Baloney

Iulia Stavre
He was a successful model settled in Paris. He came back to the country for an event. He refuse to stay at the Marriott. He slept among memories, at her grandparents' place, in an apartment in Drumul Taberei neighbourhood. Now he was waiting to board. In the checked suitcase, his grandmother had packed, well-wrapped, in an airtight box, a piece of baloney. When he arrives in Paris, he will buy a warm baguette from the corner store, a bottle of wine, and some Camembert. He will invite Jeanette to dinner, and who knows, maybe he will even propose to her.

Nicolae Popescu
It was the lunch break. Ion cuts thin, green slices: Hey, from today we're eating organic. Nina made a chicken roulade with what we planted behind the house. She winks at them. All three eat and feel like flying. Gelu says, What did you put in the roulade? You look so good, like you have all your teeth in your mouth. Forget that; have you heard of something new, AI? They say you click and the tiles jump off the walls? Dude, we'll be the first bricklayers to work remotely. Vasi's eyes widen: By then, won't the boss have called us to work today? Shut up, live your dream; I gave him an organic slice too.

Aurelian Țolescu
I taught the little girl to eat baloney, even though she initially didn't like it. She was small, and I would tell her stories about adventures that ended with warm bread and baloney, laid out on newspaper and eaten together, however we could grab it. It became a habit for me to bring home a hot loaf of bread and 250 grams of baloney every Sunday evening. We loved to eat it, just the two of us, enjoying ourselves, laughing, and I would tell her my little tales. Now I can't eat baloney alone because it lacks flavour and taste without her, and the bread would cool down in tears.

(Translated by Alexandra-Ecaterina Sandu / 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.