Session

Dan Banu
I am extremely nervous. Even in high school, my feet didn't shake like this in front of the class. It's my first exam session and I really want to pass it successfully. I check my tie knot one more time and try to center it on the placket. My legs feel like jelly, and my eyes feel blinded by mist. I'll get over it, I tell myself bravely. Fifteen minutes to go. I pull out the tickets and put them on the table. I read the first one. It's not hard to answer. I place it back in the stack and signal to the girl at the door that the first student may enter.  

Ana Maria Dobre-Nir
It started as soon as I closed my eyes. The colours were brighter. They told me the truth that they were actually able to give me all those sensations through the electrodes. I have to admit I didn't care anymore. Not even that it was all part of a long series of tests. Maybe I had become addicted. Maybe my brain had gotten used to that level of serotonin. One day, one of the doctors told me that the sessions were going to get long. Meaning that they'd wake me up after about a week. It didn't seem risky to me, but it was.  

Elena Fermuș
Ring ring, the phone. Hello, how do you do? He's killing me with these nonstop calls. Darling, but I told you, I'm studying, I don't have time. I'll talk to you after the exam session. I'm concentrating now. I'm sort of a literature student. I'm learning the alphabet, you know. I need to know one word for each letter and I pass. I can do it, it's not hard. A for airplane. B is for baby. D is for Divine being, help me. M is for marriage. P for Paris, not Pitești. T is for...I look out the window for inspiration. T is for taxi. S is for shadow. X is for...an unknown variable. An unknown woman. Arm in arm with my baby. Could it be his mother?  

(Translated by Andreea Ciubuc / 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.