Stories to Be Read at the Train Station

Titela Durnea
Be careful about which book you take, I say. The train station you end up in matters too. Some are lively. Bustling. Full of people, trains, and hustle and bustle. Full of the tears of parting and the smiles of reunion. In a station like that, a short story is all you need. But then there are those grim stations. With empty platforms. Where you wait. You wait for a train that never comes, not realizing you're waiting for yourself. There, you can read a thousand stories. All in vain, if they're not about you. Look at that, what luck, a train is coming. Don't let it slip away. You're still reading, caught up in the story.

Florentina Ghițescu
A kid with his eyes glued to his phone is holding his mom's hand; he's blind, connected to another world. A young pregnant woman, who looks like she'll give birth any day now, is crying while waving at her boyfriend. He doesn't seem to be leaving her; I think he's going to work abroad. By the time he comes back, the baby will be a few months old. An old lady is sitting on a bench with a few raffia bags at her feet. She's staring into space; her headscarf has slipped a bit, revealing her white hair braided into pigtails. So many people, so many stories. The train is delayed again. Where am I even rushing to?

Vero Anttheia Teodoru
Surrounded by a bunch of raffia bags, she eagerly takes a bite of a pretzel. A gray suitcase drags its monotonous tune along platform 8. A backpack sits patiently on the back of a young guy with headphones in his ears. There's a wall between him and the world. Sounds carry him wherever he wants to go. A Louis Vuitton purse rests on a plastic chair. A fake one. Just like life, just like all lives. People are stories you can't really dive into between two trains. A short whistle invites us into the train wagons. We get off at the first stop.

(Translated by Eduard Mihai Uretu / 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.