Dracula

Andra Toropoc
I was a guide in some house from Sighișoara and later in the afternoon a very excited group dropped by. They tried on the armours, took photos with the stuffed bats, drank bloody mary and almost fought over a sit in the coffin-like bed. They had tired me out, I was hungry, purple eyebags painting my face, therefore I proposed a game to them. They would have to roll on the floors of the room at midnight to scare off the bad spirits with the creaking, I explained to them. When the grandfather clock struck midnight, the babel in the house started and in its refuge I myself had dinner.

Lucian Pătru
The denim jacket was constantly rustling, brushing against the walls of the coffin. You can hear the crickets, to hell with them, Dracula thought, horizontally, as if he had been positioned with a level, with eyebags as big as the Milky Way. And these fireflies are moving their butts back and forth. Is light really what I need now? As if I hadn't had a disaster of a night. Let's see what ya'll be doin' now, without your wings, you naughty fireflies. I'm dying to drop off. See, I have the Raid close, he said, feeling for it with his nails. I have it. He closed his eyes and turned to his side, counting some drops dripping from the IV.

Alina Ilie
Tick-tack-tick and in a second, I am already at her neck, she smells raw. The rhythm of her pulse unravels me in a savage dance which makes my inert heart leap, waking it up after hundreds of years. The howling is scratching me, but the taste is too sweet to be able to stop myself, I fill up my being with her, I inhale her boiled blood. Tiiiick. Quiet, I move my fangs to her pale mouth, without breath and I try a kiss, nooo, stay a bit longer, don't go. I suck in air and give it to her; weakly she coughs and looks at me with the horror of facing death. I step back a little, then I take her last drop as well.

(Translated by Ana Maria Mitruș / 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.