Luminitza

Luminitza collects the green, star-shaped bellybuttons of oranges. She keeps them in a shoebox which she shakes every now and then to hear their bellybutton music. She says that her father works for the Securitate. They have special stores, people who work for the Securitate, in buildings unmarked from the outside where they enter using secret passes, where oranges, candy bars, and bananas are sold. We are afraid of Luminitza because if she doesn't like you her father can make a phone call, and he can get your parents disappear one day on their way to work, never to come home again, so we swear to give her all the bellybuttons we come by, even the ones we find on the street, but I haven't seen oranges for years and I never find anything valuable on the streets, yet in my dreams I sit under enormous, fragrant, blossoming orange trees in a faraway land filling my pockets with green, star-shaped bellybuttons for Luminitza.


Buy McSweeney's Issue 12 here (This is an outside link to mcsweeneys.net)