I Can't Imagine

Georgiana Gabriela Fodor
I never leave something unfinished. Whether I make a project, I write an article, I cook meat jelly, I clean the garden, everything has to be finished. I explode if I can't finish it. For example, today I left for work, I had important things to do for the company. I started working in the morning without lunch break and I had one cup of coffee every hour. I worked until evening when I woke up in a big room with white walls full of generous people who were satisfied with my work. The shirt was too tight on my neck but everything was fine.

Silvia Ștefan
She was laying on a small white blanket. Today is Saint Peter, she murmured when she heard the bells. She took the English book with her and is reading with interest. An ant climbs on her ankle and tickles her somehow. Oh, if only that was you, Mircea! Her face brightens and his body is filled with a warmth that only he knows how to make. I'm here. You thought I wasn't here? I promised we would learn together, didn't I? His lips kissed her wrist and give a cold sensation in her body. A day without you is always incomplete[1]. Am I right? Andra Toropoc
may there be sarmale and a countryside wedding. Bride exit. And we hope for the best when we eat expensive food at the table. The music is playing Bocelli, but the bride and the groom are the only ones dancing. The wine is luckily good and we have a lot of it. We're in luck to have a musician who plays some local music and the everybody makes happy screams. We rejoice, we break the ice and start dancing as much as possible. The bride is being looked at, the violin is heard, but she tolerates. The photograph is ready and she wants to be all smiles. The final photo is unbelievable. The bride is dancing without shoes at Perinița.

(Translated by Iuliana Mocanu / 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.