At the Last Minute

Mihaela Scânteie
She could feel the sweat running down his back. In front of the roulette, she could barely stand on her feet. Those high heels finished her off. She had already lost almost 5000. C'mon, I'm gonna win this hand, she told herself. She bet the last hundred on the 11th. His birthday. The dealer throws the ball. The roulette wheel began to spin. Les jeux sont faits, rien ne va plus. The roulette was spinning, spinning. Slower and slower. Stop. 12. Red, obviously. She sighed. The dealer drew the last chips in front of her. She sighed again. I'm so stupid, I knew 11 was black.

Vero Anttheia Teodoru
I have sex for money. I pay cool men for this who fall in love like fools and dream of long lasting relationships, I forget them the next day. They begin to suffer, draw hearts on scented sheets of paper and write love poems. Syrup. I sip with the straw from a cardboard cup that slowly softens with me. A few flashes incubate, sprout, see more clearly, fall into REM sleep again. It's hot, I'm on an exotic beach, I hear waves. Voices: I don't think she will make it until morning. They have no idea I'm not in a coma.

Mihaela Vicol
We are participating in a counter-time cooking competition. I had the ingredients on the table and the timer had started. I had to measure 450 grams of flour and I couldn't find the scale. No mug, cup or glass. Just teaspoons. Knowing that a grated teaspoon of flour weighs 5 grams, I began to calculate and carry the spoons from one dish to another under the puzzled looks of the jury. About the 70th spoonful, when my hand had already got tired, I also saw the scale. I measured the last hundred grams with the spoon, out of anger.

(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.