Remorses

Ana Maria Dobre-Nir
What's with the gun, she asked him. I don't know, you'd better tell me, Igor replied, smiling. Come on, don't you pretend otherwise, he added, pouring into his glass. We have all night. He didn't just disappear like a donkey in a fog. And he didn't have the jewellery with him then. The story you told everyone may be believed by the gullible ones, but it doesn't work with me. You think you're a big shot, don't you? But, girl, you didn't hide your tracks good. That night, you were in the cab, not Luna, like you said. And we both know it's not the first time you've done that.

Florina Hegedüs
And they have come upon my silence asking me to come back, because the public demands it, and if I don't want, they will have to close the theatre. Props? The one you know. We should try something eclectic, throw in a little kissing. Out of the question, the public wouldn't allow it, they want us to stay pure. And I've accepted bathing in applause on hot summer nights. I'm not saying it's easy to bite and bite again, from the often unripe apple, but at least I can die with no regrets knowing Eva is still wanted, washed clean of sins by repeated encores calls.

Miruna Marin
The Dacia car creaks from every spring. It's only seven o'clock and already the sun is shining my chest through the windshield. We're silent. He pulls into the parking lot and I get out, swallowing dryly. Shall I walk you up? No, never mind. I'm sorry, I don't know how. Yeah. I'd had a lot to drink. Yeah, me too, I'm lying. We'll talk at school. I'm hardly walking. I'm knocking on the door. Dad, happy: Good mood? He didn't notice I'm wearing a flannel on 30 degrees Celsius. I smile crookedly and walk away, mumbling something about sleep. In the mirror I feel my bruised neck. I remember his embarrassed eyes and nausea takes hold of me. I lie in bed and hide.

(Translated by Adrian-George Ilinca / 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.