On the Scooter

Andra Toropoc
Handsome as Dean, wearing jeans and a black leather jacket, the rebel of the block went out of the elevator and stomped with his cowboy boots all the way to the mall. There he spotted the target with a peeking eye from under his arched eyebrow and went swinging towards it, knocking everything that stood in his way. He put a penny in there and climbed onto the brightly coloured little Yamaha which immediately started to rock back and forth as he squealed and shouted vroom, vroom. The he descended and greeted the astonished kids from the playground with his left hand, with two fingers in a V shape. 

Elena Fermuș
Gigel looks like a cartoon boy. To be honest, he really is the living proof that man is descended from monkey. Viewed from the profile, he looks like a chimpanzee. One could almost throw bananas at him. All his fortune is an old Trabant and a young horse. On Sundays he hitches up the horse to the car and drives it around the village. But not much comes out of it. He wants andrenaline. He exchanges the horse for a scooter and scraps the Trabant. He buys himself cowboy boots and a Dallas hat with the money. A welder tank top and i love you tattooed on his arm. I'm gonna kick your ass. 

Titela Durnea
The clans, clearly demarcated, met at the edge of the village, anticipating a fierce battle. The followers of the lie, almighty and taunting, challenged the followers of the truth, hurling poisoned words at them. At 7.00 p.m, when the bell tolled, The Lie appeared: huge, in chain mail, with a shining helmet. On the shield was written: I'll conquer you. In the other corner, The Truth, stunted, having 5 pieces of food in his palm, appeared with an exposed chest on which it was written: I'll set you free. The next morning, the gate to heaven opened over the village. 

(Translated by Irina Vild / 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.