At the Library

Ruxandra Comșa
He knocked three times on my wall and I handed him a cup of sugar. Not much later, I heard four knocks. He wanted some coffee too. I didn't have much, but it was enough for two cups. He told me he had taken a break from everything and now read a lot. The doctor thinks that keeps me in check. Come see my library. I went there, just hoping he wouldn't ask for food. My fridge was empty. I found him in the bathtub. The stories floated in huge soap bubbles. We read until they popped, one by one. When he pulled the plug, I caught the last bubble. Velvety. With fragrances.

Fabiola Stoi
He came every Thursday, parked the bus near the playground and fully opened the front doors. The neighbourhood kids rushed down the narrow aisle between the shelves, returned the books they had read and always borrowed new ones with which they travelled for another week. When the first bombs dropped on the city, he completed his weekly tour in just one day. The last stop, towards the evening, was in their neighbourhood, he boarded the children and ascended towards the reading camp. From below, the parents waved at the book-filled windows.

Gheorghiță Mircea
After filling the library with mice, Angel was arrested for sabotage and theft. A book was missing, a treatise on eschatology, the final fate of man. Angel, resurrected after having been struck by lightning, was interested in the subject. Confess, they asked him. Angel told them the truth was the human condition, but after they tied electrodes to his testicles and electrocuted him for the third time, he thought that everything he had read was useless. From now on, he was no longer interested in the end, but in the moment. He swore never to read again. When they threw him off at Neagra, he was laughing, their light bothered him.

(Translated by Laurențiu-Gabriel Niculae / University of Bucharest, Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures, MTTLC, year I / 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 March 2024, the group has 12,800 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.