Shadows and Lights

Aurelian Țolescu
After Codruț had been the head's of the unit deputy for years, having the professional and managerial experience that few of the people his age had, the new commander surprised me, a not very well-known guy who was put there from an inferior echelon. I called Codruț and made fun of him for a bit: What happened, professor? Did you bark up the wrong tree? He replied instantaneously and I could see a smile of relief on his face: Țoli, Buddy, I'd rather stay in shade with 60 lei[1] in my pocket, than with 100 in sunlight.
Ana Ludușan
What are we going to do, I desperately ask, the fence is falling over the pedestrians, he's watching TV, we don't have stairs, we enter the house like hens, he's enjoying his coffee, it rains inside the house, he puts plastic basins in the middle of the bedroom, you've never taken me on vacation, he's nastily looking at me, why did you marry if you don't know how to live together with someone, he's flipping through a magazine, we're two parallel lines, he snores, I drown my loneliness in the dense night, I dream brightly, I see his ballerina body, his noble face, his bishop manners, his immortal calmness.

Florina Hegedüs
Shadows and lights asked me to rent them the house. Which I did. More than that, I promised them that all that I've lived would be left to them after I won't be here anymore. Honestly, I don't want to be alone. Some of them are gentle, eager for bright touches. Others are mysterious, they have hats, curls and stiletto shoes. They come and go as they please. I introduced them to my relatives. They looked at me sideways. They said that they could see nothing but white papers with black letters written on them. They put me in a mental asylum. Only the renters come to see me. They bring me candles. So I won't be useless on the earth.

(Translated by Cristina-Andreea Dobre / University of Bucharest, Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures, MTTLC, year II / 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.