As It Is in Heaven

George Dometi
His leaf was smeared with mud and his palms rested in muddy water, but the fissure in the Garden wouldn't fill no matter how much clay and straw he would have shovelled into it. He did that every time he wanted to make it up with her, but each time they had a row the chink in the Gate widened. The wheelbarrow emptied of cob was now lying in the shade of the apple tree. With a pain in his ribs, perhaps soreness caused by the effort, Adam looked at the tree, thinking that maybe she is right, maybe the fruit is tasty and he is just being stubborn and used to getting his own way.

Caterina Tudorache
In the morning, the short-circuit in the bathroom surprised me one foot in the air. I crossed myself, thanking. I nearly choked on the omelette, but my wife came and gave me a back blow. The brakes stopped working, but I managed to stop in the first fence. My boss promised he would fire me if I was late for yet another meeting. I got burned with my first coffee and the second had milk in it, to which I am allergic. Tired, towards the evening, I slipped on the floor in the kitchen. I hit my back against the table and my spine hurts. I lay there, smiling. Alright. Thy will be done.

Carmen-Ecaterina Ciobâcă
That day was far, cloaked in mist. But sometimes the dimness split and she could see clearly. It was then that she had started to hate herself. She would clip her nails too short. Jeans had been replaced with baggy skirts. She would wear grandma's sweaters to hide her breasts which had just started to bud. But she kept feeling she was being watched, and her heart pounded like crazy when she entered blocks of flats on her own. Then she came here, and a sense of peace cloaked her like a clean shroud. She became like the bodiless. A voice distracted her from her thoughts. Bless us, Mother Superior.

(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.