Drizzle

Caterina Tudorache
The dormouse entered the bar, shivering. The sounds of breaking glasses and plates intertwined with howls, roars and other foreign languages, yet the atmosphere was relaxed and everyone had come in to dry off a bit. The newcomer climbed onto a stool. Gin. The bartender, a tattooed stork, was busily mixing some sorrel juices. Wine? What kind? The dormouse slammed his fist on the counter. Gin. With lemon. So, wine? A dromedary barged in through the door. Man, it's raining. It smells so bad in here, like a mouse. The dormouse angrily darted towards the dromedary's raised hoof and screamed. Who are you calling a mouse?

Cristina Daniela Dumitru-Pascal
I exhale. Blood has coagulated on my forehead. Crashed cars, locked up people, the woman screaming because of labour pains. I'm helping her. I'm holding the new-born in my arms. He's not breathing. I exhale. I'm now taking mine out. I lay them on the stretchers. I exhale. They are covering them with sheets. It's raining. It's drizzling. I exhale. Am I crying? No, it's the rain. I think so. There's no time for crying. I exhale. Silence has enveloped the place. The cry of the new-born brings us all to out knees. I step out into the rain. There's blood on my chest. From where? I smile. I held life into my hands.

Gheorghiță Mircea
It had been raining like that for days on end. He saw the mist rising from the forest and flowing into his yard. It's time, he said to himself. He put on his best suit, slipped on his rubber boots and, with the black shoes in a plastic bag, he left without even bothering to close the doors, following the fog that had until then waited for him in front of the house, and together they set off through the abandoned village towards the cemetery. Once he descended into the pit, he put on his shoes and laid down into the coffin. He looked up at the sky and laughed, remembering the shocked face of the craftsman when he asked for handles on both sides of the top plates.

(Translated by Oana Ionescu / 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.