Today, we’re thrilled to debut in English the runner-up of the 2017 Festival of the European Short Story, “I, The Executioner” by Serbian writer Srdjan Miljevic. Distilled in nine bracing vignettes, the flash fiction centers on former prostitute Jasna who, on the brink of literary success, meets a gushing reporter—except, her mind elsewhere, she finds herself unable to concentrate. Through the stilted interview questions, which recall the stilted essay assignments she was given in a childhood disrupted by refugeedom, we are given to understand that Jasna’s life from the margins is one that does not fit the neat checkboxes that society has imposed.

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In Sarajevo, in her second year of primary school, she got a D on her essay on the topic: “When I grow up, I want to be . . .” 

She never found out why a D, because the very next day she became a refugee.

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A man in a worn-out McCloud jacket stopped in front of her. He bent down, trying to pick up a coin that fell out of his pocket from the pavement. He made it on his second attempt. Two dinars. She did not think of how people, even the richest, humiliated themselves by picking up their own small coins off the street. She thought how good it would be to try not to smoke more than one pack of cigarettes today. Up to two drinks. And one joint max. 

She had been smoking for nineteen years. More than half her life. On a daily basis. She could burn through up to three packs. Theories about what a cigarette was a substitute for and what processes occurred in your brain were comprehensible to her, but she could not think about that now. She would quit one day. And she would take more care today. It was different with alcohol. She had no craving for it, but she did not refuse it either. She did not like to lose control. The same went for ganja. READ MORE…