Yesterday It Started Falling

Alex Caragian
Only three suitors were still in the race for Princess Wow's hand. When the tie-breaking final began, the Zmeu[1] threw his mace into the sky and it fell on the moon, but it still wasn't high enough to impress the jury of royal jesters. The Căpcăun[2] launched the bludgeon beyond the stars and it got tangled between the rings of a planet. Obviously, only Prâslea[3] held the key to the test. The sword he was left hanging from after the throw cut the strings that the Moon and all the stars were hanging from. Prâslea is still up there.
Arthur Ianoși
ashes, mom. I thought they had set fire to the leaves gathered around the barracks, mom, but the screams that can still be heard in the skies turn Buchenwald into the darkest nightmare. Five days ago, Ilse Koch brought in a stove with a hot plate. There are no sick people in my camp, that's what he told us. Thank God, I'm all right, mom. Karl disappeared. And so did Hans. They had a very slight cough. Now they're lampshades. I saw their tattoos. Yesterday I also saw the cave full of urns. I named it the Groaning Cave. I'll sign off here, mom.

Andrei Tiganus
And I get worried every time he falls. I know he's old, but we can't stop anymore. We stopped one night in a barn. They almost caught us then, we had the fright of our lives. But now we're close. Two more days of walking, that's all. Then I'll take him to the hospital and he'll recover. I tell him that every day, but he doesn't believe me. To be honest, I don't believe it myself. But I can't admit it to him. I have to be strong for the both of us. Come on, Pops. One more step, one more mile. Come on, you can do it. Come on, you can do it.

(Translated by Raluca Ioana Crucerescu / 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.