Soundtrack

Dan Banu
At the moment she opened the window, she had seen the seagull on the window sill. The bird did not get scared, but looked at her for a few moments and seemed to say something to her. I like to fly too, the girl replied. The bird talked to her again and the girl replied smiling, flying fills my heart with joy and peace. Then the bird raised its beak and happily shared the girl's words with another one flying above. That one in turn raised its beak and spoke to the one above, and so on in a column up to the sky. The girl spread her wings and started floating gently.

Sanda Burță
She could have become a great pianist. Up there on the stage was her place, not here. She would have wrapped herself in glory as she is now wrapping in the fur coat of that pansy boy, Volodea. For a few kopecks a week, Masha rattles the piano and time passes just like this. With more passion, Mashenka, with more passion, Ivan the projectionist shouted to her from above, soon he will be here. The old man was nice, but who on Earth was coming soon, she had no clue. When the big Potemkin stormed in, all the muzhiks in the first line run away knocking her down. They tore her stockings.

Daniela Rusu
Promise me you will love with all your heart, she told me. And then she died, having the same good behaviour with which she lived. Ever since I lost my mother, I can't get over this horrible message. I wished she would have taken it away with her. So, that's how the dying persons are thinking, that they have the right to give you life advice, since you still have the privilege of bathing in it. Why with all my heart? My mind runs back into the past, the past in the amniotic fluid and after a short heavenly drunkenness, it spits me out on the ground. Or under. Lov. How the hell can I love, mum, when I can't hear your voice anymore?

(Translated by Constantin Grigorescu / 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 November 2023, the group has 12,090 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.