The Worst Movie Ever

Monica Bologa
I'm sitting in the middle seat in the back row. There are 7 people in the cinema. Right in front of me, two are fiddling about, laughing, eating nachos. I feel like yelling at them, but I don't say anything. Three people leave after 10 minutes. A couple at the end of the row keep touching, kissing, I think she had an orgasm. I could hear her moaning. After 90 minutes, the lights are turned on. What a joke of a movie, I hear someone say. The credits are rolling on the screen, I can't bring myself to get out of my seat. I'm crying. It's the first time I played in a movie. Tomorrow I'll be back again.

Nicolae Popescu
Andrei comes home from work spent. Only a good movie could relax him. He takes advantage of his wife playing with Ilinca in the other room. He cracks open a beer and gets on Netflix. Ten minutes later Ilinca pops up, book in hand. He moves his head from left to right, not wanting to miss a second of the movie. Ilinca props herself up in front of him, nose in the air: daddy, will you read to me from the fox and hedgehog? Andrei breathes in, breathes out, breathes deeply and turns off the TV. Ilinca smiles. Come on, I didn't like the movie.

Iulia Biro
He was tall, she wasn't. She was delicate, he wasn't. When she looked up at him, all the light of joy gathered in her eyes, she was like a child looking at a cherry tree. When he looked down at her, his gaze went straight to her breasts, her face didn't really interest him, plenty of women have pretty faces, and in his eyes lit up the hunger of the wolf of Nu pagadi cartoon. He didn't even have to spend on alcohol, he got her drunk with lust. There was no need for words either. The sex was wild, daily, and if they didn't die, so it is today.

(Translated by Adela Neacșu / 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.