Session

Carmen-Ecaterina Ciobâcă
Wrapped in a towel, she strutted down the corridor like a sea-foam-born Aphrodite. C3, 103, third floor. Her lucky number. The bathroom was some distance away. She stepped gently through the tobacco smoke and pushed the door. A leaking pipe. 3 people inside the room. She went downstairs. 6 inside the other room, two in each bed, for they had the guard's consent. On the ground floor, the hot steam almost smothered her. A bunch of Aphrodite's waiting in line. She climbed back the stairs. On the first floor, there was a crystalline sough. 3 occupied stalls. The fourth door opened suddenly. Three pairs of eyes turn towards her at once. Learning, are ye?

Alina Ilie
My first exam session, binging music. When the colloquium in graphics started, I was holding my drawing tube and the classmates were holding me. That was my first A, The Best. I cried. Then I had those classes in mathematics during which I felt like and English man in New York, unattended seminars, yet an Amazing Grace, for I got the passing grade. The chemistry classes were Love to Love You Baby. Economy and marketing helped me earn my course credits, so these were just Something You need. Statistics- old Mandarin, but There's Noting That Our God Can't Do. I was up in the air in a wheelchair.

Cecilia Fofiu
The last exam of this session. The toughest of all. And I've skimped on studying. I primp myself up carefully and set out for school leisurely, two hours earlier. I pray in my head and bow before the wayside cross. I enter the cathedral and, before the saints, I solemnly vow that if I pass today's exam, I'll quit smoking and complaining when my mother asks me to peel potatoes. Like a good Christian, I share my pretzel with two pigeons and ask the universe for mercy. The whole amphitheatre is in an uproar. The exam has been postponed. The teacher won a car in the lottery. He's gone to see a psychiatrist.

(Translated by Bogdan Macarie / 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.