New Times

Costică Tihan
I poured 50 ml from the Stolichnaya bottle. Papa's eyes were glazing over. Mummy was cooking pan-fried chicken and polenta. There was a clear pleasant evening air in the summer kitchen, with crickets chirping and frogs croaking. Papa brought some wine from the cellar and kept staring at me. Want to make an estimate? He drew a barrel on a silky notepad, gave it the dimensions and we began to calculate. He finished first with his old ways. We were silent for a few seconds. So, what's it like? Different times, huh?

Alina Nedelcu
 I've been following them for a long time. First it was Artanu'. Big sly one. I almost thought his daughter was a model named Adeline. Then the band's vocalist turned into a cute old man with a braided beard who looks like the white wizard from Lord of the Rings and also has a president's name. Turns out the old man has guts, can play the guitar and writes cool lyrics about Moldova Mon Amour. I love this band, it has a future, even if times aren't quite so new anymore. Old school rock never dies.

Magdalena Daminescu
Sometimes I get overwhelmed by the messages and videos from friends and multiple groups I'm a part of. Luckily I wake up in the middle of the night and within a few hours I have them all sorted, including thanking and retweeting. I'm really excited that people are thinking of me, but I want to go out to the movies or the theater and I have no one to go with. I can't find any outings, no one comes to my openings. My best friend calls me, we talk about the latest TV show, we used to talk about the last book we both read.

(Translated by Anca Maria Florea / University of Bucharest, Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures, MTTLC, year II / Corrected by prof. dr. Nadina Vișan, Edited 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.