Three Kilometres to the End of the World

Francesca Dorobanțu
That's how it should be, to be seen by the sun because that's the tradition around here. I was looking in disbelief at the rusty trailer, then at my sisters and grandparents. I wanted to scream; it felt to me like the biggest humiliation served as the crowning of a life that contained everything except happiness. I remained silent. My grandfather, a stoic man at 76, made of skin and muscles with cartilage worn down to the bone held my mother's open coffin. He will carry it for the last 3 kilometers to the grave where everything will end: my adolescence, his old age and a world where Sundays spent in family existed.

Daniel Popa
How much longer? Not much. Why can't I say where we're going? Because Fus will be very hard to control. We will talk in code. Like when you told me that we were going to the movie and you took me to the doctor? Yes. So, being an adult means to lie? Among other things, yes. So why is it bad when I lie then? Because if you lie about something hurting when it actually doesn't it's not good. Okay, then, how many kilometres left to the end of the world? I stopped the car and looked at her proudly. Fus was barking and jumping from one seat to another. He had seen the sea.

Monica Ciurea
Three years of war. I have reached the end. I descend from Hell greasy,deformed, gimpy. The village. A footprint in the dust and the alley becomes empty, it narrows. I search for the house all around. The gate. The Honeysuckle has overrun the garden. Poor thing, from where did she get so much strength? I push the door faintly against the wall. In the dust of the ray, no one. Did she sense me? Such a long waythrough which I was mixing in my mind the same moment. The same face. From a corner, a silhouette. Mom, is that you? Mom I am as well, but of another. Get out on the road, child, and keep on Heavy Hill for three kilometers. A cross is your end of the world.

(Translated by Ioana Bobeanu / 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.