With Short Pants

Răzvan Dițescu
Everything hurt. She entered the room wobbling. She took off her long short and the baggy pants. She went to the bathroom and began to peel off the hijab from her greasy hair. She carefully cleaned the wound inflicted by the morality police. She returned to the room, picked up the magazine from under the bed, and flipped through it for the thousandth time. Before the Islamic Revolution, women could wear anything. She just had to hold on for one more week. She would leave for Romania to study medicine. There, it's not a crime to have your head uncovered in the street. And she would wear shorts.

Oana Brumă
06:45 AM. Darn it! I've turned off the alarm again. I rush, still dazed, to the bathroom, I mumble a prayer, and then I raid into the kitchen. I prepare them smoothies and run to wake them up. They don't want to get up, I pull their legs: come on, time to brush your teeth! Get the uniforms out, make sandwiches, and put the backpacks by the door. Round two: arguing over dresses, over choosing braids or hair back like princesses. Off to the garage, I put her in the little chair and pedal like mad toward the kindergarten. Come on, kisses for you, my love. Mommy, mommy, look, you left home in your pyjamas. Oh dear, well, let's just call them short pants, okay?

Horațiu Dudău
The body was in a quite comical position, considering t. Yes. Wait a second. The body was. I'm coming, I just told you that I'm trying to write. As if it wanted to take off running with its eyes closed. I don't know where they are, you look for them, you're old enough. Ants seemed to be holding it on their shoulders, to look for. Damn it, kid, I'll find them and throw them out the window. The last time, the sunrise from the sea. I can't believe you're sitting there in a t-shirt with no pants on. What sea? He died at the mountains. I found your shorts, damn them!

(Translated by Laura-Monica Doroiman / University of Bucharest, Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures, MTTLC, year I / 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 October 2024, the group has 13,400 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.