Sci-Fi

Cristina Daniela Dumitru-Pascal
You're nothing, an abnormal, a mistake of nature, too weird even for SF. That's what the others called him and he retired to his room, where an entirely different world was awaiting, stars and planets hanging from the ceiling, UFOs floating on string. He was excited when he found out that he was going on a school trip, especially because they were going by plane. He would be closer to the sky he loved so much and he could show everyone how he really was. But he also knew that would be the time for revenge and the spaceship went off the radar. Back home, his face in the photos was blurred.

Vlad Nastea
Her favourite spot: at the foot of the dam. She loved it at dusk, when the season was over and the tourists had already left. That's how she had met him, she had started following him with increasing interest. She had noticed that her nipples were often getting harder if he was alone, lost in thoughts and smoking, unconcerned with another smiling creature. It was after a three-month absence when she felt telepathized: do you really think I haven't noticed you and that there is no such thing as a gill implant? She shuddered to the scales on the tip of her tail.

Diana Cornea
Hehad caught up with her. She had been afraid. She had gotten away. Again and again. Here it was colder. That's probably what he thought too. Between the walls of the bathroom covered with the horrible pink tiles, where she felt like throwing up, where she had hidden before, where the only thing falling was her falling into thoughts, here she had leaned onto the tiles and had tried again to stop her heart beat. She heard him lighting his lighter. She heard him drawing avidly on his cigarette and she almost heard him smile. She closed her eyes as slowly as she could hoping that maybe life had a happy ending.

(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.