Delicate

Lucian Pătru
Loch Ness started to reek of mourning. Nessie had tangled in a bunch of ferns brought by the flood and was struggling to set itself free. It had lost three ounces, it was skin and bones now. Superman, still trembling in anger because Batman beat him at Tablanette again, was pulling himself together in a shower cabin. He was fussing a great deal, the poor fellow. His pulse had risen from a 7 to a 9 on the Richter scale, but even so, he pulled up his underpants over his trousers and his bra over his shirt, and took off. God left out a sigh of relief and went to sleep. The whole mankind was as good as saved.

Florentina Ghițescu
A flutter of the wings, the dust on butterflies, the perfume of chrysanthemums. She was drawn to the ephemeral, the fleeting. Some gathered fortunes to build up castles, she sat from dusk till dawn contemplating nature. Seen from the outside she was just as fragile as a butterfly, her skin was as translucent as dragonflies' wings and a faint smell followed her, something like the smell of the sea after rain, or snail trails on the asphalt. She had come into this world too early, she was missing the sarcasm armour and the evil spikes. The wind and the birds recognized her.

Florina Hegedüs
I'm worried. She's right here crammed up inside me. Delicate, fragile. I cannot, I really cannot help her. The last time I invited her on a walk, she was so tired she didn't even crack a smile, even though we met for her sake. Gently, she fluttered her eyelashes hello. She asked me if we could go back, embarrassed that she was seen in such a frail state. That broke my heart. I see it ever since but I won't mention it to her. The gravediggers, crows up in the trees, with fixed eyes, gaze through my window. And if she wants youth for herself, pulsing in her veins, how could I nurture her in my elderly body? How could I break it to her ?

(Translated by Diana Gabriela 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.