Make the World Look Like You

Andrei Lămureanu
On the first day He created the word. And the word flew away like a majestic bird. On the second day He turned the light on, obviously, because it was pitch-dark. On the third day, while still sleepy, He created coffee, fire and the big breakfast. Back then, breakfast was indeed Big[1]. On the fourth day He turned on the TV, was horrified by it, then created a social media profile and invented abbreviations. The fifth day brought with it music, painting, and literature. On the sixth day He had a brainstorm and created critics and comments. Exasperated, on the seventh day He created the drill.
Florentina Ghițescu
I had many children, all in my own image and likeness. But none of them were conceived with the same man. I get bored easily. It is not the father, but the mother that matters when it comes to passing down character traits. Their fathers played a small, cameo role in this - they were more like guest stars. Do not think that I have abandoned them; I carry them all with me. Sometimes, one of them would suddenly come to me asking why he does not have a father. When a man wants to raise my children, I take him out of the hive immediately; we do not need drones. Everyone calls me queen bee.

Carmen Crețu
He had come out of the sea. It was night and he was completely wasted. She was waiting for him, sitting on the sand, with an opened bottle of beer in her hand. She had met him in Expirat. She did not like him. He was ugly, but now, at night, drunk and wet, coming towards her, he moved his hips like Jagger. I would turn off the moon if I could, he howled, looking up at the sky. To make it stop following me everywhere I go. She looked at him in amusement and said: Make the world resemble you. Make everyone believe the moon revolves around them. And then I'll stay. But I live[1] in Cluj, he said.

(Translated by Valentina Mihai / 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.