You either Have It or You Don't

Georgeta Diaconu
Wow, Grandpa, take them out again, please. Wow, you're really the Iron Grandpa. Can I tell Matei too? He doesn't have a grandfather with iron teeth that he pulls out whenever he wants. Ada from kindy[1] has braces, but you, wow, have intergalactic teeth. Will I have iron teeth in a year? My mother read to me that the Tooth Fairy comes secretly, changing the kids' baby teeth with strong, steel teeth. In the evening we will both put them in the glasses like armour. And we'll make fun of Grandma, ha, ha, who cuts your apple to pieces.
Florentina Ghițescu
I have or maybe I don't, I have no idea. When I was a kid I had time, I grew up, and now I don't. When I was young I had love, time passed and now I don't have it. When I was young, my children needed me, now they don't. Does it make sense to look back or not? Some days I think it does, when people and events pass before my eyes. Today seems like it doesn't, it's cloudy outside and all my bones hurt, I don't have the strength to get out of bed. The phone rings. Mom, I'm coming over for a coffee. I smile and put the kettle on.

Sanda Burță
He wanted to have a rifle. He had a grand piano. He would have needed only one finger. And a trigger. He had 10 fingers doomed to press keys. He would give anything for a moment. The moment in which he could have hugged her, forgive me, Lia, I'm a fool who loves you with your pink-rimmed glasses, with your hair too short and your skirt too long or vice versa, God, why don't we forget what we want to forget?, her white body on the red asphalt, the drunk driver shrugging his shoulders, c'est la vie. Requiem for life. Applause.

(Translated by Corina-Alexandra Belu / 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 July 2023, the group has 11,540 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.