Scarecrow

Lidia David
The shadow sticked itself on the walls, sneaked through the nooks and crept up the stairs on its way to the attic. Once she got upstairs, she opened the door on which Dan's room was written and hid under the bed. Later in the evening, Dan shouted good night from the doorway, his parents responded with good night, baby, closed the door and turned on the starry lamp. Then he lifted the quilt edges and said: you can come out, now. The shadow loomed. What do you want to play at? she asked timidly. I want to play at killing mom and dad, he answered enthusiastically. The shadow began to shiver.

Radu Gramatovici
What are you mostly afraid of, I asked her, not that I cared, but because her lap, where I rested my head, seemed the safest place on earth. Of hunger, she responded to me and jumped out of bed to open more wardrobes, while I, standing with my head in the air, I was already regretting asking her. I have food everywhere for the nights when I dream how I look for it in the house. I see, I said, although back then in my mind there were just the imperfect curves of her naked body. I still was not aware of the fact that my biggest fear was the exact opposite of hers.

Vero Anttheia Teodoru
He would cling himself to the edge of the hearse during the funerals. He would come out with the bucket full in the way of the bride and groom. The children would look at him driven by curiosity telling each other all sorts of stories. That he had been thrown in a fire pit as a child, or that he had been abandoned in the woods among the beasts. Others that were more daring would make funny faces behind him. He would make strange sounds and would try to catch them. Laughing, the children would scatter. When the evening came, he would head towards the house on the edge holding at his chest the alms he had received. Mother would wait for him, with her eyes always sad.

(Translated by Irina Vild / 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.