Soundtrack

Ana Maria Dobre-Nir
Look, there is an interesting piece of news. A new sound comes out of the depth of the Universe. How's that possible, dad, the little girl asked. I thought sound didn't travel through space. Her father looked at her tenderly, stroked her hair, then asked her to go play. The child took a magnifying glass and went out to look for butterflies. The man called his wife. Where are you? On my way home, I'll stop by for shopping. What do you want to eat for dinner? He didn't get the chance to answer. He fell to the ground. Dizzy. All day he had been thinking about how the MilkyWay could collide with Andromeda sooner.

Diana Stanciu
The bullets were putting holes in people and buildings for three days now. The frost kept the blood stains intact on the pavement. A baby had died over night from a ricocheted bullet. She is running away with the others. They reach the first barricade, where she is given a flag. She wears the cloth cut in the center like a cape. Blue on the front, yellow on the shoulders, red on the back. Clothed in the Flag would be a good title for a mandatory reading at school. Or song. She hums quietly. In West Germany, Klaus Meine writes the first chords of Wind of change.

Monica Bologa
I need to tell you something. Ok I'm listening, I said to him. Let's sit down, he suggested with a kind voice. I sit down on the armchair, he sits down on the couch. On the radio, Gloria Gaynor is playing in the background. I'm leaving you, he told me firmly. My lips are shaking. He kept going on, I don't think I love you anymore, our relationship has been dead for quite some time. Tears are flooding my eyes. I have been seeing someone else, he said. I burst into tears. I'm sorry that I cause you suffering. It's ok, you can leave me, I'm not suffering at all. You know, this song always makes me cry. I will survive. Bye.

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


Real Fiction is a collective project started in 2013 by Florin Piersic Jr. The concept of Real Fiction continued to exist as a Facebook group, after a volume of stories was published at Humanitas Publishing House. (In November 2023, the group has 12,090 members.) The authors write ultra-short stories, with the texts limited to 500 characters (in Romanian, so the length of the English translation might be a little different) - a flash-fiction exercise on a topic that changes every few days. The group's coordinators are Florin Piersic Jr., Gabriel Molnar, Răzvan Penescu, Luchian Abel, and Vlad Mușat. (Drawing by Adrian T. Roman)

Versiunea în română a acestui text se poate citi aici, în rubrica Ficțiuni Reale.