The Donkeys' Scale

Arthur Ianoși
The third millennium. I missed the first two, I had no energy, no carcass, but at least I was home. Now I am just a helpless spectator, in front of the TV, even the remote has run out of batteries and the house I live in is foreign. I wipe my glasses with the table cloth and I watch them come up to the stand, one after the other, making promises to feed my hope. They walk up three steps. To lie to us, to me. Someone bring a chair for mr. X, someone said in the room. I wish you all defective microphones, I say, and take out my hearing aid.

Sonia Ungureanu
The funeral procession stopped at the crossroads and the three priests jabbered on about their business, to make them, to arrange them, to place him next to the righteous. Ample prayers and foreheads wiped with the backs of hands followed. Cacarache had led a poor life, but he had had a dream, to be buried with three priests, like he had seen it done at the funeral of Motâtău's son. He had paid the priests while still alive, it seemed. His dream was coming true. His woman paraded around, a few years his senior. Death picks randomly, not one after another. Tongues wagged in front of people's houses.

Ligia Dumitrescu
Costel lives on the ground floor. Chewing seeds all day. He is Tanti Mimi, the cleaner woman's, nightmare. On the first floor, uncle Fănică's door is always wide open and he swears at his wife. Poor woman toughs it out. Ionescu from the second floor has two dogs that do their business in the hallway, he is too lazy to take them outside. It's Chernobyl out there. On the third floor, auntie Gica dries her clothes in the hallway. I have never seen panties and bras like hers. Then there is Dorel. He gets drunks and plays manele[1].To each his own floor, one after the other. You get me? That's why I am looking to move.
(Translated by Ioana Grințescu / 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.