Yesterday It Started Falling

Silvia Ștefan
They held each other's hands over the kitchen table. They couldn't look each other in the eye. So much love, and yet so much pride. He stared at her right lobe, the one he'd rubbed his nose against on their first date. She stared at the shoulder where she would rest her head on movie nights. Neither dared stop the story, though it was only a matter of time. Do you still love me, Silvi? Tsk. Not at all? Where were you yesterday? At Grandpa's, picking grapes. At Grandpa's, she said quietly. That's where I come from. She withdrew her hands, and he continued to fall.

Ana-Maria Butuza
She knocked on old Vanda's door, carrying a black hen and a handful of coins, as much as she was able to save up since misfortune struck her. The old woman sized her up through the choking smoke of the pipe, and after letting out a deep cough, she showed her to the chair: don't be afraid, woman, for if you do as I tell you, all your troubles will go away one by one. And they began to stoke the fire in the hearth, until the flame reached Scaraoțchi's[1] tail and it caught on fire. The sinner howled, but the women stoked the flame until the hen's feathers turned white.
Paul Dârvariu
Not really since yesterday. It started a long time ago. One strand today, two tomorrow, three the day after, and in a couple of years I've ended up witha beautiful bald head. I wanted to cry when I looked in the mirror, so I took out a loan from the bank and made an appointment to get a hair transplant. I didn't tell Cocuța. I wanted to surprise her. When I came back from Turkey, when she saw my hairstyle, she burst out laughing: you're such a loser, Grigore. Don't you know that bald men are now in fashion? It's true. I'm going to the barber tomorrow. I'm getting a buzz cut.

(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.