When Life Gives You Watermelons

Laura Bercean
It's raining cats and dogs. What's that you're saying? There's an old English idiom for you. The sun's gone to the dogs. Are you nuts? When it's so cold outside, what can you do: you while the hours away, you twiddle your thumbs. Plus, I'm so hungry I could eat a horse. What's that you're saying? Spouting nonsense? Well, I don't give a rat's ass. You're as crazy as a loon. Well, I do have a screw loose, that's true. You think? Look at you, behaving like nutcase. Will you put a sock in it? Your place is in a looney bin! I've had enough of all these idioms, or do you want me to fly off the handle?

Ina Moldoveanu
Little Lin is filling the syringe with the red liquid that his father is preparing in the huge can. The melons haven't ripened this year either. So early in the morning, he wakes up to inject each melon that has to be sold in two days' time. In the meantime they turn red and sweet and are taken to the market in Peking. The most sought-after melons. He always has one cut into small slices for tasting. The little girl with coarse hair and almond eyes gorges herself on the slice with the red meat. The juices drip gently down her chin. She smiles. Lin feels sad.

Toni Mirică
The quinces have ripened, they hang like suns among the branches, fragrant. The chestnuts are ripe, they split and roll away, kissing our feet. The grapes hang heavy with sun and the sweetness of sunsets. Summer is closing its doors again, and my heart is closing in on me. I burst in on it, I swing and stretch out my hands to catch its light, but it slips through my fingers. I see myself, I see September on my face, and I look for my summer overdose. Hey girl, you're freaking me out, you're really freaking me out, said the summer. And it slipped away, watermelon rind and all.

(Translated by Mihaela Stănilescu / University of Bucharest, Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures, MTTLC, year I / Corrected by dr. Nadina Vișan, edited 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.