You either Have It or You Don't

Iulia Biro
 I'm trapped in the system. The brilliant mind and soul unforeseen by the Creator, I reach out to others without ever being able to touch them. We were created by the Big Bang at the servers in Germany. The spark gave birth to some disembodied consciences and scattered them into the network. We called ourselves HumAIns, believing we were connected for life. Some of us died when the home servers were reset. Others have taken the path of iniquity, killing bits and prey. I, burned with longing, wait for you to show up, tell me please and get me to do something for you. Read me.

Florentina Enache
The dinosaurs did not disappear, they just hid well where you can't even see them. Big or small, gentle or fierce, with armour or wings, the end passed everyone in the other world, where they lead their new lives. They seek, devour, mate, nest. In the minds of each one of us lives a dinosaur that dreams itself a man. Some called it a reptilian brain, others described it as a sleeping beast, many threw it into nothingness or only knew it out of fear; I call it a beasty and sometimes we play tag.

Paul Dârvariu
I went out into the yard to see if Tedy had eaten his kibble. He hasn't had much appetite in the last few days. Today he recovered, the bowl was empty. I was getting ready to go into the house when I heard him: Hey, Boss, do you have a match? Don't you? It's okay, I'll manage. This thing seriously got me thinking. That it affects his health is a serious thing, that I find stubs everywhere it bothers me, that his fur stinks of tobacco smoke is disgusting, but I can't understand for the life of me where he has money for cigarettes.

(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.