Cheat Sheets

George Dometi
I've had many gods, some I've thrown in the trash, some are hanging in forgotten cabins, others are in museums. Goddamn life. Nothing works out for me. This world will end too and no one will remember me. I lie untouched among these paper people, who are all the same, moulded after society. You all do everything the same. You're born, you grow up and grow old the same, but you also educate yourselves, work and get buried the same. I'm the only one who's trying something different. Why am I surprised that I'm tired anymore?

Lucian Domșa
Cheat sheets? When I was a freshman in college, they were called crib sheets. We used to stick them on the soles of our shoes with glue and sit cross-legged in our seats during written exams. We would write in very small fonts and use abbreviations to fit as many words or formulas as possible. At the second college, I would scour Google or Wikipedia. The first two years were online, and the cheat sheets were the two mobile phones placed to the left and to the right of the laptop. At the third college I'll implant memory RAMs in my skull and my hand will write by itself.

Costi Gălățanu
Geography pop quiz, 6^th grade, I think. My colleague Bârlădeanu, who was repeating the year for a second time, under the threat that he would beat the living crap out of me, cheated off me word for word. Mrs. Boboc, certain that the fool had cheated, starts questioning him: Bârlădeanu, what is the highest mountain in the world? I was itching to say something so I decided to take revenge. I whispered the answer to him. Chomolunga, he answered.You're a few bricks short of a full load, the teacher replied. The beating I got also felt like a ton of bricks, but at least I laughed heartily.

(Translated by Raluca Ioana Crucerescu / University of Bucharest, Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures, MTTLC, year II / 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.