Here is Where I Hide Myself

Monica Ciurea
Children love to paint, and today's theme is my family. Bogdănel dips his brush in brown and draws a boy on the sheet; he scribbles the rest on his chest, on his shirt. His parents send him branded things from Spain. Leona is a cheerful child, she paints herself in the middle in yellow. She holds the hand of a red mother in huge heels. The other side of the sheet is blank. Maya draws in white on the still-white sheet. I'm painting god, she tells me seriously. Seriously? But no one knows what he looks like. Wait until I finish and you'll see him. And she winks at me.

Monica Bologa
The hall is full of people, the spotlight blinds me, I take the microphone in my hand and start speaking: all my life I have worn all kinds of masks, I have hidden my shyness behind controlled gestures, I have been silent when I would've had important things to say, I have disappeared when I should have been in front, I have covered my body with long, grey clothes, I have crept shyly through the world. An ironic voice from the hall took away my oxygen: and your breasts, madam, when will you stop hiding them? I put the microphone on the chair and took off my bra.

Cecilia Fofiu
Six months have passed. Terrible six months. I go out very little, I don't let anyone see what I'm feeling, I don't ask questions, I don't want to be comforted, I don't want to expose how I'm crawling through long nights that crumple my cheeks with their ruthless dryness. Tomorrow has become a concept whose meaning I don't feel anymore. And yes, I hide this as much as I can, isolating myself. I don't have to spread the bitter powder to others, because I know it's unhygienic to borrow the powder compact. As much as I can, hidden in words, I compose cheerful texts, here. And I laugh at my own laughter and that of the fictionalists.

(Translated by Eliza 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 January 2025, the group has 13,600 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.