Baloney

Cristian Nedelcu
The boss was staring into a magazine while we were working like slaves. He left it on his desk and rushed to the toilet. After the groans, I figured he was constipated. Hey, guys, let's eat, Vasilică came back from shopping. We've got cheese, onions, wine, and baloney. I tore a page from the middle of the magazine, laid it out as a tablecloth, and we started eating. Oh, Paris Match, said the Vietnamese guy who had just joined the team. It's pronounced parizer[1], you fool, Dorel, our bricklayer, replied. What do you expect, huh? Just a bunch of peasants, Uncle Gogu concluded.
Vlad Mușat
As I was encouraging him, he was smiling at me. Vlad, there's no point, I know what's gonna happen to me. Still, I want you to do something for me. Because he had lost so much weight and his hair had fallen out, his eyes seemed almost to pop out of their sockets. He could barely speak, a sign that the illness was forcing him to use a limited number of words. My friend, grab a sports newspaper from the stand, then stop by the supermarket and buy that Kobe beef just like when we were students. Oh, and don't forget the horseradish mustard. I want to feel, once again, like a young man with future plans.

Alina Ilie
Words starting with b bring happiness. A good burgomaster, for example. If you eat bullfrog, baloney or bread, take your beloved and your little ones by hand and go vote, that is your superpower for today. Your opinion matters. When you use the voting stamp, you matter. Your friends, parents, all of them should be persuaded. Our sacred country needs determined people, who know how to decide. That is how we progress. That is how we know we are going to succeed, partners bonded for the big change. Moreover, I love bears and I adore bacon with broccoli and bhocolate.

(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.