The Bell Rings

Cristina Daniela Dumitru-Pascal
She heard the bell ringing. She went to the bedroom. What's going on dad, what happened? She looked him straight in the eye. He could talk only with his eyes. Have you wet yourself? That's alright. I'll change you right now. And so she started wiping every inch of that beloved man of about 100 kilos. She took care of him on her own. Sometimes she felt like she had grown tired. She woke up joyfully, she had slept unturned, he must have done it too since he hadn't called for her. She made him coffee and brought it to him laughing. She saw one tear hanging by one tip of his moustache, like a globe in a thin fir tree. It was cold. In the room. She put the bell in his hand. Please, dad, just ring for me.

Gabriel Rusu
The real nerves started after my baccalaureate. My GPA, good enough to provide me with a spot at the university, but not good enough to secure me a bed on campus, had really troubled my mother. It was almost impossible for her to pay two rents, in two different cities. The opening of the academic year had found us on a platform at the train station, with no prospects whatsoever. We couldn't find that damn bed. God willing, like she always says, she managed to find me a spot at a dormitory, then, after the ceremony, I kissed her hand. I'll stop here. I can feel the tears welling up in my eyes.

Ana-Maria Butuza
Ring this bell whenever you need me, I told him. At first, for fear he might be bothering me, he endured the pain in silence. Then, he started ringing for me more and more often. I was exhausted and often times I blamed myself for these thoughts that haunted me. The last ring of the bell occured late one night. The light in his eyes had faded. He pointed to the prayer book and I understood what he meant. I read to him until the very end, and instead of a penny, I put a bell in his chest pocket. Ever since then, every night on September 13th, a brief noise wakes me from my sleep.

(Translated by Diana Gabriela Radu / 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.