Stories to Be Read at the Train Station

Gheorghiță Mircea
The city was adapting, it had become a lacustrine city up on pillars. Few were the ones that had been born before the rain, since the last clear sky. The houses were painted blue, once up, now down between the greyness of the clouds and the muddy greyness of the canals. The people had expressions devoid of smiles. You could have an expensive aesthetical procedure to get a cheerful face. Not everyone could afford it, it was a fad, they had become alcohol slaves, were smoking opium and were succumbing to orgies. They were failing at slot machine halls, where, in order to win you needed a line of skulls.

George Dometi
The railway universe sketched in a few lines, askew and without pair. The decision has been made, I choose the railroad. The pluriverse is claustrophobic. That's how I sing a duet while having a beer in a pub, where the cats, irritated, are barking. The footnotes are a rub at a rail, don't let yourself be disappointed about the recycled stick, spaceships won't come, if you turn off our light. Whoopsie, the story? An old man had a tree stuck in his heart and at every tear falling on the platform, another branch would grow. Fast alternation of moods.

Horațiu Dudău
I draw in the steam the scope of a gun. I see people crowded at the forefront part of life, wheezing as if they lived posthumously. A beggar holds the hand that had been snatched from a past lover. Euthanized priests ever since university, are waiting on the platform for the train to come and take them away. A sick devoutness is dripping on the warm steel, worn-down by the wheels that are on fire. I grind my teeth so hard that I cover the sound of the breaks. The conductor with his coat pierced by surrenders throws out of the train the ones that have forgotten the goodbye kiss. Alone in the compartment, I hate myself erratically.

(Translated by Ana Maria Mitruș / 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.