In Search of Lost Time

Daniel Onofrei
The old man trudges through the room, staring intensely at every object. He tries to remember what he is looking for in the first place, and then, where he put it. Perhaps this will take all morning and he hasn't even put on his second stocking. Tired, he takes a seat on the chair, contemplating many things that he almost knows nothing of anymore. Shakingly, he grabs a photo of two children smiling between a tall man and a beautiful woman. For a moment, the fog in his mind turns into tears.

Ruxandra Comșa
I apologize for the innocence; I was determined to keep it. I clung to it; I couldn't have lived any other way but naively. The obsession for clean hands, nowadays translated with foolishness, brings me closer to his hands. I sit in the front of the house. I dare not enter; I am late. It's the night that keeps appearing in my dream. The door is closed, the lights are off. I am waiting for him to scold me, yet no one's there. I cannot remember his voice anymore, but his hands, even though it is night-time, are right before my eyes. I turn the hourglass and time concedes. Welcome home, dear daddy.

Andra Toropoc
I recall the table having been set for many people. I'm watching you all. I wish to find myself there for one more time, and yet, for me, the here and now is crystal clear; after half a century, I understood. I pinch the slice of bread out of hunger, I'm chewing crumbs of the past; they only taste like longing, and my lip's getting chipped because of the salt. Stop, I tell myself, stop chewing, stop counting, stop searching for people with your gazeful eye. I get up and go out in the sun. I exit a house that isn't only mine anymore, and yet, inside my pocket, my fingers squeeze the dry slice; I fetched it myself - my share of time with you all.

(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.