New Times

Fabiola Stoi
Hinta-bolinta[1]. The little girl saw the treetops, the shallow sky, closed her eyes as her gaze almost drowned in the sunlight, felt the sway of the cradle against the top bar in her arms and heard the hiss of the descent in her ears. Once more and she heard the hintabolinta, Grandma's refrain, again in her mind, she didn't know what it meant, but it seemed like a magic formula. She resumed the ascent and descent, feeling with her eyes, her hearing and a little in the tremor transmitted in her arms. Then she took off the vr headset and dropped the controller on the desk, running fast: I am coming, mommy.
Nicolae Popescu
She's got her eye on her book, he's got his eye on his book. The subway travels from one station to another. They don't bother, they seem absorbed in reading. The people around are all staring at their phones. They look up, their eyes meet. They smile. Cut, cut, that's it, that went very well, the director's voice is heard. Everyone relaxes. They close their books noisily and quickly take out their phones. She tells him: It sucks to sit with your books in front of you for so long. Shall we make a video of them, to get a good Tik Tok before we hand them in to props?

Marilena Demian
Oh, and let's not forget the car. The gray Mercedes, the first one you brought. No, it's no longer the talk of the neighborhood, I gave it to a nice guy here for a fee, he said he would do a good job. Everything is expensive today, I had to give him your camera too, I know how much you care about it, but he said it's an old model, never mind the make. He promised he would put in a marble backsplash instead of a mosaic. He also asked for 500 euros. I know you said not to touch them, but I want a perfect work. To be the cemetery line.

(Translated by Florina Șamata / 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.