The Laws of the Beach

Florina Hegedüs
The waterfall gushing from the rocky wall spilled into the small blue lagoon. Reddish fish and algae caressed her feet. The sand. Ah, the sand seemed to be made of gold and platinum grains all at once. Here's the place, and she spread her sheet on it. From the basket she took out her sunglasses, a crossword puzzle and a few bags of sunflower seeds just in case, and a flag with: No peeping eyes, and there, clothes off. She fell asleep in the summer buzz as a firm hand brushed her shoulder: Ma'am, we have our laws here in the Mall.

Gheorghiță Mircea
First of all the beach is mine and I am the law. The island is mine, I was here first. At the crossroads of the currents, no boats pass by, once caught in the whirlpools they are lost. If you get here, you'll have to obey the laws. There aren't many. It's forbidden to designate any object, woman or man as mine or mine alone. Cannabis and pearls are shared equally by all. It is forbidden to cut down trees and build rafts, because you must be aware that no other world exists and you will not be able to leave Paradise. You will be sand.

Tina Dublea
Jupiter[1]. There I took you to Venus[2] and you lit my fire from Olimp. Then we ran to Vama[3] and did it all over the place without giving it a thought. In Saturn[4] our rings jumped off our heads too. Same at Cap Aurora[5], there in that little gulf. In one of the Eforii[6], we even had euphoria coming out of our noses a few times. In 2 Mai[7] we had a big fight, I remember, and I don't remember two others being dumber than us, when in Corbu[8], we let the crows nibble on what we had and nobody knew. Only the stabilopozi[9].
(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.