How Did I End Up Here?

Arthur Ianoși
We were coming back from tilling the fields when I saw him there, where the tracks knot together, with that look of someone fed up with loneliness, hunched over like in a final prayer to a merciless God. From a distance, the sound of a train grinding the metal underneath could be heard. I ran over, grabbed him by the collar of his shirt, and yanked him hard to take him out to the fields, beyond the tracks, to convince him that life is worth living, even when you're teetering on the edge of chaos and faith. They arrested me for not letting him do his thing. He was just the signaller. I wonder where the train end up?

Elena Fermuș
He was trembling. When the curtain rose, he would ask for forgiveness, in front of everyone. He had humiliated her. That stupid bet, her expression when she noticed his smirk of a false victory - they would gnawn at his guts. His heart beat differently. He had fallen in love. But she never appeared again after the curtain fell, not even at the next shows. She had evaporated; no one knew where. At that moment, he swore she wouldn't stop looking for her, that he would find her even in a snake's hole. And he did. After years and years. With the reptile coiled around her legs, she was weaving a shawl from thin threads of illusion.

Carmen Ecaterina Ciobâcă
I asked you. You pretended not to hear, then told me to leave you the hell alone. I probably said something stupid; I don't like it when you shout, pull that little bottle out of the cupboard, pour a glass, and cry your eyes out with the head on the table. So, I never asked that again. Now I've locked myself in my room and I'm stuffing my fingers in my ears. Bubble, bubble, the kids yell under the balcony. That's what they've called me since you loudly told dad that if his little balloon hadn't popped, there wouldn't be an extra mouth at the table. I preferred to believe that a stork brought me.

(Translated by Marian-Cătălin Niculăescu / University of Bucharest, Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures, MTTLC, year II / 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.