Iv cel Naiv
Hey listen, whipped cream head, I work from morning till night, I break my back at the gym, I take care of hygiene, I get eight hours of sleep at night, I eat healthily, I don't drink I don't smoke, I mind my own business, and you? The flesh of my flesh, blood of my blood, what did you think, to ride on my coattails? Damned if I don't stick my nail in your throat, if I won't crush your bones, you albino? Don't you get so worked up at me, or I'll chop you with the blade, I'll break your head between my fingers, I'll strangle you in cold blood, you runt. Go on, scram! Ohhh, not on the mirror.
Monica Bologa
I shouldn't have drunk. All the way from the community centre to my home, I walked in the dark, staggering like a drunken sailor. A few times I slipped into some ditch. But I, the fancy chick, got up, brushed myself off and kept walking, hiccupping. No sooner had I entered the gate, than a slap smacked the back of my head. I've raised you, sent you to school, and now you come home drunk? I'll tear you apart, you wretch, 'cause you're my blood. Cease your blows, Aunt Geta, I'm my mother's blood. Your daughter is still at the ball. Forgive me, hic, I got the wrong gate.
Florentina Ghițescu
She had been waiting to hold him in her arms ever since the instant she found out she was pregnant. He was a wanted child, a precious child, as they say in the medical jargon. It had been conceived somewhere around her second youth, after so many treatments. And now the universe crumbled. \'Is there anything that can be done?' she asked he colleague, the ophthalmologist. Unfortunately, he will go blind before he turns one. She got home, opened all the windows and took the child in her arms, It had been long since there had been such a harsh winter. They were buried together.
(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.