Folding chair

One morning, engineer Aurelian Pop woke up starving. He ate 6 eggs, a stick of salami and a jar of jam with an entire loaf of bread. Then he ate the fridge, kitchen table, chairs, sink and dishes. He went to the living-room where he ate the sofa, TV stand and coffee table. In the bedroom, he ate the bed, wardrobe and nightstand. He liked the nightstand the most. "I could eat a thousand more nightstands", he said to himself, grabbed his briefcase, coat and hat, and a folding chair and left for the office.

(Translated by Eleonora Manea / 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.