Apples, Pears in Baskets

George Dometi
The creak of the gate made the priest flinch. Ah, old lady, it's you! How is Mihnea doing? What a handsome boy you have! And he sings tenderly too. She perused him. Well, I came to leave this basket here for you. And the woman set it down at the priest's feet. What have you got here, old lady? Grub? No, autumn fruit. Then, why are they as white as snow? I would like to give alms to honour Mihnea's soul. He hung himself this morning because you defiled him on the altar. Then the old woman pulled out an axe. With each blow the fruit stained.

Ruxandra Comșa
I grew up on a farm and, when the other children were teasing, me I ran in the orchard. Sometimes, they followed me and we would fight with apples, green, ripe or rotten, depending on the season. One day, someone replaced the apple with a rock and, because I dodged it in time, another kid got hit. He fell down in an unnatural position. Hadn't it been for the blood trickling from his temple, I would have said he was just sleeping. We decided to cover him with leaves. He was a waif. I went to see him after a while. The ants had built a nest in his eyes.

Arthur Ianoși
Lențu was humming to himself when he snagged it. I'll take care of you, I'll cherish you as if you were the last of your kind, he said while he ran his fingers over it from top to bottom. He unzipped his jacket, then unbuttoned his shirt and pressed it onto his hairy chest. Ah, how lucky I am to have found you, a trouvaille, in the last moment, Newton's apple fallen from above. Had I been five more minutes late, someone else would have grabbed you. That's it, I'm taking you home, he said while he was getting on his bike. He fell off as he was taking the first turn and he felt some heat on his abdomen. He was hoping it would be blood, but the smell of vodka made him burst into tears.

(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.