Stuffed Animal

Marilena Demian
The little girl yelped as she pulled the corner of the top shelf and pushed it all the way in front of the door. She had emptied it to make it easier to move. There you go. She filled it with games, books, dolls, clothes and shoes. On top she put the rug, the duvet, the pillow, the quilt. And on top of it all she neatly placed her beloved collection of plushies. Then she pulled the chair to the window and opened it wide. She knew that, as before, her parents would gift her a new plushie tomorrow. She didn't need it. Now they would see what happens when they break their promise not to fight anymore.

Cecilia Fofiu
Everyone and their dog gathered, dressed in their finest clothes, solemnly watching the blessing of the village's optical fibre, eagerly awaiting the party promised by the mayor with musicians, dancers, traditional food, beer and other surprises. The priest is seated at the head table with the deputy mayor and his offspring who is clutching a teddy bear won in a sack race. A buffoon grabs the stuffed animal and makes it talk to the gawking guests. Uproar, the devil take him. The ventriloquist is abundantly splashed with holy water by the priest and chased away with taunts.

Arthur Ianoși
They had called her to the morgue to identify the body. At the station, a clown-faced policeman had told her that the body matched the description. She walked into the cold room praying it wasn't him. The neon flickered to the beat of her heart. She wanted to leave. Come on, you can do it, she told herself. She lifted the sheet that still smelled of balm and, without grimacing, ran her fingers along the edge of the ragged wound. No, it's not him, she said to the coroner as she bent down and kissed the purple lips of the man lying on the table. She remembered Tim, Iga's doll.

(Translated by Bogdan Nicola / 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.