Picture of the Year

Iulia Anastasia Roșca
He's there with the two of us at the beach. You're grabbing my waist, just how I like it. I'm happy, showing off my engagement ring to everyone. Only the background is edited. And, well, it was my ex in the original photo, the one who could afford to buy me a damn ring, unlike you, broke ass. You should be grateful I pasted your head over his. I posted it everywhere. Dozens of calls from you, but I won't answer; I'm not stupid. Then one angry text saying that, apparently, the current girlfriend saw it, and now she is huffy. Now, whose fault is it that the current one was my best friend?

Caterina Tudorache
So who's coming today? What do you mean? I said we're done with the needy for a day. And the food. What do we have? Good. How many of us are there? They say it's better to have an odd number for diversity, so I suggest we bring a woman too. I'd like to bring my mom. Make sure we all wear complementary colours; I don't want anyone dressed the same. I'll sit in the middle, my mom next to me, and you'll pretend to chat in groups of three. What do you mean there are 12 of us? Isn't anyone left back in the village? Well, it is what it is. Bring Judas. But put him in the corner; I don't want to see him at Supper.

George Dometi
The Earth calls us with its unquenchable lament. Let's cease the struggle of living. In our minds lies the den of the vipers that bite and deceive us with the poison of happiness. I looked through the lens at the face I believed was joyful. His parents had died, and he was to live as an orphan. Don't judge the face by the grimace of ordinary deceit; in silence, it deafens even more. I'm not trying to touch the metaphorical ocean stained with meaning; I want to perform a transfusion of words with the pain that has tormented me since birth.

(Translated by Bogdan Macarie / 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.