01.11.2024

Alex Caragian
They say you can't choose your family. It's false. I bought my uncle for half price at the grocery store. His name's Natasha and he's got curly hair on his chest. He graduated the college for uncles, he's pedigreed; unlike us, he comes from a good family. When we go out with him on Saturday mornings in the flea market, he breaks around five old ladies' hearts and women leave their husbands. He barks in five international languages and two that are gone underwater. He gets drunk at parties like any respectable uncle and shriek with laughter at his own embarrassing jokes.

 Ana Maria Dobre-Nir
The first one to throw the stone was his own uncle. He hit him in the lip. Next were the others, either with stones or eggs. It wasn't yet proven that he was the murderer, but when this village got hold of an idea, there was no way out. In the morning, a family passed by him with a eight years old child. Mother said that he was an alcoholic, as she had heard in the market, but father, that he would be mad as a raving mad. The child looked at him raddled just like he used to look at the dissected frog in biology class.

Titela Durnea
Come and meet Radu, my cousin, I can hear my mother. I was five years old and the world used to fit into a coloured balloon and a chocolate. He gave me no choice, I loved him perched on his strong shoulders. At 14, I was staring at my slovenly legs and hated them. Love had risen, hiding shyly behind the round glasses. Unexpectedly, my corolla opened up, turning colour under Radu's eyes, who started to rest differently on the petals. The first and last kiss came with longing and a vow: that in the after life we would meet in time.

(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.

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