In Search of Lost Time

Vero Anttheia Teodoru
Leaning on his cane, he was heading towards the exit of the lecture hall with soft steps. He had finished another exam session. He stopped by the door looking with nostalgia into the empty hall. The students were greeting him respectfully on the corridors. Many of them did not know him. He was responding to them by looking in their eyes and seemingly digging for something. One more exam and his greatest dream will come true. The Law school had opened its gates for him perhaps too late. His neighbours and his daughter were making fun of him. He graduates among the first ones. At the age of 70 he was happier than ever.

Denisse Oana Rădoi
I have 18 lost years loving you to make up for. Filled with longing, madness and squeezed tears from the wet pillow. How many seconds are counted in 18 gloomy and painful years? As many as shared joys and pleasantries are counted in 18 years. But the intervals are not equal. How can you compare the winter's cold seconds with those of sunny spring? But I do not regret my choice of spending the time wishing things. Because I had loved the Universe till the most distant quasar just because it is your contemporary. And I am waiting for its messenger to come back, incarnated.

Vlad Mușat
Young wolfs are howling restlessly at the moon. They are coming after her. They sensed a smell of a single woman. The season, the spring, is to be blamed for giving us hope. I had been her first love and I had not accepted replacement. I had turned into a criminal at 70 years old. I am repenting but the jealousy had sharpened the knife blade. A thirty-year old woman who could not love me again had become repulsive. As a token of appreciation, I will anoint myself with her heart' s blood and reveal myself to the beasts. They will do justice. They will take revenge for not allowing them to be domesticated.

(Translated by Irina Vild / 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 June 2023, the group has 11,430 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.