Here is Where I Hide Myself

Florentin Sorescu
A part of him was hidden just like the unseen side of the moon. He wouldn't let anyone, absolutely anyone see the side of him, we all knew about, but pretended not to notice. We had heard that he had an accident when he was little, but to us this was him: the boy with an injured eye, who wrote the most beautiful stories. But the thing that impressed us the most was his sense of humour. That was until one day, when the surgeries were successful and the scar on his eye suddenly disappeared. From that moment on, no one recognized him anymore.

Neti Niculae
The best hiding spot is in plain sight, that's what my grandma used to tell me. I understood that later in life, when I could no longer fit in the hammock between the walnut tree and the fir tree. Nor under the trough. Or in the hollow of the linden tree. And no matter how much I tried to make myself small, the lucerne no longer covered me. And the hayloft no longer had a ladder. No one looked for me, however fate was going to find me wherever I hid. It was winter when I left behind my fears and hiding spots, just like a snake that leaves behind its skin. Two memories still kept me warm: my grandma and the kittens in the hayloft.

Monica Aldea
Clara, an only child, had always been lonely. She grew up in a house with a huge orchard. That's where she used to hide, although no one one was looking for her. Only her grandmother would find her while cleaning the caterpillars off the apple trees. Come on, girl, you haven't eaten since noon. When she was a Literature student, she used to go to a secluded destination during summer and write. She had published many works of literature, but avoided praise and honours. The voice of nurse on the oncology ward brutally woke her up to reality. Clara, where have you been hiding? We are moving you to room 2, it became available this morning due to a death.

(Translated by Adina-Lorena Dulamă / 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.