Lambada

Camelia Munteanu
I am an invisible shadow stuck to your body. I like watching you light up your cigarette calmly. Lost in thought, you are left with it between your teeth, the smoke engulfing your figure greedily. It sometimes so happens that you flinch and turn around abruptly, as if you could sense my presence on your back, and then, surprised, you catch a whiff of my scent. You don't know that I am there, with you, next to you, in you, deeply imbued in your skin. The cigarette is searing your lips, you spit it and curse softly. I'm humming a song and I'm dancing salaciously with your thoughts.

Răzvan Drăgoi
I am Vasile Brahmaputra from the psychedelic troupe of Mitică Shambahla, the true successor of the great Nirvan. As you all know, we got three mandalists[1] who distract and destroy the public's attention, using their hips and not only. Even so, ever since I have sung the Black Lambada by Porcofiev, they only twerked their butt a little, which led to the despair and reincarnation of their target audience. Allegedly, it is out of solidarity for Bach, the great German athlete, specialized in fugues.[2] I wrote it here since Lady Customer's Protection might be reading.
Fabiola Stoi
A poet drowned in thoughts, his heart always aching, no cure to be found. He goes through doctors and doctors, the pain keeping still. And that's that. He keeps inking thorny verses to paper. He gets used to the pain, as the neighbours do with his grumpy looks: Vivi from the first floor, the astral chauffeuse, Gigi the plumber of nerve pathways, mister Nae, a special correspondent for the underworld. When She appears on the stairs and he looks at her straight in the eyes, his heart does a twist, the pain disappears instantly and his lips utter without a single thought: Shall we dance?

(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.