On the Crosswalk

Cecilia Fofiu
My grandma's basement dug in the ground is always locked. Today, as if by magic, it wasn't. I tiptoe carefully on the plank passageway. Shelves filled with apples, boxes of potatoes, cabbages and three big barrels. Standing on my toes, I take a look inside one of them. The light outside the window shines over the black contents of the barrel and unveils some sort of twisted devilish figure. I instantly turn tail, but I come back once I have calmed down. Now I can see it more clearly, it looks at me scared. I dart away again, but curiosity is killing me and I return. I stare at it, it stares back at me, I put out my tongue, it puts out its tongue, and there I recognize myself.

Siranuș Hakobian
Years have passed until I got rid of washing my hands. Obviously, people wash their hands, but few do it as I do. I could wash my hands for hours, up until total decontamination. But finally I got lucky and I got over my compulsive handwashing, and now I'm perfectly healthy: I can leave the house by myself, I can even cross the street. I do it with care, without touching the grey asphalt, as only the white lines are trustworthy. Sometimes I cross the street twice, just to be sure I do it without flaw: I must only step on the white.

Narcis Moraru
Peter crosses his eyes to ask for the scalpel, he carefully removes the inflamed appendix, after which he cautiously stitches the surgery wound. He takes a quick look at his watch. In an hour he has to cross by the party Olguța had organized a month ago. He rushes out of the hospital with his coat in his hand and jumps in his car. I have time. At around nine he finds a parking lot a few streets away. He sees the blinking green light from afar. I can do it. On the crosswalk he has a feeling he had forgotten something. Oh, God, the scalpel.

(Translated by Laurențiu-Gabriel Niculae / University of Bucharest, Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures, MTTLC, year II / 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, Monica Aldea, and Vlad Mușat. (Drawing by Adrian T. Roman)

Versiunea în română a acestui text se poate citi aici, în rubrica Ficțiuni Reale.