Eleven fingers on one hand

"I think that's enough for today," thought the distinguished professor Friedrich A. Lange, putting away the typewriter. "There's enough time tomorrow." He fell asleep easily, feeling an itch in his right palm. At dawn, after breakfast, he resumed his work with a crazy appetite and an astonishing speed of work. In his excitement, he had not noticed that his palm had widened overnight and another finger had made its appearance. The next night the same, and the next, the same. On the sixth day, a crazy idea came to his mind. "Why don't I get a piano?"

(Translated by Mădălina Mangalagiu / University of Bucharest, Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures, MTTLC, year II / Corrected by Professor Nadina Vişan)


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 January 2021, the group has 3.000 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, and Luchian Abel. (Drawing by Adrian T. Roman)

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