The School of Magic

Monica Bologa
You absolutely need to enrol in this school, do you hear me? Why would I do that? Because you learn all kinds of tricks here. I learned how to turn myself into a bird, into Superman, even into Santa Claus. Now I really know how to laugh, more with my soul than with my whole mouth, instead of dragons I dream of castles and fairies. I forgot what hatred is. And the coolest thing is that I learned to get over any anger with the speed of light. This school is salvation, dear friend. Ok, but how are the teachers? They are children.

Răzvan Drăgoi
Let me tell you your fortune. Palms up. Do you think I can't? If I tell you even about the milk you sucked from your mother, will you believe me? No, I'm going to think you heard about it somewhere. Palms up. Ask me something that nobody else knows. What was the name of my first girlfriend in third grade? I told him. How did you know? It's written in your palm. He looked at me in disbelief. I also answered other questions. I left him speechless. I didn't tell him he was going to die the next day. Nor did I tell him why my hand was so cold. He would have expected me to have a scythe.

Alex Caragian
I skipped the canes straight to the little wands, and left the alphabet aside, preferring the he-Abracadabra. The uniform was merely an invisibility cloak. After kindergarten I got my master's degree, my doctorate and I did research all my life with Marian Râlea[1], and I admit, it was great magic; I enjoyed assorted cakes, surprises, miracles, games, joys for the smartest of children. An old miner revealed to me towards the end of my life what the secret really was and made me understand that magic was within me.(Translated by Tania Diniță / 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 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.