Apples, Pears in Baskets

Laura Stanciu
I am worried. I know what is about to happen. First, she washes you. Then, she peels you with a knife. The pain is so excruciating that you don't feel a thing when your pulp passes through the grater. She adds some sugar and cinnamon on top of you. She mixes you with all the other apples in the bag. Your seeds end up in the bin. You don't even realise it when she puts you in the oven, all wrapped up in the pastry sarcophagus. With me, it will take even less. I am perfect for her lunch break. In ten bites I will be back to heaven again.

Ramona Ungureanu
I met her when I was paying my phone subscription. Hey, I haven't seen you in nine autumns, how are you, and the words were flowing towards her and wrapped her in leaves and time stood still and we kept talking about the Himalayan salt, and bread, and oil factories and I was trying to imprint her image in my mind so I don't lose her, because this girl was like an orchard that satiated me. And then the man behind the counter said: you can catch up tomorrow, we're closing now, we can't, I said, because I am craving for apples now.

Ana Maria Dobre-Nir
Catch me. Come on, look for me. I am here. In our orchard. Warm, cold. I've left my white dress behind me. Then my scent. I'm taking a bite from an apple with great appetite, I'm enjoying it and I'm closing my eyes. Catch me, I say it again. All of a sudden I realise you aren't here. The storm has begun. The trees have nearly fallen to the ground, and I'm stumbling and tripping over the fallen fruit. A worm perhaps from a rotten fruit is crawling on my feet spattered with mud. We have rotted from the inside too. Slowly, slowly, without realising it. Where are you? Where the hell are you?

(Translated by Alina Roșu / 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 December 2023, the group has 12,210 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.