Make the World Look Like You

Tina Dublea
 If the world resembled you, disaster would fall on muggins here. Not Huggins, you crazy woman. Look at her, you've gone mad and started reading books, innit? It seems Cioran has got to your head. Eliade this, Eliade that, you like talking about him all day everyday like a broken record. If, God forbid, all women started running their mouths like you do, I'd be dead. You'd better use that mouth to chew on some seeds or something, and stop threatening me with that neica[1] Constantin of yours, \'cause that's not normal. Listen to me woman, or else I'll kicking your ass so hard that not even that Blake-ache guy will be able to save you.
 

Ana-Maria Butuza
During his class, the lecture hall was always packed. Sometimes, I would get there an hour early and still could not find an empty seat. This morning I woke up early, had a quick coffee and put on the linen dress I had bought because it looked like his suit. His entrance was spectacular: Can you imagine a world without Sunflowers or Starry Night? He took off his coat, sat on the teacher's desk and his voice rose in the hot air of the hall, floating through the open windows to another world.

Lidia David
I light the tinder fungus and voracious tongues of fire shoot up into the air, biting the sky. The women scream at the stake, the flesh sizzles, the red hair turns grey. I cross myself and say, reconciled: this was God's will. A black cat is lurking in the church tower. I bow and get off the stage. Round of applause. There are torches burning in the street. The horse-drawn tram arrives at the platform, I get on, the parrot fortune teller asks me: do you have a wish? I put a coin in his hand, take the fortune card the parrot has picked up for me, and get off at the gypsy women. I open the tiny door and go inside. The cat sheds its stage fur and says: you played it well.

(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.