Skull

Titela Durnea
There was quite a commotion ever since Father Ifrim riled up the whole village against Petre after hearing the awful news. How could he not bury her in the graveyard? With incense and the censer? But Petre refused, and that was that. He stood up to the priest. He took her under the walnut tree in the garden they had both worked on, as long as the Lord had granted them together. He wrapped her in the embroidered scarf his mother had made. He stroked her strong cheekbones and her round, youthful forehead for the last time. And then he laid her down next to her dear ones, Turcuț and Copila. So what if he didn't ring the bell? Let the sound of it beat in his heart.

Bogdan Mihai Bati
Bones. She asked for them and received them. She carefully arranged them, starting with the feet. Flesh. She rolled it over the bones with a rolling pin. Skin. Then came the skin, and she pulled it over, like a jumpsuit. Give me the neck and skull. She received them and placed them carefully. She shoved a neuron into the skull, covering it with a bit of flesh and skin. She proudly gazed at her creation. The perfect individual. She looked at her husband. See? I can do it. She ripped a rib from the body and created its pair. Imperfections. See, husband? It's perfect. It just has to resemble us. Nothing more.

Ramona Ungureanu
It was as if I were small, wrapped in a diaper made of leaves, sucking from the earth's teat, and the milk would gush out, black as coal. And I was hungry for words, saying, Give me, mother, knowledge and light, sucking greedily, as if all the hunger of the earth depended on it, and through me, everyone drank, knowingly or unknowingly, waking up full. And when I lifted my gaze to the face of mother earth, her eye sockets were empty, and she began to die beautifully, from head to toe. It was a beautiful death, with snowdrops in her eye sockets.

(Translated by Carmen Badea / 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.