Great Expectations

Carmen-Ecaterina Ciobâcă
Look, Grandpa, here we have the best icecream in the whole world. With caramel. Really? the old man asked aimlessly. He looked up. He's a child again. He's delivering food to those in the mountains. May God give keep them healthy. It won't be long until they come. They will get rid of this burden. Then they beat the daylights out of him. When he managed to escape, he didn't wait for anyone any longer. He lived with his eyes down. Go to Hell, he says, seeing a yellow M on a red background. I was waiting for you with weapons. You came sixty years later. With fries.

Alina Ilie
They had put down 20 pounds, besides a pen and a notebook, a flower, an icon, a mirror, grandpa's patent, scissors, and mom's perfume, by Luis Lorent. The child, confused by the overlapping encouragements of the enthusiastic family members reached out for the money but didn't take them, to the audience's disappointment. Poor just like his dad, someone mumbled, while the godmother clenched her jaw. That's right, take the image, cheers and confetti, you're going to be rich while doing nothing. The flower, who put the flower on the boy's tray? God forbid. Look, he took the perfume as well.

Silvia Ștefan
He had read somewhere about the wish jar. He wanted it too. It wasn't good timing on the third of January. He sat at his desk, lit a cigarette and squinted at the old image, not hung straight. Ilinca. I will put Ilinca here. If I work a little harder, I will be able to finish the house next to the forest and I will propose to her. Max. I will build a new cage for him. I will put myself too. When it comes to me, I want time. He stood up, straightened the image and drowned it in a sea of smoke. He coughed intensely, staining the last paper with blood. Children. Tch. He broke the jar and sighed. I don't have enough time.

(Translated by Bianca-Andreea Rîmboacă / 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 February 2024, the group has 12,700 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.