Overpopulation

Ioana Bostan
These people are ruining our plan. Let's wipe them out, Master. To the death, roared the horde of dark thoughts. They had allied with the pessimistic and the depressive ones on the top floor who cut their nails down to the quick. The grotesque and sadistic ones were fainting from the music that could be heard over the hedge. Master, give us your malediction so that we may inflict our worst upon them. The blooming jasmine made them retch and the joy of those on the other side gnawed at their insides. This nauseating love won't bring us down! thundered the Master, shattering into pieces. And then there was light.

Iulia Vîși
I open the oven; the pie spills over the edges of the pan. I am still not sated. At Lidl, my cart is overflowing but I still can't find my shopping list. Closets full of clothes that taught me nothing about myself. Shelves filled with books, yet there are still blank pages in my soul. My phone's memory is full but the battery is drained. So many bottles waiting to be recycled, dehydration persists. Unlimited minutes, friendships reduced to silence. In the studio apartment, people crowd in to stay the night. In the attic, there's only sweltering heat.

Bogdan Sebastian Burjan
They came down from heaven to build their own heaven, here on Earth. With clear skies and puffy clouds in the summer. With white hills in the winter. And mountain peaks piercing through the gray skies. There was harmony and you could almost see the quiet hum of harps in the background. Then came the first crime. They hated each other and only death could keep them apart. A terrible plague came upon them. They were selling their own souls, their neighbour, those who trusted them. There were so many souls up for sale that the stock market crashed. They kept selling. A large population but so few human beings.

(Translated by Bogdan Nicola / 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 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.