Among Strangers

Sanda Burță
Cezar, tell us how you flew to the very Africa to have that Bernardo doctor fit you with a baboon heart. Hehe, wait just a minute now, let me throw an armful of grass to the nutrias, he would answer. And since he was giving them grass, why shouldn't he give them some grated turnips and change the water in their basin to increase the impatience of those who have no other business than to listen to nonsense about baboon hearts. Man is like that, he isn't pleased if you honestly tell him that you sold everything but your soul to gain a new valve.

Bogdan Sebastian Burjan
He met Alessia there, in the peninsula. He learned Italian from her. Verro, as they spoke it there. They had good dough at Matteo's. He became a great pizza maker. Famous, with lots of followers on socials. Not much dough was left for Lorenzo. He dropped out of school and lived from small affairs and insignificant thievery. He buried them one by one. He kept an old cardboard photo album with black and white photos of his parents. So many foreign memories and I don't remember anymore the smell of grandma's cozonac. At home. Long ago.

Marinela Trifan
She struggles with a massive cardboard box, carrying it under her arm or moving it to her hip, crowding two complaining Iberians who missed their siesta. The subway smells of zacuscă and țuică, a little liquid leaked out. Mom hadn't tightened the lid of the jars properly again. She gets to her house and tears the partly flooded package. She recovers the zacuscă, it's harder to recover the țuica meant to preserve those sour cherries that will become alcoholic bombs, a mystifying desert around these parts. But she gobbles them up, they taste like they were made by mom's hand, they taste of dad's glass and of memories of drunk geese.

(Translated by Jessica-Polixenia-Cristiana Copilaș / 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.