The sheet masked people are coming

Wednesday, during sleeping time, he got closer to her and he smelled her like a dog.
It smells like wine to me.
I didn't drink anything, you're crazy, I even promised, she said looking up, as to not let the hydrating sheet mask fall.
They had decided a month ago not to drink anymore, except the weekend, because they got puffed out as the drunkards.
I can still smell it.
He got up, looked everywhere, even in the trash, nothing. She was smiling, breathing in the weekend air that was coming. She had gotten rid of the packaging a long time ago: PLUNA. Sheet masks with red wine, chamomile and Lithospermum.

(Translated by Nina Iulia Tufă / 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 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 Ficţiuni Reale.