Who Put the Tavern on the Road

Laura Stanciu
 I haven't witnessed a Bookfest as successful as the one this spring ever since I've started working at Romexpo. The highest turnover yet, brother. Thousands of people bustled around here almost every day. They might have skimmed through books at the stands, but they bought them, too. They were carrying bags as though they had been to the market. Those people have money. Time to read, of that I'm not so sure, but it worked out for the publishing houses. Why, we made more profit than at Gaudeamus. The heat might have helped, I'm not saying it didn't. They would come out, all tired, and we had our garden right across the entrance. Cold beer, minced meat rolls on the barbecue.

George Dometi
The old man drags the coffin. He places the shovel against the wooden fence. Eh, I've finished this one too. Where should I put him? Would you look at that, what is that? Right here, in the middle of the cemetery. What's it say? Free drinks if you're sad. Well butter my butt and call me a biscuit! Phew, what filth, he knocks on wood, goes in and drinks. A good fir tree, a pit of planks in the light of a night huddled in on itself. Bloody hell, I'm a poet, too. I'll just drink another glass and then I'll finish digging the hole. But he greeted daybreak lying in the hole he'd freshly dug.

Monica Ciurea
 Who, you ask? I, father of all the tears that fell from my sensitive eyes, I, whose soul wept that we'll die, man, and this life will go up in smoke, a life in which I woke up like a proper man in the morning to go to work, but who stood in the way? My wife, man, whose nagging I can't escape even in the pub: for no other reason but to knock me down, asking me why I drink, telling me I have kids at home, crying on an empty stomach. And then I knock it back, the glass, that is, I don't knock her down because I'm a sensitive guy and care for her. Pour one more shot, man, we have one and only one life to drink away!

(Translated by Alina-Alexandra Șovar / 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.