I Made You, I Kill You

Arthur Ianoși
She concealed her pregnancy as best as she could from the judging eyes and gossiping mouths of the village. Anyway, no one would have believed she was the priest's child. They would have pelted her with stones, and her name wasn't even Magdalena. And what for? Just as her mother had left her on the church steps at birth, that's how she was about to do now. Fumbling in the darkness for a piece of wood, bit it resentfully, pushed and groaned from her belly. She pulled the bloody head out with her last strength and, with the last ounce of strength, tore the cord with her teeth. She fainted before the baby could even whimper.

Costi Gălățanu
She could hear her daughter-in-law's screams and she felt herself shrinking. She pulled the blanket over her head, hoping it would all end, but with each groan of pain, another wound on her soul reopened. The ones on her body had scarred over a long time ago. Her granddaughter's scream made her jump. She found the wall with the door, grasped the poker, and struck with her eyes closed. Silence fell. She opened her eyes. The little one was crying, without knowing what happened. What have you done, mum? Whispered her daughter-in-law. What I didn't dare do to her father. May God forgive me.

Florina Hegedüs
I followed her steps, enchanted by the wafting of her elegant long gossamer dress billowing gracefully over the warm sand ruffled by the playful wind. Her image deeply resonated with the colours of my soul. I followed her until we reached the beach where she let the garment slide off, and to me, she seemed even taller and thinner with her hair gathered in a Roman bun, she seemed like a bridge between the earth and the sun. She gazed, overwhelmed, at the relentless waves' struggle to reach the shore. I came closer, and once I took her in my arms we started melding together on the sandy shore.

(Translated by Bogdan Macarie / 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.