At the Last Minute

Paul Dârvariu
I drank it with knots, at my boss' insistence: drink it uncle Grigore, because this palinka is the best digestive. Farcaș from Bistrița sent it to me, as thanks for making him director. Drink, because you need it, your face turned a little green . I think I've gone green too, after what I've eaten: beef salad, meatballs, tripe soup, grilled mackerel, wild boar tenderloin. Our luck was that the Boss brought us this natural palinka. Natural, dammit, I think is that stinky kind. Wow, I feel like I'm going to explode.

Vlad Mușat
One hundred. Ready or not, here I come! You looked. But you didn't. Oh, you did. We make you the Silver Cross. The three friends were saying the incantation, while I was stuck to the concrete pillar. When I heard the word mom, I turned around and punched them in the mouth. They started crying and vowed never to play with me again. They knew that this was the only punishment, that they had no one to tell me, I was only with the older brother, who anyway let me do what I wanted. Anyway, I found my entourage: The Three Musketeers.

Liviu Rusnaciuc Petru
€4 a kilogram of nails. I bought two nails so that I don't knock my fingers out with a hammer due to the wind that bends them, €30 I spent on a cartridge of Russian cigarettes and a candle, to light it later, two solar ropes taken from a sitecost €40because stupidity runs away from me but I'm faster than it. If they put a bar of soap next to them too, I wouldn't mind the money. With the last of my money I ordered self development books and some clothes hooks to hang them on the solar ropes.

(Translated by Ioana Andreea Radu / 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.