Two Women

Magdalena Aldea
One was following the rules without blinking, while the other was building walls to climb and jump on by herself. One kept pulling down her blouse to cover her thighs, while the other folded the elastic of her skirt three times to match her thighs with the generous neckline. One embraced children and saw the sky in their eyes, while the other found passion in every dance, every touch. One lived during the day, while the other knew she could only live this way at night. They were two women, although sometimes it seemed like there were tens, hundreds of them dancing under the same umbrella.

Ana Maria Dobre-Nir
In front of the mirror, Luna was fixing her hair. She liked the new shade of red. It was stormy outside. It was thundering, and she flinched at every bang. It might have been lightning when the lights went out. One thing is certain, she was scared. And then she lit the candle. She continued to look at herself. But it seemed like she was no longer the one she was looking at. Or she was and she wasn't. The woman in the mirror had sad eyes. Laugh, she yelled. Tears started flowing from the woman's eyes. Luna began to laugh hysterically. When the mirror started to swallow her, she was still laughing.

Neti Niculae
The beach stretched as far as the eye could see, but mine had stopped at his abdomen and pectorals. They gleamed in the sun like the sand that was beginning to burn me. I engaged in a conversation with him, not sure what pretext revealed his perfect teeth. I found courage, almost convinced that I had ensured a continuance. He seemed more and more interested, although I couldn't see exactly what he was looking at beyond his glasses. Surely it was my breasts. The fever heat wasn't long in coming, and the question hit me like a merciless wave: Is your mother single?

(Translated by Claudia Garofina Greculeac / 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.