On the Scooter

Alex Caragian
The curtain rises. The act starts. The clown enters the stage with the clatter of a Vespa. A vintage model just like the driver. The audience laughs. The leather seat has more wrinkles than the face of the makeup lady who powdered his face an hour ago. The artist is dressed in a wasp costume, matching the scooter. The audience laughs. The clown does laps around the applause-filled circus. The motorail accelerates. The laughter grows stronger. The engine gets hot. The clown catches on fire. The audience goes crazy. The curtain catches on fire. The people clap. The clown cries.

Dan Banu
When his worries weighed him down and his eyes filled with tears like grapes in a vineyard, he would jump on his iron steed and take to the mountains. He would climb the road carelessly, then through the sullen trees that showed him with thin fingers the way to the Princess' house. Leave me be, Dragon, for I'm upset, he would cry when the beast showed up with a wide open mouth. Not today, for I'm many winters old, he would tell the Hag too and all three would sit on the Princess' veranda, who would welcome them with a story and a smile. Then he would return home whistling into the night.

Monica Ciurea
so does his unravelled silhouette come sometimes, he stops at midnight on the other side of the road, at the forged fence, I watch him, his gait is apterous, he holds a scape, a weak light sparks on the top floor, the house has been long abandoned, bloody child, you're not allowed there, the curtain was pulled slightly to the side, the rusty gate gives in, I'm not moving it an inch, it's too dark, I only see how his scooter is waiting, I climb over the fence, a girl with tuberose once lived here, I hold my breath, her portrait is in the hallway, the day of her wedding she was found dead, his cold kiss on her pale forehead.

(Translated by Adriana-Maria Botea / 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.