There Is Always Something behind a Grate

Răzvan Drăgoi
Wohin bringen Sie uns? he said, and the answer to the question of their whereabouts was a blow to the mouth by the gun barrel. They were marching in a row. Somehow, as sombre as before. Some because they were about to lose the war, and others because they still had one thing to lose. Here, after so many years, a grate with the inscription that labour liberates you stood still. What was behind it? Maybe the entire history of dehumanization. Maybe all the fear and terror. Or maybe there was nothing left. Where are we really going? Wohin bringen Sie uns?

Florentina Ghițescu
The drugstore where mom worked was next to the city bank. Coming back from the dorm, my brother and I drafted a plan to rob the bank. With each visit to my mother's workplace, we became closer and closer to figuring out the solution. We had not seen La Casa de Papel back then. We knew what we were going to do with the money, I would buy dolls and my brother would get himself a remote control car. One day, when we were climbing the window grate in order to put our plan to the test, a guard appeared and offered us a lollipop each. We gave up. I became a forensic law enforcement officer.

Cristina Daniela Dumitru-Pascal
He was left alone, he could do anything, but he was fascinated by the sounds coming from the wall. He took out the ventilation grate and started listening. Nothing. The space was large enough for him to squeeze into it. Darkness. He opened the flashlight of the phone shaking. He froze. He found himself in a town. There were people collapsed next to the walls, with lumps and black spots on their bodies. Blood dripping. They died in the same way, whether rich or poor. Rats were racing from one body to another with bits of flesh in their mouths. They stopped. They were staring at him. He had a nightmare. He fell asleep in the air shaft.

(Translated by Andreea Cuprian / 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.