The Sunday Afternoon Dairy

Ana Maria Dobre-Nir
I'm so tired. I can barely breath under the mountain of paperwork. It's interesting, but I like it, but when I like something, I have no sense of proportion. I start the work, then I forget about myself. On Sunday my daughter sometimes comes in my office, she gives me a smile I feed with or she tells me a story so that I won't forget about the outside world. These past few days she asked me why all of these, I told it's for her. She didn't believe me. She left upset. She came back to her chessboard. The mother is the bishop, I can hear from where she's standing.

Fabiola Stoi
After lunch, silence had settled, the shadow had entered in the yard at first shy, then swallowing little by little the alley, the grass, the flowers next to the east wall. I was waiting for it to lie down over me too, cold and big, to wrap me sleeping the daydreams, when from the neighbouring yard it burst out again: Goood, the ball doesn't pass the Bumbescu[1]'s wall, it clears quickly, it goes to Bölöni[2], who gives it to Belodedici[3]. Belo fights for the ball, wins, Steaua[4] attacks hard, Lăcătuș[5], Lăcătuș dribbles anddd unbelievableee.
Paul Dârvariu
After lunch, daddy grabs a beer and sits down in front of TV. I play on the carpet. Everytime I ask him something, he sends me to mommy, in the kitchen. Today, mommy didn't answer me and basted daddy. I don't like fights. I hid in the bathroom. Mommy came in, crying. Her nose was bleeding a lot. I bumped into the closet door, she told me and nursed me. Tomorrow I will ask the teacher to let me come to the kindergarden on Sunday afternoon too. I don't want mommy to get hit again, because of me.

(Translated by Florina Georgiana Țîncu / 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.