Dying Tales

Carmen Tot
After eating the overripe pear, the Bald-Man covered the well with the pear tree tended to by the old man's daughter, now cut down, he then placed the 99 stones of the story-telling louse over it. Inside the well, Harap-Alb[1] understood that the destiny of every Romanian is tragic and in three days, he resigned himself to the situation better than some would in three years, until he died. I climbed up on a saddle to finish the story, but some guy, Petre, pushed me down to the side and stole my horse and royalties. Ispirescu, Ispirescu, I yelled from behind, some chum you are. Come over to my house tomorrow, let me cook you some delicious cabbage rolls.
Camil Popescu
12^th grade, I was walking to school with my shirt untucked, one hand in my pocket, rucksack on my back and a cigarette behind my ear. The future sounded good, the three free seconds offered by Connex[1] at the beginning of the call were enough for me to tell my English teacher the time and place. Or for her to tell me. One day, during the break, the phone rang. All eyes on me. I, undying as ever, pick up: what's up, baby? Baby is in the teacher's room with your parents. I am the princip... I hung up instinctively, the three seconds were over.
Cristina Daniela Dumitru-Pascal
Dying stories are stories that never got to be written. Or last so little that the letters fade. I tried to learn to save them. Some I managed to. Others, I used indigo dye on. They were not the same as they used to be, but at least others got to read them. Some I tried copying with a photocopier. That didn't work out. You can't plagiarize souls. There were also the deleted ones. No ink could help me with those. Now I turn to my stories. They are waiting for me. I forgot to mention, I am a doctor. Pediatrician.Oncologist.

(Translated by Ioana Grințescu / 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 May 2024, the group has 13,000 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.