Anarchy and Jasmine

Miruna Marin
Sex Pistols is blasting from his headphones. He's shaking his head, smiling. The driver hits the break, the joint of the articulated bus screeches, the circle shaped platform throws her, as if it were meant, into his arms. She's dressed in all black, smoky eyeliner, boots, long and naughty red hair. Jasmine perfume. Kind of strong. And the nails a little bit cat-like. His gaze discreetly goes down towards the full chest where there's a wavy A inside a red circle. Anarchy? No, Andreea, she whispers. The T-shirt, he says. Oh, H&M. Disgusted, he shoves his headphones back on. Back to Rotten and Vicious.

Arthur Ianoși
Draga mea Lilith. For Pete's sake, why am I writing in Romanian? the Big Man Upstairs thought to himself, deleting with a piece of cloud. Since you left, things around here have been bad. The winged ones got into a fight with the horned ones. I was inspired to develop our memories in a drop of dew that I saved in the last blade of grass. You forgot your black swan scarf. In the closet. It still smells like you. Like white flowers and rebellion. I've loved you for a Universe, but now I have to end here \'cause this lot is burning everything to the ground. Love, God. 

Ana Vlad
The roundabout squeaked in her memory, pushed by the wind. She jumped on. The green dress waved of summer on her tiny body, the heart swallowed joy twisted with sun, a shard glittered every 360 degrees. The stranger who watched with greed next to the blooming bush came to her mind only later, when he pulled the reddened shard from his dirty eye. Don't talk to strangers, she gritted her teeth and walked away. Then fear started to chew her heart away, until one day she spat it out, all bitter. Since then, the only thing she can feel is a weird spinning motion where she falls slowly, and the sweet smell of jasmine.

(Translated by Ruxandra Adriana Dodoiu / 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 August 2023, the group has 11,680 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.