My Uncle

Elena Fermuș
Forgive me, Bulgăraș. That's all it was, two words, and that was written. If he'd told me, I'd have stopped him for sure. It's late. Forgiveness didn't take away the pain. The best man in the world is gone. I used to call him Chichi, that's what I used to say to my uncle when I was little, and that's how it stayed. He called me Bulgăraș. He had no children and chose me to fill the void in him. He was wonderful. With him I reached the top of the mountain and swayed on the wave of the sea. He used to tell me that if life is music, I should sing it, and if it's a fight, I should fight it. He gave up. I didn't.

Monica Aldea
In the village, they called him the uncle. Some said he was a local, others knew him as a outsider. Children followed him down the alleys. He used to hand out sweets and pretzels. He'd appear when you didn't expect it, like out of the ground. And so he disappeared. How many times they accused him - either of knowing the language of beasts or of being a wizard. When the village was flooded and the floods were raging, he prayed to heaven and God forgave him. Then they never saw him again. On the Armindeni[1], when the waters receded, his body came to the surface.
Caterina Tudorache
The dormouse received the invitation in a golden envelope. Dear sir, we are informing, you and a member of your family. Thoughts and through ran through the narrow carcass of the little brain. Aha. Family. He looks towards the nutcracker mother cradling baby number 15. Better not. What if it's with women and they can't move anything. Maybe a brother. Hm. Which one, they are 362. Maybe one of the older kids. They're stupid, and if it's with women, they'll rat me out. A light bulb went on in the hallway and on the top of his head. My friend. The dromedary. He's kind of ugly and hunchbacked, but I will say he's my uncle.

(Translated by Iulia-Mihaela Țugulea / 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.