A New Hope

Nic Ularu
Is the chair free? Yeah. Do you want to have sex? What? It was just a question. Say yes, no, or drink your coffee and ignore me. I think you're crazy. I'm not. And if I said yes? I'd say you're shallow and I don't have sex with women who don't attract me. Perplexed. Then why did you ask me? It was just a question, but you took it as an immediate action. Wait a second, so you're not attracted to me? Have you seen my legs? She stands up. Yeah, beautiful, but I like intellectuals. She starts crying. Hey, where do you live?

Răzvan Dițescu
Please sir, can you give me a leu[1]? he whispered, his voice trembling in his chest, thinking about that I'll kill you if you come back empty-handed. His outstretched hand, thin and fragile, looked like a little boat floating on the ocean of indifference. Everyone was ignoring him, rushing away as if poverty were contagious. And that broke his heart; but even so, he kept hoping. He would have loved to be welcomed home by a mother; to be held in her arms; to be pampered. Any one, any woman; like the one who was approaching. Please, madam, can you give me a hug?
Dana Popescu
In the gray country where the little pink princess lived, laughter was banned by royal decree. At her birth, horrified by her shameful color, the king and queen ordered their subjects to smash all the mirrors in the kingdom. So Pinky grew up among the dull people, running through the gray gardens, without even imagining that there were other colors out there. The day she discovered the last shard of mirror, in a room where she was forbidden to enter, her peals of laughter woke the entire kingdom.

(Translated by Eduard Mihai Uretu / 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.