Soap Bubbles

Cecilia Fofiu
The staircase is festively decorated with colourful balloons and flowers. On the steps, the musicians are tuning their squeaking instruments. Ion, an older cousin of the groom's, is shifting uncomfortably in the polyester suit he picked up at the market. Driven by nerves, he gulps down another glass of brandy. He then goes into the unfamiliar restroom to loosen up the tie choking his neck. He spots a few cans of spray on the shelf, and takes one thinking that he might still smell like the heifer he'd milked at dawn, and quickly spritzes the shoulders, lapels, and the combs of the jacket. With bubbles of foam from shaving cream. 

Carmen Tot
When we broke down our wall, the old man said, gazing at the black clouds that were cramming up above the park, I thought, you hear, young man, I did not believe, you understand, I thought that the world would become like us. But the wall was in Berlin, sir, said the boy, crossing his sneakers under the bench. We all had a wall, there were too many of them. And the old man gazed at the sky once more. I'm leaving now. And he nestled his raincoat against his chest, so that his deceptiveness wouldn't be visible, and the rain began falling bulbously down the alley. I'm leaving, the old man whispered again, you stay. 

Gheorghiță Mircea
When I opted for the tuba, there was nobody in town to become my maestro. The two who played the tuba in the town's marching band, Luci and Dudy, were gone. When, after a burial, they would get wasted at the dead man's funeral feast, and go on with a jam session at the Summer Garden. I watched them fascinated. I took online lessons. When I made up my mind, I washed the tuba with detergent, and from under my girlfriend's balcony, I attempted to play. From the funnel, multicoloured balloons were the only things to come out. I was distraught, but she answered by blowing soap bubbles my way. 

(Translated by Diana Georgiana Rădăcineanu / 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.