I Can't Imagine

Vlad Mușat
The high altitude is making me hallucinate. I keep repeating it, to stay lucid. Next to me, I see Van Damme doing the splits between rocks. Stallone is climbing in a sprint, without support or ropes, and he seems to be followed by Arnold, the Terminator. I shake my head and climb up. I'm cold, hungry and thirsty, and now I even hear the voice of some women I think I know. I'm convinced it's all a mirage. I'm colder and colder. Marieta, can you wash him yourself, while I handle Gigi? Yes, mister mountaineer is very well-behaved today.

Miruna Marin
When I was little, I caught and spread everything I could, like an antenna of viruses. Mumps? Measles? Chicken pox? Otitis? An nth number of sketchy hives? Of course. I finished 8^th grade with a memorable bout of mono, as in the kissing disease, without even getting a kiss, although, ugh, I wanted it so much. Try explaining that to everyone in the family, who kept throwing each other glances and snickering. Nodes as big as a house, liver pains, rotting in bed? Yes, yes, and yes. Kisses? No, sorry. However. Scarlet fiver at the big age of 36? It's too much.

Florina Hegedüs
Lately, Irina takes a detour through the park on her way to school, which she never used to do. She didn't use to be confused, like she is now. She excels in school, by her own doing. When, after a physics lab, she and Radu, here on Earth, have witnessed two parallel universes colliding, when he pulled he to his chest and breathed right through her lips, as she only whispered: you tell me, what is it? Because it's not physics, and he shyly replied, I don't know I fell in love with chemistry. The parents don't agree. It's tyranny.

(Translated by Bianca Ioana Prisecaru / 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.