I have pushed waggons my whole life. Now, I am resting. The nave of the church was too narrow for the load of
looky-loos and wailing women. Popa Dorel's body was lying in the wooden coffin. He was nicknamed Hammy, after the tool he had carried proudly to the CFR way station in their small village. He had worked as a engine mechanic for
forty-five years, in a railway station through which passenger trains had not passed for many years. So he found himself another activity to kill time. His cross was his witness.
(Translated by Alexandra Handrea / University of Bucharest, Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures, MTTLC, year II / 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 September 2021, the group has 7.150 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, and Luchian Abel. (Drawing by Adrian T. Roman)
Versiunea în română a acestui text se poate citi aici, în rubrica Ficțiuni Reale.
