Black Metal

Carmen-Ecaterina Ciobâcă
I was sitting at the table, mumbling a carol. War had ended. The liberators had made a manger for the horses in the church. Our hearts stopped when they slammed the door against the wall. They took mom to the stable. Finally, they took the cow by the rope and left drunkenly. The next day, they took the pig. On the third day, mom cut the fat rooster. They've left us alone ever since. During the winter, we ate the potatoes that we kept for the pig. When the snow melted, a chunk of soil was torn apart from our garden. The black helmet with the red star shined brightly in the vivid sun.

Alex Caragian
He crawled to the edge of the bed with a stench that convinced the priestess to pretend to still be sleeping. He stepped on the empty bottle that rolled and broke the silence of the cruel morning. He made his way among the devils in the yard, who were staring stunned, because they couldn't remember when was the last time that he was awake at that hour. Damn you devils, filthy things. Do you need meat? I will give it to you. He dug a hole in the sky to make room for his creator to sneak in. Agheasmie put his armor on for the last time.

Cristina Daniela Dumitru-Pascal
What are you doing, I asked him. Can't you see? I'm watching him. He is lying on the bed and the white of the room accentuates his paleness. Drops of frozen sweat are shining on his forehead. It's quiet. I can taste something metallic in my mouth, he tells me. Like black metal. The taste of death. I open my mouth to answer him, but my words are silent. He's been sitting still for hours. His right hand is full of hematoma and his left hand is held by God. He gets up, smiles and leaves. This remains written on the wall: another day faded away, now I am searching for silence with my head wet from yesterday's rain.

(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.