Overpopulation

Iulia Biro
There are definitely too many of us in the group. When it comes to new themes for discussion, we can't even hear one another since long ago; it's just turmoil around here. When someone we know seems to be talking, we clap for him out of reflex, even though we can't hear him nor do we have the time to listen to everyone. A service for another service, of course. I am trying to picture faces but all that it's shown to me is a mass of eyes, ears, noses, hands. So, I ask you: is it good to be this many? Ah, member no 12345, I saw that you weren't clapping. Do you have something against me? And what if you haven't heard what I was saying?

Adriana Patroi Miu
Excess of words scribbled on a lifeless social network where avatars say they love each other, know each other, need each other. They unfold their souls until the keyboard becomes a field of poppies and the walls chains of ever flowing sunsets every night. And autumn slowly sets at the window between leaves and trees, calling them outside: there is no love for the ones who are not in love, she would wish to tell them. When they meet, only the silence of the moment, a moment of authentic connection remains. Then everything goes back to normal.

Florina Hegedüs
I am spinning galactically with my eyes closed in my ashy-gold foam dress. I get dizzy, so I stop, opening my eyes just to see somethings floating next to me. I tell the stars to hush. It's almost as if I can hear these somethings' pulses; I get close, I listen. They do. They do have bumps all around as well. They also have black holes in them, leaving me shocked. These black holes absorb the somethings inside which they are embedded and divide them into infinities of nothingness. I got really, really scared. I take my stars and run into the Universe, away from the rubbles.

(Translated by Ioana Bobeanu / 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.