pickmann

—Mum, what do we have for dinner today? —asked the little savage.

—A tender Australian missionary —answered softly the cannibal mother.

Gourmets – Daniel Frini & Sergio Gaut vel Hartman

—So, tell me, do you have barbeques in Mars?

—Of course we have!

—Offal?

—Inirf intestines, namtrah kidneys and other delicatessen. ..

Branches - Oriana Pickmann

It was hard for the genealogic tree to believe that one of its branches was a black sheep.

Scammer - Javier Lopez & Sergio Gaut vel Hartman

He buys things like eclipses and horizons, selling illusions and crescent moons to men of cities who knew these phenomena only by what they read in the press, while taking breakfast in a  hurry.

The auction - Guillermo Vidal

Who's bidding higher? Going once on ninetenn, going twice... going thrice and... sold for nineteen!

Translations were made by Oriana Pickmann, Maria del Pilar Jorge, Carlos Feinstein and Hector Ranea