Out of the Queue

Iulia Biro
They're ready to fly. They are huddled together and can't wait. While all of them dream of far-away eyesights and to see the hills from above, Dan50[1] is the only one who wants to stay alone. Not to jam, not to thrust, not to be titillated by the others. A cat catches the first ones. None of them get too far, they lay slowly on the grass and rest there. The others, almost all of them, are gone with the wind; he heard them shouting: yoo-hiii, yoo-hoo,as they bear away. Dan50 owns Mother's Dandelion house all for himself, the whole day. Florentina Enache
You guys are pinhead? What the hell is this corn you put it hier? That's rows; it's like ox pee. Was that with the tractor drunk again? Yo, if our mat' comes to the county and sees them like that, gorblimey!, he'll sen' us all to cows and pigs. Fuck you, you idiot, I'm sick of yo' shit. Guv! It's too late to turn the furrow now, but you know? We say da' dude is esperimental an' bear up by himself and chases after sun and water. Mhm, yo' think he's stupid not to see that I'm pullin' the wool over his eyes. Guv, I thin' he is.

Carmen Tot
Out of the Pacific Ocean came a little fish in motion, on its tail with not a doubt was it written, you come out. The little girl kept wagging her pigtails, twirling and counting, then pointing to who was going out of the game. We're all going down, I told myself. And, one by one, the children grew old, stepped out of line and climbed all of them alone and resigned into the boat, paying the boatman the last penny they had, the dream not dreamed yet. On the other bank, the same circle, the same count, and one by one they became unremembered. You know what, I shouted, I'm not playing with you anymore.

(Translated by Florina Georgiana Țîncu / 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.