The Ogres' Swamp

Oana Jindiceanu
 Does it really exist, Mommy? It really does. Where is it? Do you know the story of Pinocchio? How the children were tricked into going to the island of pleasures and turned into donkeys there? It's the same with us. There's a kind of island where everyone's an expert, everyone shows off their perfect lives, vacations, expensive clothes, IDs, and even their underwear. Then they start fighting with each other. They say horrible things they'd never dare say face-to-face. Slowly, everything fills with mud, people make grimaces, and they stay that way.

Nicolae Popescu
Prâslea[1] leans on his sword. Beads of sweat drip from his chestnut locks, there's a puddle at his feet. The air reeks of death, and his linen shirt is nearly charred. Around him lies a multitude of severed dragon heads, some still smoldering. The contest judges are counting, noting with chemical pencils, erasing, and noting again.The head of the committee approaches: Mr. Prâslea, you're in second place. Mr. Greuceanu[2] has one extra dragon head. Prâslea takes a deep breath, choking. I demand a recount, he says, and faints.
Ana Maria Dobre-Nir
Nina carves, from times long past, her way through the depths of the earth. Each day, her clay hands turn into scales, her mossy hair dries into roots, and her amber eyes glow like embers. The light she seeks seems close, but it always retreats, leaving her with another tunnel and another face. It flickers somewhere, in a hidden corner, like a strand of buried gold, untouched by the earth's weight that ensnares it. Nina, Nina, Nina- the call of the light echoes, lost in the mud soaked with silence.

(Translated by Larisa Marta Mreană / 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.