The Laws of the Beach

Ionuț Morariu
The sea and the women have their own rules. You break them, you pay. He'd known this truth since he'd boarded the Swallow ship. But in the ten years of his engagement to the unmarried blue, he never learned the laws of the beach. Nor did he need to. He'd only come off deck for a night of drinking. But now the story had become as tangled as a knot. A mermaid who called herself Circe claimed in court that he'd made her pregnant. He could feel the shipwreck in every pore. Illiterate, he could make out only five signs from the whole citation. The defendant's name: Ulysses.

Vero Anttheia Teodoru
I sit cross-legged next to a tree. What else can I do? I'm three years old. With both elbows on my knees, I rest my head in my palms. Hundreds of feet in flip-flops pass in both directions. I can't count. I don't cry, I watch the chaos of the street. I don't move. I don't understand how much time has passed. Someone is approaching. What do we do with her? It's simple. We take her where we need to, you know the rule. This is Radio Vacanța[1], Hier Spricht Der Ferienfunk, This is Radio Holidays, Ici Radio Vacances, Kids don't get lost you'll find them at RV. My desperate dad has gone silent. Nicolae Popescu
Venus Beach. Vera and Pricop sit on a towel in a towel rail. The beach is full of sun loungers. Vera gulps: Prichi, you've been taking me to the poor for 30 years. Couldn't we at least get a lounger? Forget it, Vero, we're a bit cramped, but who's drinking beer from the dispenser and eating anchovies tonight? Vera's brightening up. The whistle of a lifeboat, agitation. Someone's drowned, says one, with a towel underneath. Pric nods: Look, you've got a sun lounger, you want to ride the waves. We're safe here, there's no room to get to the water.

(Translated by Andreea Cristina Moise / 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.