Black Metal

Mihaela Moisescu
I was sitting in between Black Metal and White Knight. One was drinking whisky on ice and was listening to rock on his headphones, what else? The other was sipping on his brandy. The first one had a malicious and know-it-all touch, he was undressing me with his eyes, I was thinking he had already seen my strawberry panties. The second one was mysterious, he seemed to be silence embodied. I didn't know what I preferred, a night with fireworks or a warm summer day at a five star resort. Then, Black left with another lady and White took out his lipstick and retouched his lips.

Caterina Tudorache
Yes. Yes. The dormouse was jumping, rhythmically hitting the asphalt. A pair of big headphones almost covered him all. One foot hit the air from time to time, making the tired leaves fly away. Three shocked ants were closely looking at him. How amusing. Is he sick? What's going on in his head that he shakes it like this? And look how his pants are fluttering. He seems stupid. The dormouse looked up. He stuck his tongue out. He grinned. The dromedary snatched the headphones with a hoof and kicked his head. He trampled the ants, ate the leaves and burped. Art, man. Art.

Călin Ciprian Rus-Gheorghiu
Art overpowered Gălman's soul, who was also called Trumpet, so much that he became sad. He took the rooster of nanny Veta, snapped his head and sprinkled the white cloth on the easel until there was no blood left. He then plucked the feathers of the bird and stuck them randomly on the painting. It wasn't enough, so he caught the neighbour's tomcat, and, holding its head under his armpit, that public head, while he was screaming, Galman he started pulling the cat's tail, so hard that the poor thing cried so loud it broke your heart, meanwhile the other, the dumb one, was loudly saying: art, man, art.

(Translated by Claudia Cioplea / 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.