Twelfth Night

Carmen Tot
The sun set for the eleventh time, but not even at this moment did the padishah look towards the harem. Instead, just like yesterday, he asked for the outland storyteller woman storyteller to be pointed out. He obsessively remembered her words: never shall the last veil fall, as long as she refuses. And this teared up his heart, just like termites destroyed wood, and he couldn't be a weak warrior. Undress her, he demanded his servants, and she knew she couldn't do anything about it and kept on looking into his eyes until the end. It was only now that the padishah understood the true meaning of her words and that he had lost the first battle.

Siranuș Hakobian
On the first night, I didn't let you sleep a wink. I couldn't get enough of looking at your long fingers and pouty little mouth. I'd rather you had kept your grey eyes wide open, but patting your tiny shoulder and smelling your rosy skin was enough to make me happy. I suppose you wanted to get your revenge, because for the next few nights, you wouldn't let me sleep at all and used a terrible force to make me walk kilometres around our room. On the twelfth night, I couldn't help it anymore and gave you your first big deceit: a pacifier.

Dan Banu
The fact that the sea was bordered by sand as shiny as stars caused the man great distress. A moon-shaped seashell was placed on top of a castle. The girl grabbed the Moon by a corner. Lit, the Moon burned for a long time, just like a lantern feeding on dreams. On the first night, the sea let out a whistle and began to play to the rhythm of the flames. On the second, the waves curled up like a lamb's wool started to dance. Then, other ewes joined. On the twelfth, when the shepherdess climbed the skies with her flock, it was only silence that remained.

(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 April 2024, the group has 12,860 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.