Reading Time

Miruna Marin
We lie on our stomachs on the bed. We read about a family of hunter-gatherers. Taffy, the little mischievous-being-who-needs-to-be-spanked, and her father, Tegumai, the man-who-doesn't-take-a-step-without-pondering, invent the alphabet. A, for instance, is the open mouth of a carp with a moustache above it. T is the father with open arms, ready to embrace the family. O, an egg. T, my father smiles next to me, with dimples in his cheeks. Flash forward. Now, A is her. We read lying on the bed. Still us, the family of reader-storytellers, hatched from the egg of then.

Ruxandra Comșa
Summer was cracking at the corners (sepia image) when a family moved into the house next door. Bearded husband, curly-haired wife, freckled child, wise grandfather (vintage photo from the 1800s). We were surprised. Everyone knew that it was a house inhabited by ghosts. Mom told me not to peek through the fence. That's not how I raised you (coloured photo; me, small, her, big). Through the gap in the fence, I reached who knows where. There, I came across who knows what. The teacher yelled as if she had lost her mind. You wrote nonsense again? The theme was clear: I know how to write, but I don't know how to read.

Paul Dârvariu
Yours truly, Ghiorghiță Cusurgiu[1], would like to make you aware of a fraud that is happening with the meter reading. According to the Law, the meter should be read on the First of the Month in reality, your employee does not read it at 0:00 sharp as it should be but much later and even days later I would like to mention that I have been living at this address for 24 years and 8 months and I have calculated over 118 days of overpayment I request you to recalculate and refunded the Stolen amount. Down with The Mafia Down with Theft.

(Translated by Diana Georgiana Rădăcineanu / 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 January 2024, the group has 12,500 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.