The Scale

Ana Maria Vaida
When the child stopped in front of the bright display window and began to tug at her hand, she thought that maybe she shouldn't have bought everything that she herself had missed out on. Cooome on, Mommy, it's on sale. A doll for Ana. You already have eight dolls and you don't even play with them. She had spoiled her, and now she felt like she had failed. Her daughter would never understand the value of what she had. Wait, let me teeeell you, the thin voice started the negotiation again. Ana, don't insist. Pleeeease! Not me Ana. My colleague, Anușka. She doesn't have any left. Hers were bombed in Ukraine.

Julia Sandu
Being Catholic, unlike my dad, a non-practicing Orthodox who ended up directly in the basement, drunk and dead from his mistress's bed, I have to go through purgatory. There, I see my personal record with a score of 0 for good deeds, many bad ones, and all seven deadly sins checked off. I slip 100 Euros in an envelope to the guy at the gate, who, while picking his teeth with his trident, places my soul on the scales of justice and with a finger under one side, I get a cozy job in the Department of Laziness, handling tar invoices. Money is the devil's eye, my dad used to say.

Vlad Nastea
The irony: I was right in Sibiu, two eyes of an unreal colour looked at me past the metal scales, adding slice after slice of bologna. On a scale plate. I only have fourteen Lei left, I told her, but well, take those thirty years from then until now, take this stack of letters, maybe we can balance it somehow. Nem tudom, Gabi smiled (happy birthday), with that slightly hoarse voice that drove me crazy. Alright, fine. I upped the ante with the faded photo from Tușnad Băi[1]. She withdrew two slices of baloney, I added a flattened piece of lead. We are even.
(Translated by Alin-Marian Mărgescu / 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.