Great Expectations

Radu Gramatovici
The relationship with Gabi, my new co-worker, was progressing. I was captivated by his spirituality and foresaw a great future for him. The fact that he was now folding fortune notes was just fate's way of getting him in my way. I felt it was time to take the initiative and invite him to my place, but my house was like Great Expectations, so I redecorated. He came in shyly and ogled me until I shed all my clothes. When he spread my legs, he suddenly pulled back and from his freaked out eyes I knew I had missed something: I hadn't really redecorated everything.

Laura Stanciu
Ioana was spending her birthday at a restaurant with her best friends. She felt loved and accepted for who she was. Girls, I swore I'd start tomorrow. I'll start for real. It's either the 13-day metabolism-switching one or the kale one. I have 47 pounds to lose. It'll take me a year, but you know I can't take it anymore. So I'm gonna eat everything I like today. Are we having a super party? I want cheesecake, crème brulée and sangria. The girls went over the menus, ordered, and promised to keep the diet together.

Iulia Biro
Mom and dad did for their offspring's future what they knew best. As if what money can't buy in this country. They worked all the time, the money kept piling up, but it also flew. They paid for the child with everything it took. Luxury nannies. Private school. Chauffeur-driven car to get to school. Expensive tutors, they even bought one for home, a sort of human Alexa. Camps, to get rid of him at home. They invested so much in his ass and everything turned to dust, he came out a poet and he'll stay with them till they die.

(Translated by Cătălina Colibaba / 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.