Hopless, Oblivious People and Their Journals

Ștefan-Andrei Scînteie
There were two times when I forgot to pick up my child, once from kindergarten, another time from school. It was brought up in the divorce papers, and that's when I forgot about her, too, even if I had already forgotten how terribly she cheated on me. She probably had memory issues herself; maybe she'd forgotten. Ten years of marriage vanished from my mind in an instant. Yes, I forget, and it's good that I forget; it's the only way I can forgive. But I can't forget when I love, when I kiss with passion, the warm hugs of my loved ones. I forget birthdays, but I don't forget to give. Maybe I'm broken, I forget selectively, and if you somehow manage to understand me, maybe I'd never forget you.

Alina Ilie
For millennia, I've changed bodies. I go through similar experiences over and over again. I fail to learn my lessons, to move on toward eternal light. I've become a hunched soul, burdened by the weight of hundreds of lives, yet I remember nothing. If only I could come, just once, with the wisdom of a past life-maybe I'd make it. To know what I need to do, to stop making mistakes and living in constant regret. To love and be loved in return. To have a simple, peaceful life. To have no hardships, no endless thoughts. To take care of my soul first.

Arthur Ianoși
I've waited for you, you know. Patience is a virtue, my friend. This way, you've avoided a hundred years of sadness. Not to mention, I've stayed within my academic quarter, you can't rush perfection. Have I come? You've come. I'll make you forget anyway, and you'll forgive me. For example, do you remember that ninety-nine years ago I waited for you at the exact same table, in Balzac's mind? That guy drank forty coffees that day. And just like that, Waiting and Forgetting had their first argument in the mind of the young writer who didn't know what he was looking for.

(Translated by Alexandra-Ecaterina Sandu / 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 November 2024, the group has 13,480 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.