Bronze

Daniela Rusu
Why you not covering your boobs? Ptooey, the tramp you are, and she spat on her foot. Her jet-black eyes were burning like a forest on fire. That's it, today I kill her. Show me your palm. C'mon, let me read when you'll kill me. He was grinding his teeth really hard out of spite. She is so young. I won't leave my gypsy camp for you, Fănică. I'm not into your good'old gold. He went crazy. He took her by the neck, slammed her into the field of poppy, made love to her while she was squirming like a bird trapped in a cage for the first time. You don't want me, huh? His hand kept pushing onto her neck, until she stopped squirming. At all? Woman!

Caterina Tudorache
Boss, you must really do something. My woman wants diamonds. She's tired of wearing bones and poorly-made things. She wants us to invent the bronze, ceramics and to create the premises of the development of our species. The boss looked directly at the drawings in the cave. But we haven't even invented iron yet. What do we tell those who will try to figure out how human kind evolved? That we did whatever crossed our minds? Wouldn't it be better if we fed your wife to that wolf we were trying to tame? You can get a new one. A modest one who doesn't not pressure us into changing history.

Gabriel Rusu
Ciobi dear, the first brandy still was invented in Dacia. When Attila's hoards arrived on our territory, you had no idea what plums are used for. The original texts mention that you used them as ammunition for slings. We were chemists back then, man. We knew exactly how many molecules of marc to pour, how many logs of wood to add to the fire and the golden moment when the brandy had to be stirred. Stop complaining to the European commission, because we have the documents. C'mon, taste it, it's from last year.

(Translated by Cristina-Paula Grosu / 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.