10 Stars On IMDB

Ioana Dinescu
We are passing by Paprika Csárda, he pointed out. For how many times, it crossed her mind. When we visited Wienna, when we returned from France, when we left for Belgium and then, again and again, there were just flashes in the night, like now, driving between the two homes. I had eaten goulash once here, it had been the first time, she remembered the spicy and salted taste, the chili pepper and sour cream next to the clay bowl with a painted rooster. Why am I about to cry, she said as she brushed off her hand in front of her eyes. Luckily, no one can see the movie that I have in my head.

Daniela Rusu
There is nothing interesting about dying. When I bit my cheeks and I saw you in that cold coffin, your life became a movie for me. It would not have good reviews. You didn't want to impress anyone. You were straightforward and a hypochondriac. You had taken the train, you had spit, you had had children, you had made poetry and bean soup. You had played chess and you had splitted the gains with me from the rummy games. I liked how you stored green tomatoes in the winter and how you placed wood in the storage room. I liked how you would develop pictures and then how we would go out with the motorbike. I know that this is not an Oscar-winning movie, but it is one in which you would be forever part of.

Monica Bologa
I don't understand why this movie received the maximum score, I said after rising up at my boyfriend. An Earth created by a I don't know what kind of cosmic cloud made of dust, ice and gas particles, an Adam and an Eve, both sinners - may that apple be damned - dinosaurs, caves, shacks, sky-scrappers, phones glued to the palms, wars, diseases, and by the end booom, people's bad nature destroys the planet and then, love rebuilds it. A foreseeable ending. I would award it a ten just because my name is Eve. Come on, bite from that apple again and then go home, your wife is waiting for you.

(Translated by Andreea Cuprian / University of Bucharest, Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures, MTTLC, year I / 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 September 2023, the group has 11,820 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.