Magnolias

Ramona Ungureanu
I was going to meet his family, Mihai said a good word for me, yes, mom, she loves nature and she cooks great, of course she uses wild plants, yes, mom, she knows how to make pickles. There they served us stuffed cabbage rolls and after a sip of plum brandy I was more more rakish than they expected, he is not a weed because of me, I say, I don't cook only nettles and ramson, Mihai is giving me a sour look. But what a beautiful magnolia, you know flowers can be pickled, over my dead body, whispered the father-in-law. Nice people, I say to me, it's a pity they keep watch over the magnolia.

Florentina Enache
 How on earth, is this gone too? Do you see anything on the camera? No, boss, they've been hiding. How many is this one? The sixth. Let's put another one in, I've got two more in stock; if they steal it again, fuck the natural flower arrangements and throw them a plainness of recycled pipes. In the park near the mall they've put iron tulips, near Titan they've made some plastic dandelions, I'll plant here a steel magnolia smelling of welding. What if they steal this too? It's expensive too, you know, it's metal, we'd better make it out of pvc and sprinkle it with glitter. You said it!

Titela Durnea
They called three of them to reveal the thread of her life. May you have a body as svelte as a spindle and a face as beautiful as its flowers, had the first one wished to her. May you be loved by all the kingdoms of the world, had the second one wished. The third one, casting an evil eye on the others' nectar cups (as the maid had spilled hers) hissed: may your womb be as sour as the cracked earth, may your beauty soon fade and tears may cover your body. And had the princess flourished, conquering kings and kingdoms. Soon then, barren and forlorn, she covered her blackened heart with leaves.

(Translated by Florina Georgiana Țîncu / 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.