At Your Window, Late

Ana Maria Dobre-Nir
The little girl stood by the window, with her nose pressed against the glass, watching the scene unfolding in the courtyard. Two crows were lunging at each other, their sharp beaks tearing into the skin of a rat. The metallic sound of their beaks echoed with each strike, and chunks of flesh broke away falling on the asphalt. Their wings clashed in the air, each trying to snatch more. One of the crows drove its beak into the rat's stomach, while the other got up with a bigger piece of flesh, flying directly towards the window.

Andra Toropoc
They called for you from the street: Vasi's motheeer, will you let him out to play? You'd lean out the window, annoyed, he's doing his homework, he's not coming, and I would die a little inside, trapped between notebooks, trained to listen to you. I had no friends and envied the kids who shouted from below, asking for money to buy soda, I tried it once, just like they did, but no coins ever flew from your window. And then you even beat me, because I was embarrassing you. I didn't cry, I wasn't even allowed to do that, but you should know, I was the one who pulled the ladder when you were fixing the new curtain. There were many pieces of glass, and I was one of them.

Elia Ghinescu
It took years for the honeysuckle to climb on the walls. Like a mad thing, it kept reaching higher. Now, it has reached the window. At night, it will make an effort, gather all its strength from the roots and splutter to cover her. In two days, its white flowers will ripen into yellow and will convince the woman to refrain from jumping. She's the only one that didn't ask for the building's walls to be cleaned. Weeds, the others had said. But not her, she kept to her own extinguished life from within the window. She will open the window and won't be able to jump. At least not her.

(Translated by Maria-Ilinca Darie / University of Bucharest, Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures, MTTLC, year II / 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 December 2024, the group has 13,540 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.