Baloney

David Brescan
He layed his coat next to the spring and sat on it, propping himself on his elbow. He took an old newspaper out of the plastic bag, on which he layed a short knife, a boiled egg, a green onion, a loaf of bread, two juicy tomatoes, a slice of cheese and one of baloney. He peeled the egg and cut the baloney into four slices. He crossed himself, threw a slice to his dog and took a greedy bite from a tomato. He ate leisurely and quenched his thirst straight from the spring. He lit up a Snagov cigarette and looked up to the clear sky. According to the sun, there were four hours left until he arrived with the sheep in the village.

Ana-Maria Butuza
When you are poor, PET beer can replace the best Armand de Brignac champagne. The baloney can replace the tastiest Steak tartar. What the hell, he never tasted them, neither does he dream of ever doing so, and it is not even important, but the taste of the meat when you first fall in love has to be the same for everyone, as well for the poor as for the rich. He smiled bitterly at the thoughts which had been nagging him since he first met her, he paid the ring with only one zirconium stone and went out on the crowded street. He could hardly breathe waiting for their first night.

Laura Bercean
There's a book from my childhood with Bibbidi Bobbidi Bang from which I learned from a mischievous tomcat that when you eat baloney, you have to lay it on your tongue to feel everything; meaning you place the slice of baloney on the slice of bread spread with butter and a little Tecuci mustard, and then, when you are about to take a bite, you flip the slice so that your tongue directly touches the pink slice. When I tried, the slice fell on the ground, because I am not a tomcat, but I learned from the same book that the little humans who take care of the house clean everything during the night, so I blew the dust off the slice and chomped it down.

(Translated by Carmen Badea / 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.