A Photograph Forgotten in the Back of a Drawer

Radu Gramatovici
I was sitting on the edge of the bed, with my eyes fixed on a photograph I have found in the drawer of the nightstand. Searching the room while she was taking a shower became the only way to get to know her better. But now, in the photo, there was the girl to whom I had paid for the stolen sandal a few years ago. And its pair. Iulia got out of the shower, took the photo and tossed it back into the drawer with indifference. Is that you?, I asked her. No, it's a girl I met a long time ago. At re-education, she told me with an accent on those words, pushed me on the back and climbed on top of me.

Amalia Melnic
Joseph finished cutting the flesh and cleaned up the house. He carefully washed the blood off. He poured himself a glass of wine. Finally, there was silence. He let Mozart play in the background and contemplated the moment. So many memories came into his mind, so smiling was she when he met her. He surprisingly looked in the drawer, her photo taken years ago by him himself annoyed him in some kind of way. It portrayed her childish and benevolent face. He closed his eyes and hoped he would dream about her. He seemed to have forgotten that his wife was lying dead in his bathtub.

Cristina Daniela Dumitru-Pascal
Thank you for the interview. Is it true that you can talk to the dead? No. They talk to me. Those whose shadows turned their backs to tell me about unfinished things, unspoken words, dried kisses on the lips. They don't suffer from a lack of love, but from forgetting. It's said that you have a desk whose drawer has never been opened. The gratitude of those on the other side that I listened to lies there. You may have a look. A photo of an hourglass, today's date, the day I'll speak to the living written on the back. What does it mean? Nobody answered her.

(Translated by Cristina-Andreea Dobre / 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.