I'm a Cabbage

Yuka Brevi
He died. Rich. Suddenly. Attempts to save him, commotion, all in vain. The next day, his women, both current and former, hurried over. What do we have here? the lawyer asked sarcastically, impeccably dressed. Well, he left everything to another woman. What, to another? Yes. There was another, you see. God forbid, we contest. Yes, it's possible, he encourages them, thinking of his hefty fee. And he left us nothing? Oh, but he did. It says here: a studio apartment, a Doubletail Betta fish, and..., he paused, glasses on the tip of his nose, a wooden cane. Used, he added. You're out of luck, he thought to himself.

Tina Dublea
I've been stewing in this pickle juice for a while now. But I've heard them say that time is relative. Maybe today, maybe tomorrow, maybe when they make that stew or at Christmas. Oh, how I would roll around those stuffed cabbages and pull tricks with that pure plum brandy, mom, just give me some polenta and I'm set, just need them to finally lift this rock off me, because I'm already blushing from the beetroot and I don't want to spoil, to be cut with the knife, because otherwise their relativity will stink in an exclusively pungent way, I swear.

Florina Hegedüs
I wait in the anteroom, fidgeting on my chair in embarrassment. I need His signature although, to be honest, I've hardly cared for holy matters, hardly at all. My turn comes, I enter. Without looking at Him, I start to babble. About the dreams-crutches that I've put into words to support me on my journey. That's how I've lived and I'm satisfied. And I seek approval to enter the garden. I hear Him sighing, saying: Girl, you've killed yourself with fantasies. I have the attic full of people like you and not a goat to chew them. Go to the wilderness. Peter, let the next one in.

(Translated by Claudia Garofina Greculeac / 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.