As It Is in Heaven

Vlad Mușat
I was floating and I was trying not to lose sight of the Earth. I had resigned myself to it, in 5 minutes I was going to run out of oxygen. Snapshots of my memories flashed before my eyes. I hummed a little from Space Oddity. 3 more minutes left. I began to say Our Father, I couldn't finish it because of some memories. Sleepless nights spent with Corina. I cannot see the Earth anymore. I close my eyes and wave my arms energetically. It seems real. It's the day my dad punished me severely for having caught me smoking. I fell asleep inside the snow angel.

Florina Hegedüs
Neil Armstrong was sleeping on the meadow that lay exactly at the intersection of the deist world and everything around it. A flock of sheep woke him up. They were dragging hoes and pick mattocks. They asked him for help. Since he knows how things work up there and they also want things to be here as there. Neil couldn't believe his ears. He lay on one side and told them ethically, gently: When I was up there, through the void of the imaginary dome only a spot like a beautiful blue ball helped me hang on in there and gave me hope. The Earth is our sky. Keep your eyes on it and look for no other gods.

Sanda Burță
His stocky figure covered the gas lamp on the table and a huge shadow spread in the whole room. I made you, I will kill you, where's the key? he yelled. The eldest boy kept quiet his jaw clenched and only a throaty growl like the growl of a dog jerked on the chain would come out through his teeth. His sister was crying her back leaning against the cabinet and the clatter of dishes infuriated him even more. Dad, come to bed, she kept asking, you've drunk enough. Out of my house, damn you. A smaller God, but still a god he was.

(Translated by Alina Roșu / University of Bucharest, Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures, MTTLC, year II / 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.