Yesterday It Started Falling

Caterina Tudorache
Mister, as I fall asleep, I see myself falling. Three stories, exactly. Can you imagine? The man's moving nervously a little. I said I'll sleep during the day and I'm tricking my mind. Nothing. I've fallen asleep during the day. Three stories. Only that I could see the ground. Until recently I was dreaming of running. I ran all the way to Oradea every night. The man looks lost at the door. Wait a minute, I paid for an hour. The former psychologist told me I couldn't get rid of that dream. But I did. I don't run anymore. I'm just falling. The man's getting up. Excuse me. You know, I just came to fix the doctor's sink.

Titela Durnea
She waits for her every Tuesday in the courtyard under the chestnut trees. She shows up at 12, unravelling her hair from its ponytail and shaking it rebelliously over her pubic shoulders. Come on, I'm skipping the philosophy. The park is ours at this hour. He thirstily takes a drag from the forbidden cigarette back home and kisses it like the end of the world is coming. He has no idea how close it is. When Radu hands her the white powder, she laughs. Okay, once doesn't count. And in the yawning pit, pieces of body and soul fall, facing the void. The news announces the pointless, hilarious suspension of the freshman prom.

George Dometi
The metal's hardened from so many tears, let's change course. In the grove, where the train passes on its way to town, in a gazebo two children were playing with a sphere from which a strip of meat hung. They were kicking hard and didn't care that the leaves were sticking to their egg shaped thing. Cheerfulness hovered in the tomnatic atmosphere. At one point the more talkative one said, Well, Davi, I told him it'd cut his head off if he stayed too long. Well, now we're playing football with him. But him no and no, Beckham, Beckham. Come on, give him a shot.

(Translated by Adrian-George Ilinca / 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.