Clean Air

Carmen-Ecaterina Ciobâcă
She was like a second mother to us. She bathed us, put food in our bowls, and at night, she told us stories. She probably made them up while walking with the cows up and down the hills. That's why I missed her so much after she left with dad in the cart to the city. Because she was suffocating, they injected her with some big syringes to drain the water from her lungs. It wasn't good that she slept in the grove on the damp ground, they told dad. Now she's in another cart, dressed in a bride's gown. Don't cry, Zenovia, you still have so many children to raise, a neighbour comforts my mother.

Laura Stanciu
I felt better a few months ago. It's true that I thought I was in heaven. I was either dozing off or sleeping deeply. I was always full. I had the impression that someone was stroking my back or the top of my head. It felt like they were tickling me or kissing my belly button. Sometimes I would hear music or voices that were soothing me. You understand, it was probably the same for you. Only, somehow, I did a few flips, got tangled up, got scared, like I had a rope around my neck. When I came to my senses, the doctor told my mother: Do you hear him? He's alive.

Florina Hegedüs
We, the ones infected with the literary virus, were locked up. Underground. Strictly assigned, in subterranean levels. We explored them all. Discreetly. Through the ventilation system. What I noticed everywhere was that words were being pounded endlessly. Until they became soft and humble. Probably that's the only way they could be chewed. It seemed like an outdated practice. Lacking imagination. I was suffocating. So, sorry, I slipped a bean into the wall. On the vine that grew, I escaped, high above the clouds. You might think it's fiction. It might be, but the air is ozone-rich.


(Translated by Claudia Garofina Greculeac / 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.