Jazz

Carmen-Ecaterina Ciobâcă
He was a loafer, he whistled while strolling, the others would yell at him to go away, you're not allowed on this bus, these are not shops for you, get out of here, so he would hurriedly take off like a stray dog. In the evening, ah, in the evening it was a different story entirely. Bourbon Street would bustle with people, light bulbs would flash on every door, and he would walk into the bar, head for the place he knew, and begin. The wails of the whipped, the howls of the maimed, the moans of the desecrated women, they would all come out of him, making the world weep. Then he would leave his soul in the saxophone and depart.

Elena Fermuș
Uncle Tilică, 66 years old, recently retired. A great man, a real piece of work. Always up to mischief. And full of hobbies. Like all men. Adult magazines tucked under the mattress, the occasional espionage and his nephew's trumpet. A toy trumpet, obviously. A bugle, basically. But grandpa made a killing with it. And with a pair of toy binoculars. Well, he smooched down with them by the river. 007 in the bushes. On the lookout for hot women coming to cool off. Just like in the summer. And when they'd cooled off, uncle Tilică would enthusiastically blow his trumpet. Encore. Please.

Cristina Daniela Dumitru-Pascal
Hello, 112? I'm Mișu, I'm seven years old and I need help to show my dad that my mom's in the hospital, not because she's gone mad, but because grandma wanted this, for I saw her putting something white in her soda, for she never liked her because she's infertile and because she made my daddy adopt me and I don't belong in the family and I'm a damned mongrel and my mom taped it and my dad got mad and my grandma swore she'd get revenge and not a single strand of our hair would be left in the house. Hello, I'm sick too. On the other end, there's jazz playing.

(Translated by Oana-Elena Dragnea / 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.