This Fall

Ana Maria Dobre-Nir
I took my daughter to the planetarium. There I met an astronaut who asked us if we realize how beautiful Terra is, but how fragile as well. What do you mean fragile, she asked him. I mean just like you. You see, your parents still need to take care of you. Such is the case for our planet, we, the humans, need to take care of it. I saw how she stared at him pensively and we didn't say a word on the way home. She just dragged her tiny boots through the coloured leaves. In front of the house, she drew a rocket on the asphalt with chalk. Unfortunately, the rain erased it.

Siranuș Hakobian
For about the last 20 years, after the first rime hits the ground and the young must turns into adolescent gleeful wine, a certain courage takes hold of me, and I tell myself I will do it. Come what may, I will do it, at the risk of seeming narrow-minded, frivolous or dreamy - capital flaws that I'm not in dire need of. But the wine, harbinger of madness, matures so quickly, such as it often happens in life, and the courage leaves my body prematurely, just before I do it. This autumn, the wine is madder than ever and I really feel like I will do it: I'll run my own reading circle.

Sanda Burță
When I left, I swore I would never step foot there again. My mother wept gently like the rain that had been pouring for a few days, as if my father's curses had ruptured the sky. I was just a few steps from the gate when one of my shoes got stuck in the sticky mud. I tried to pull it out, but a shiver ran through my bones. If I don't leave now, I'll never do it. It's been 7 autumns since then. The lamp is burning through the window facing the street. I go in. May God forgive her. God forgive her. It's as if she's sleeping. Why did you only put one shoe on her? That's how she wanted it, dear, let it be.

(Translated by Laurențiu-Gabriel Niculae / University of Bucharest, Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures, MTTLC, year I / 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.