Delicate

Paul Dârvariu
After he asked for my hand in marriage, Decebalus awkwardly told me: my daddy wants you to fill out this form. I looked over the seventy-eight questions. Some were really peculiar like: if I was born naturally or via C-Section, if I drank juice from plastic bottles or if I loved Russian literature. I think my future father-in-law wanted to know my height and weight because he wanted his grandchildren to inherit his short frail body. As for the other questions, he asked them to know whether his heirs would be just as deranged, as himself.

Cecilia Fofiu
The delicate moon sways its halo through the fog that envelops the frost covered fir tree in the yard. He pulled the blanket over mommy, who laid asleep curled up on his bed and, his eyes wide, with dark circles underneath, his tiny nose glued to the window, he pictures Santa with his sleigh that should arrive any time now. He is a little bit worried about mommy, she is so very tired and her eyes are teary, so he does all he can so as not to upset her, for fear she would get sick. He's got only three sessions of radiotherapy left, then they were going home. And he'd get his curls back, that's what mister doctor said.

Ionuț Morariu
On board there was no place for the frail or fainthearted. The sea and the captain sifted the crew like the heavenly miller sifted chaff from the wheat. And the human chaff, which God knows what ill-spirited wind had brought on the deck, quickly took in water and spilled over. Not even the most experienced sailors slept soundly. At night, the sailors whom Poseidon had spared would have to fight Morpheus. Some dreamt of rocks, the others of monsters or of waves as big as mountains. Just like on land, the only ones rid of nightmares were those, under the eyelids of whom, Tyche tattooed delicate mermaids.

(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.