02.09.2024

Mihai Dinescu
Thom Yorke's voice cuts through the fog. Oh, why don't you quiet down? It goes on and on. Like a buzzing mantra on an infernal car. With sharp tires that rumble menacingly. Like the fangs of a demonic beast. We are the dollars and cents. Cuts like a blade writing the word NO on my left arm. It takes the pain away like a worm blanket. It revives my dying mood. Order brings me peace. I accept this version of truth because I have no other option.

 Dan Banu
Behind the curtains, houses seem to be placed in a box filled with cotton wool, looking like Christmas globes. Cars are just kittens purring on the cooker, people grind words like mills grind water, and the wind swallows its riots. The air is a sea of sobs in which only music survives. The piano is placed in the front, the violins to the left, the flute, clarinet, oboe and trombone to the right, the large tuba and the cymbals in the back. It's caged in the walls just like a bug in amber. There's so much silence it seems like I don't even exist. There's only music and a huge emptiness.

Dorin Vasile
Explanatory note. Source : the melomane. Receive: Lt. S. At breakfast he admits his dissatisfaction regarding the conductor of the orchestra. Milk starts to boil, the wife admits her dissatisfaction regarding the diet. The dog barks. The phone rings, it wasn't meant for them. The bed creaks, gasps. Leek soup, meatballs. Works starts after lunch. Unpleasant sounds, he breaks the tip of the pencil. Someone visits him in the afternoon. A male voice that tells him to hide the score inside the iron. To plug it in when in need. In the evening. Stabat mater, dolorosa.

(Translated by Cristina-Andreea Dobre / 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.

0 comentarii

Publicitate

Sus