Three Kilometres to the End of the World

Denisse Oana Rădoi
I open Google Maps and add the destination: the end of the world. The backpack is ready, I put my shoes on and start the journey. Ever since I was in university, I've been dreaming of doing this, off cutting all ties and starting over in a new place. It will be just me and the blue sky, and I will be happy. I walk for days on end and at night I rest with my eyes fixed on the stars. Weeks and months pass, it's been raining and there have been storms and I enjoy every sunrise and every sunset. After 20 years of relentless walking, I arrive to the destination. I look around, I am alone. I feel sad. I think I went the wrong way.

Horațiu Dudău
The ailing road swallowed me as if I am some medicine taken in a rush. I am driving over the limit, with large chunks of tangled kilometres imprinted on my retina. The dashboard, full of lights, seems to me an intensive care machine that is keeping me alive artificially. On the side of the road, animals lie crushed by ruthless wheels connected to the gangrenous feet of the drivers rushing to arrive nowhere in particular a minute earlier. I enter the data into the GPS and see that I have three kilometres left to the end of the world. It's strange that you chose to live there.

Claudia Ene
I told him that I had to be the first to die. And I asked him to bury me somewhere far away. At the end of the world and then three kilometres beyond. Somewhere where he wouldn't return on Christmas with flowers and tears. And then to bury me in his mind as well, at the end of it and another three kilometres beyond that. Somewhere where he won't find me again: to forget my face, my name too. As this is the only way to bear with the death of a loved one. You take them somewhere far away and you forget where you left them. Only in the morning, when you wake up, not to know why it's so quiet. And then you move on.

(Translated by Adina-Lorena Dulamă / 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 July 2024, the group has 13,200 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.