The Only Thing That Matters

Ligia Dumitrescu
This dress is perfect. It fits like a glove, as they say. Ah, I mustn't forget the gloves. I wonder which ones would be more suitable? The short ones with rhinestones, or the long ones up to the elbow, with buttons the size of a coffee bean? I'll take the long ones. They're more dramatic and go best with the dress. Black stockings. Definitely the ones with a stripe. And the veil with feathers. The shoes? The shoes. If I pick the ones with stiletto heels, it's going to feel like an endless torment. It lasts too long. Better let them see that I suffer. After all, it's the first time I'm a widow.

Monica Bologa
The alarm throws me out of bed, I grab the child, wash him, dress him, we leave the house, I drop him off at kindergarten, rush to the office, spend eight hours with my eyes on paperwork, pick the child up from kindergarten, we get home, I make soup and some schnitzels, the child draws castles, we eat, I wash the dishes, we take a bath, and then I get to the moment I've been waiting for all day: what story do you want mommy to tell you tonight? About a puppy, pweaaase. For three years, I've been making up stories, keeping them in my head when I work, when I make cabbage rolls, when I hammer nails. The rest are just details.

Ana Maria Dobre-Nir
Harper sits in front of the TV, her eyes fixed on the screen without really seeing anything. The news are on the screen, but to her, it's just background noise, lost in the void of her mind. Her gaze drifts to a white feather resting on the windowsill, a remnant of summer that tightens her chest. Everything seems unclear now, except for a simple but persistent thought pulsing in her mind. She voted, and that brings her a quiet peace, even though she knows that, regardless of the outcome, the world will remain the same.

(Translated by Alexandra-Ecaterina Radu / 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 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.