Shadows and Lights

Dorin Vasile
Everything is different in the club at night. I like to look at their faces, transformed by the shining of the globe in the most unexpected ways. Alex is at the bar, holding a glass of vodka in his hand. The white Prada T-shirt highlights his tan. On the couch, three girls are watching, and one of them is staring at him. He's radiating. I wish I were in his shoes. I was about to meet him in the bathroom, later. Standing still in front of the mirror. There were used napkins all around and white stains on the sink. After some time, he turned around, smiling.

Cecilia Fofiu
He's the loved one. As his noble presence inquires, we do as he pleases and let him sit anywhere, even on the table. Of course, I expected the extended family to do the same with the Birman cat, renamed Lailu, from Laila, which was a correction after confusing his gender. Like any other mother who has a daughter, mine visits me frequently, because she's more alert, not a dizzy person like me. Of course, she has the key to the house. Astonished, I surprise her talking to my hat, which was put up in the hanger in the hallway, kitty-kitty, come down please, my precious.

Nicolae Popescu
Panfil is digging the land for collective farming. A rabbit passes by him. Rilă, where are you going so sad? Man, I've been fooled. I believe you've read about the election in The Roar of the Forest. I wanted to move out from the field and go to the detached burrow, the one in the woods. The bear promised he'd give me a place to live if I voted for him. And what happened? After he won the election, all that the bear gave me was a kick in my little bunny tail, and he built a big house for himself. The forest is gone as well, he cut off all the trees. What should I do? I don't know, this happened to me also. Come take the hoe and let's think about where we should run to.

(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.