03.12.2024

Oana Brumă
During her high school years, all she wanted to do was to escape the small town near the border where everybody knew her. As far as possible from her parents and into the metropolis of all possibilities. She got accepted into college with the best grades and shared a dorm with many cockroaches. She was eating at the cafeteria and was washing her clothes over at some strangers, engineering students. She studied tirelessly, got the job she wanted, bought a house, married, and had children. Now she runs erratically through the city and sometimes when she lies down, she wishes to exchange the city dream with some countryside peace. But turmoil is addictive.

Răzvan Drăgoi
  The terrorist association Little Pranksters, supported by parents and the kindergarten teacher, is behind some terrible attacks with semolina, chocolate milk and marmalade that caused panic throughout the city. Women particularly are angry with the assault that these fabric enemies launched on clothes, stained literally with anything. Dacii și Oltcitzii Liberi[1] metropolitan organization brought some natural questions. Are the Americans behind this? Or maybe the vaccine or 5G internet? They came to the conclusion that it is true.


[1] It is a play on words that reffers to the Dacians and the persons originating or living in Oltenia, but also to the Romanian Dacia and Oltcit cars.

Nicolae Popescu
Dear fellow villagers, dear relatives and friends who are hiăr, first of all, today we celebrate two important things: starting today, our village is offcially a comună[1], and mai bradăr has succeeded. I quote directly from WhatsApp: I've ărraivd at the station in Miunchen. Miunhen, Mr. Mayor, his cousin Ionică, his right-hand man, corrected him. Mayor Ilie wiped his sweaty forehead. Now that we fraternize with this Miunchen, I say we should have conditions like on Germany. Florica, my wife, let's start that auction with three thousand euros for every street lighting neon.


[1] Comună = A basic administrative-economic unit made up of one or more villages and headed by a mayor.

(Translated by Miruna Dumitru / 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, Monica Aldea, 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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