The School of Magic

Sanda Burță
We had good days too. Those days when dad was passed out drunk. That's when mom brought out her box and we would run around it in circles. First she took the eraser, and her arm would grow and grow till it reached the sky and we waited with our eyes as big as saucers until she erased all the clouds. Did you see how I did that? We saw! We saw! as we hopped around. She'd grab the yellow crayon and once she drew the sun, we cheered We saw! We saw! And the world was round and beautiful once again. She blew a breath on our bruises and they'd turn into butterflies or flowers, and we were happy. We still have that box. But not our mother.

Gheorghiță Mircea
In the tent, under the candlelight, the old gypsy woman was caressing the cards and watching the young girl who had just fearfully snuck in. Outside, it was damn and freezing, and inside it smelled of warm tallow. I want you to teach me how to get Angel to love me. Clothes off, girl. Shaking, Hannah was left standing, white as a sheet, in front of the old woman who was now sizing her up, from head to toe. Then, the old woman got up and, dipping her crooked finger in the hot wax, she marked the girl's cheeks, lips, breasts, and flat belly. You can put your clothes back on. Go and show him the marks. That's it.

Iulia Viși
People kill themselves out of a desire for freedom, and are born out of their ego. Once he understood death, he enrolled in high school. He wanted to make a pact with the teenager in the first row, to learn what it's like to drink from his youth. To feel the oppression. What's it like to feel incomplete in such a seemingly complex world? The collective drama of who you wish to be when you grow up. For the first lesson, he knitted himself bones out of white thread. He made a big knot at his sternum, where he put his fear. After the first exam, he gathered his tears in his pocket. To become a grown-up.

(Translated by Bianca Ioana Prisecaru / 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 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.