Ice Cream

George Dometi
God bends over. He keeps rubbing for quite some time. The mint starts to liquefy. Then he calls for Rafa to bring him a glacial cube out of the Quaternary and starts to smash it with the hammer from the endowment. He mixes them well and while milking from the tit of abundance where the milk and honey streams through, he keeps adding little by little of each refused soul until it becomes a moisturizing cream for the taste buds. He takes an apple, empties of its contents, makes it into a cone and serves all the little angels with a divine one.

Carmen Tot
I'm telling you Chief, it's all because of that savage. Ever since she crossed the Mureș River in the village, she was dead, frozen on her horse, with her saddlebags full from the Lugoj market. Did anyone look for her or ask about her? No. Well, see? This is not a good sign. The priest did the holy service but it was for nothing, she still became a poltergeist and now it's useless to ring the bell, she's not scared of it, she can only be killed by a silver-tipped stake. So go quickly, call Sandu out so we can talk. He's the only one who knows how to put the stake through her heart. May the devil take her from here.

Dorin Vasile
 I met him in the park. We were playing chess. He was so absorbed that he forgot he had an ice cream in his hand. He rested his chin on the palm of his hand. It was pretty warm and the ice cream was dripping down his forearm. He didn't seem to notice the little puddle forming under his elbow. He didn't even move when the flies were buzzing around. Or when an unreal bird pecked at his cone. The melted ice cream flowed down. Passer-by were slipping, the drivers were stopping and honked for no reason. But it smelled nice. Of something. I waved my hands in front of his face. Nothing. It was as if he was suspended between earth and sky. I told him. Make your move.  

(Translated by Maria-Ilinca Darie / 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.