When Life Gives You Watermelons

Roxana Catană Tarhon
The crossword was tricky. What kind of definition is this-when life gives you watermelons, 7 letters. I tried all the variations for "annoyed." I looked in the Synonyms Dictionary, the DOOM[1], the DEX[2]; I even asked Fănel to ask the Romanian teacher. Nothing. Then, guess what-turns out it was "seed." I dreamed the correct answer last night. Now, get ready: I'm sending the solution to the magazine, and we'll win a cruise. A month under the sun, on deck chairs, sipping cocktails with straws and little umbrellas-a dream, really. Grigore, come back to earth; it's an old newspaper from the year 1992. 
Gheorghiță Mircea
Isac fiercely guarded two things: the stall in front of the shop and Hanna. The fruits tempted the small thieves who knew that stolen fruit tastes the best, but Hanna, the one in the window upstairs, was the fruit I desired. They're pissing me off, the old man complained about the little thieves without realizing he had just handed me the key. The expression meant to enrage the fruit guard so that, when taken out of the patch, other thieves could come around the back to steal. The kids were easily bribed. While Isac was chasing them, I was upstairs with Hanna.

Yuka Brevi
A few regrets follow me in this life. One is that I started smoking, and another that I stopped. The most profound moments were during the cigarette breaks. That's when the internal software resets, strategies for the next moves are planned, and you can victimize yourself in your mind, looking through the deadly smoke, if we're being honest. It's practically a choice. Do you want to die from cigarettes or from an existential implosion? Do you want to stay calm, on IV, or scattered like a watermelon on hot asphalt? The weekend is coming, think about that.

(Translated by Miruna Baicu / 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.