Soap Bubbles

Silvia Ștefan
While walking around Sutton, he put his hand on her left hip and pulled her closer. She was fiddling with a piece of his brunette curly hair. They were walking slowly, without talking to each other, giggling while looking at English hats in shop's windows. Every man for himself. Passing by a Greggs, they both said at the same time: coffee? They sat down, enjoying the moment. The wind brought lots of colourful bubbles above them. Two nice old men were blowing bubbles through plastic circles in front of the pub from across the street. Do you want to buy some, Elly May? the girl smiled big. Mm-hmm.

Siranuș Hakobian
Big Head, the children shouted at me, but I didn't get mad, because my mother used to say that I had a big head because I was smart. And because I was so smart, I promised my mother that I will build her a café with a piano in a corner. I am very good at making coffee: I fill the red kettle with water and add three full teaspoons. My mother always let me make her coffee the way the smart people do it. The saddest day was when we buried my mom. That's when I heard my uncle ask my aunt: what are we going to do with that big-headed dummy?

Andreea Mihaela Murariu Moldovanu
All of the other children have sophisticated devices that make bubbles, with big containers so the fun will last for a longer time. She cries in her bathroom. She keeps on mixing soap and water but cannot seem to find the perfect measurements. The bubbles are colourless and do not go high, and they pop as soon as they form. Her face has started to change colours from how much she has been blowing into the ballpoint pen. That's what her mother told her that she had been doing as well. It worked. She waited until every solution was finished. Now she is the one that makes the most beautiful bubbles.

(Translated by Cristina-Paula Grosu / 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.