Curly-haired Puppy

Caterina Tudorache
What do you mean they don't have ducks? Have you tried over there? Have you been to Auntie Geta? Mom, I don't care. You won't come home without a duck. Have you tried to the plastics? Maybe they have some of those you put in the garden. Yeah, they look like they're alive. What do you mean, to eat it afterwards? Get a henhouse. Mimi, shut up. Do you have something to say too? Let's call it a day. After we sing Happy Birthday to Sofi, I'll let you out. When we tell you, you get in the henhouse and run away with the duck. That's what Sofi wanted for her birthday. The puppy tries to wag its tail with curlers and falls back asleep.

Eusebiu Cristian Toma
I haven't stolen any damn duck, sir. That miserable cat framed me up. So what if you caught me with the duck in my mouth? It was the poultry week at Lidl and I took advantage of the offers. For real now. It's infamous. I'm as pure as a virgin's tear and I'm ready to swear to you, paw on bone if I have to. What was I doing in the henhouse if I wasn't going to steal anything? I went on a City Break, 'cause I never got out of that cage to see the world. Others in this country pinch cows and horses, but you think I'm the one to blame.

Dan Banu
On Mătăsari Street, number 17, there was a house with three floors and ivy at the windows. On the ground floor lived Mrs. Lombardi with the poodle Mrs. Steriade gave to her. Since her husband had left her, she no longer lived on the second floor, but moved to the first floor with Mr. Lebovitz, the owner. Every evening the first floor was filled with muffled, red moans and the ground floor with pink balloons bearing Mr Lebovitz's face, while the uninhabited second floor was haunted by blue ghosts. One day the poodle brought up a bone. It turned out to be a man's bone.

(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 June 2024, the group has 13,100 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.