In Search of Lost Time

Răzvan Drăgoi
 I watch, in terror, children playing hopscotch, hurray and buckaroo. I stare, horrified, at buses with people crammed on the stairs. There are no ads, the night is pitch black as the power lines have been turned off. You can hear Bulgarian coming out of the neighbours' TVs. The TV is off. The hideous glass fish found on it stares at me aggressively in its muteness. I have never own eunuch fish. I turn on the TV. The big accomplishments of the Commie Party.[1] I turn it off. My cell phone has no signal or wi-fi. Fuck
Gilda Pîrvan
with you, you answered, you plague, making faces when I asked you where you had been after so long. Everywhere, always, together. These should've been our adverbs. You dined on our money; did hunger strike you, have you got no clean shirts anymore? That no-name you had your way with finally cast you out? When you left, you even got the money from the children's piggybank, and now you've reached the epiphany that you want to go home? It's no use banging on the door, there is no place for you in our grammar. We got other adverbs to explore.

Silvia Ștefan
There are many instances when we tend to go back to people from our past. Loneliness is not for everyone. As soon as we get out of a relationship, we stumble in front of freedom. Why would you choose a body you already know? Why would you start digging around memories that have already dissolved, why would you pull on the strig that united your flesh with such dexterity when you were losing yourself on the streets, bit by bit? If you got up on your heels, you could see beyond the wall: a different love, a sweet person, a cool life. You have a blank sheet in front of you and new coloured pencils.

(Translated by Adelina-Maria Mănăilescu / 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 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.