Mission: Impossible

Adina Drag
He intends to bend over to get the watch, but he remains staring blankly. Or rather, he remains in an emptiness too full that now hangs by his fragile hippocampus. A voice screams in his head continuously, but as he does not recognize it, he continues to mind his own business which separates him from the world. I've known him since he proudly held my hand and showed me the sunrise. In my eyes, he still looked the same as he did when I was little. Strong and invincible. But through his eyes, he sees himself weak and broken, like that damned watch he can't even reach.

Bogdan Mihai Bati
Big trouble. I play the music too loud. Screams. Bass. Drums. The filth slowly drains into macabre lyrics. Thoughts begin to organize. Mutilation. Violence. Crime. All my favourite things are aligning. Suicide. The star row. I turn up the music's volume to get rid of him. I try to get a hold of myself. Mutilation. Violence. Crime. The chaos begins to make sense. The rows are valsing. They're getting mixed up. The suicide screams again above all. I stop the music and I put my head between my knees. Tears. From outside my head. Daddy, let's go and play something. Thoughts, don't go away. I'm coming back.

Vlad Mușat
In Bucharest-London plane, with work-related business. In front of me, a gentleman in his 70's, bold. Something about him caught my attention. At one point, he pulled out a crumpled paper, yellowed by time. The way I was positioned, allowed me to see everything that was written. It was the Coca-Cola recipe. I wrote it down on my phone. I was trembling, I was sure I was going to get rich. As I was getting off the plane, I felt someone slip something into my pocket. It was the crumpled paper. On the back, a message informing me that I would be the only one who would know the recipe.

(Translated by Eliza Radu / 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 August 2024, the group has 13,230 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.