Shards Bring Luck

Gheorghiță Mircea
If they are not from a mirror. After burying his mother he continued not to leave the room from which only the crib and toys disappeared. He looked at himself in the mirror looking for the face of a child. He angrily broke it by refusing a 30-year-old face. In the wall he discovered a hole looking into his neighbour's house. He began to watch her as she prepared for the shower, cleaned herself, or received her lovers. He started to wear his mother's underwear, fishnet stockings, he waxed his body, he felt for the first time that he understood life. After 7 years he decided to come out. He went to a Skinhead pub.

Silvia Ștefan
The play of lights reflected by the ancient lantern was accompanied by the morning noise of the waves. Around the solid wood coffee table are three comfortable sofas with cream cushions. The geometric pattern of the cold, white rock walls is broken by ivy and wisteria. Two species are forced to live together, to the delight of the maid. She pours the coffee, admiring the combination of colours. All is set; she called out in an Asian language, forgetting where she was. She suddenly turned and dropped the sugar bowl. Jack was breathing down the back of her neck, naked. Ashamed, they started gathering for the broken shards.

Ina Moldoveanu
There is no cemetery in Saint Mariñas of Aguas Santas. The dead are buried in front of the house. You can hear the howling of a wolf and the humming voice of a woman, coming from the oven dedicated to the Saint. At the same hour, it smells like burnt meat, although it is the village bread oven, and there are always shards scattered on the road. The women quickly enter the house. I know that Ramanda is looking for her prey, and the witch told them to beware of the sixth day of the tenth month, when another woman will fall victim to her, thus breaking the curse of the lycanthrope priest.

(Translated by Andreea Laura Stanca / 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 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.