After We Met

Iulia Biro
We were sitting on the carpet, side by side, and we were just feeling each other's presence. When our breathing had started to calm down, the sound of the rain which started yesterday filled the room. Do you think that they heard us from over there? you asked. I could feel a smile growing on your face while you said that. They for sure heard me, I said. You turned towards me. You traced my mouth with your index finger. I have always liked your voice, you whispered to me, now I know that it was made for moaning. I laughed and stretched, it felt good. Sweaty, my skin was glistening and you glued your mouth to it as if it were the surface of a water.

Ana Maria Dobre-Nir
When I felt it for the very first time, I was about three years old and I was crying in a corner of the house, hearing my parents fighting. It felt like a voice which came from nowhere. It was odd that I was not afraid. I hadn't named it anything, but I thought that perhaps it was an elf. It followed me everywhere. Sometimes I even felt his breath. For example, at ten years old, I woke up scared from a nightmare and it was there. I saw it. It was huddled next to my bed. It was muttering an incantation. It never truly disappeared.

Cecilia Fofiu
My life went downhill after we met. A voluptuous beauty, with fine curves, clean skin, elegant. I fell head over heels. Of course, I introduced her to my parents. Fiasco. My mother thinks she's luxurious and my father that she's way too fancy. My neighbour, Georgel, who I sometimes have a beer with, thinks she's way too good for me, and that I should back down. The godfather didn't even want to hear anything about her and he made me leave immediately, and my colleagues give me ironic looks. But I'm crazy over her, I want her, I won't back down under any circumstances. Jealousy is a disease, I'll take out a mortgage on the studio apartment.

(Translated by Cristina-Paula Grosu / 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.