Freckles

Alex Caragian
I love freckles, do you have any? he asked her without losing her sight. I wish I did, now that you ask. Have you looked everywhere? he went on, as if he wasn't really there for her response, and started searching her body with his gaze. If you wish, when summer comes, I'll catch the sun on my skin; I'll catch it really well. Is that so? he replied quickly and just as absentmindedly. Yeah. Maybe I'll write about this, what would you do about it? If you write with me in mind, anything is possible. He sprinkled cinnamon on her breasts and connected the dots with his tongue: look, summer has arrived.

Carmen Tot
They stared at each other with deadly intent. They were alike: oddly constructed, the same number of heavy blocks, one within the other, matryoshkas without faces, only with a past, dressed indecisively in black or white, their intentions not correctly conveyed beyond their own selves into the world of the other. My strength left me as I watched them, indistinguishable in their struggle, and then I saw: one monster was an Israeli woman searching for her child, and the other was a little girl from the other side, climbing over the fence to retrieve her ball. The rockets ignited like stars, tearing the innocence of the sky into freckles.

Georgiana Gabriela Fodor
At the mouths of the Ister River, the ship got stuck in a trap. The twenty men searched for a solution, but nothing seemed to help. Neither the gods they invoked nor karma. As they sat thirsty under the hot sun, a young woman of dazzling beauty appeared from among the trees. Her mischievous smile, her bare gazelle-like foot, and her large, freckled eyes penetrated into their very core. They allowed themselves to be captured. The Amazons attacked the ship and took their spoils home. When they released them, the freckled sun wrote their story.

(Translated by Laurențiu-Gabriel Niculae / 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.