Scarecrow

Carmen-Ecaterina Ciobâcă
She had locked herself in her boudoir and started twisting her fingers. Ah, that day when she had argued with Iorgu. He was itching for heirs, while she wanted to play the fool for longer. She was sick of folk customs and needed to ponder upon this by herself at the country seat. The countryfolk had already occupied the surrounding forests. What were they to do about the land they were demanding? She heard commotion coming from the salon. Finally, the carriage arrived. She came down in a hurry then opened the door. She froze in place. Her pop's kaftan was hanging on a stake. On its barb they hanged his bloody headdress.

George Dometi
Zizu was the only one who fondly remembered the time he got married at nine years old. He was a rather quiet guy, although he always had some crazy ideas. He was the one who first taught me to run from the police. That scrawny guy would very easily slip out through the cut in the fence of the No. 5 police station. He was so tall that we would use him as an umbrella. He covered the sun whenever we stole scrap metal. Our tough guy struck fear with his dishevelled appearance and scarecrow posture. Now I'm the last one to throw the handful of dirt. The ravens are cawing.

Aurelian Țolescu
Nothing could scare me. I'm part of the people born during the reign of Ceaușescu, with over 40.000 high school graduates in 1986. My dad had shown me how typography work is done, my mom would give my brother, a chemical engineer, as an example. Towards the end, my dad started scaring me with his kindness: it's alright if you don't get into college, you can join the army, then your dad will make you into a typographer, you get married, get a house from your job and then you're an established man. I think the image of ink stains everywhere and the smell of lead led me to study electronics.

(Translated by Laurențiu-Gabriel Niculae / 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 October 2023, the group has 11,950 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.