News Hour

Carmen-Ecaterina Ciobâcă
These days have passed since the registry. Mrs. Floarea got the land beyond the fallow land. That's fair, that's the pre-war border, they said. My mother called last week. She's cleaning an Italian's house. Grandma can hardly hear. When Anuța got sick, she said the neighbour's curses had got to us. She's been a very crazy since she became a widow. It would have been good if the cuckoo hadn't sung in the house that night. And if you didn't have a crowbar nearby. I'm going now, Daddy, they're throwing me out. I'll be back next month.

Cristian Nedelcu
It's morning. I open the window and put the kettle on the stove. I'm making coffee. I am turning on the TV, turning on the news channel. I light a cigarette and turn on the computer. I take a puff, take a sip of coffee, then take another puff. Something's not right. I look on Facebook, nothing interesting. I check my e-mails. I've got my Digi[1] bill. I take another puff and have another sip of coffee. Same feeling, something's not as it should be. I grab the remote and turn on BBC Earth. David Attenborough's voice calms me down. A perfect morning.
Caterina Tudorache
So, the one on 3rd floor hasn't come home since yesterday. That's how she gets in the summer, so I keep wondering what her flowers are doing. If she had, God forgive me. Because I saw that neither does Tița on 8th floor. Empty house and can't stand the dust. What will she do when she wakes up with a grandchild at the door. She keeps them out. I've been to the pharmacy and I still don't know what's going on with me. I don't want to sit around with my eyes open. But what can I do. In a breathless pause, I took a step towards the door of the block. Hurrying, Auntie News came after me. Have you heard of Gicu on 2nd floor?

(Translated by Alina-Dorina Nicolae / 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.