Indiscreet

Elena Fermuș
Mommy, and if I \'ay all the poem, Santa'll come at kinde'ga'ten too? Like that, dlessed in led? I'm so \'appy! Mom, back in your day, when you were 14, did you still have to get your ID card? What colour should I choose for my dress for the eighteenth birthday party? And when you feel butterflies in your stomach, do you really grow wings? Do you think this wedding dress fits me? How do you repair the mayonnaise if it breaks? Oh, mom, my baby girl has colic and she can't stop crying, what should I do? Your granddaughter looks just like me with the veil on her head, doesn't she? Why are you silent? Why do mothers become angels when their hair turn gray?

Titela Durnea
At the beginning he was a blessing for the village. He was supportive, dutiful, kind-hearted and always ready to help. They would cross the threshold with heavy hearts. They'd unwrap it like a dirty rag. Then they would go out into the world, as light and clean as infants after their first shower. After a while, wild rumours started spreading on the lane. The villagers stared at Ionică, or at Petre's older daughter, or at Simina and Viorel. Shame made many people lock themselves in their houses. In the now empty church kliros, the bored priestess knitted stockings.

Florina Hegedüs
He's a man of notoriety and it's really hard for me to find out things, the media has dug deep. But still, there has to be something, something I could catch him with off guard. I moved into the building across the street, and it feels like he defies me. His window doesn't have a curtain. I can peek in anytime. Many high heels wander around at his place, the red ones disappear. How? That's why I am here. A note slips under the door into the middle of the room. I know you are following me, be cautious, otherwise I'll kill you in the next novel. I hand the case over and dye my hair brown.

(Translated by Irina Vild / 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 September 2024, the group has 13,320 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.