The Headless Horseman

Siranuș Hakobian
Oddly enough, the prettiest girl in college was always by herself. The girls avoided her like the plague and the guys did the same, keeping their distance. When we played șeptică[1], I, the loser, was forced to ask Ana to be my wife. I went over to fulfil my duty: will you marry me? Ana raised her beautiful eyes from her book and said yes. As any respectable, gallant man would do, I lost my head, turned on my heels and mounted my Mobra[2], all without saying a word. Then I married Ana.
Laura Stanciu
Riders from all over the country gathered at the White Ugliness horse riding club for the annual convention. The host was a well-built, tanned centaur with great abs. He handed a one-armed horseman a medal and gave a one-eyed rider a certificate. The people in the bleachers went wild. The one-eared horseman[1], by far the funniest one, received the popularity award. The headless horseman adopted the stiff posture of a statue with an arrow pointing at the clouds, where he also happened to lose his head out of love.
David Brescan
An arrow with two missing feathers and a steel tip pierced through the breastplate that covered his chest. His chainmail-covered hand dropped the sword; the horse jumped, reared, but the rider's iron-clad feet wedged in the stirrups kept him in the saddle. Only his helmet fell, hitting the ground with a dull thud. A raven detached itself from the flock swirling above the battlefield. It pecked the crimson-stained metal and rummaged beneath the raised visor, where it picked out a glassy eye. The horse screamed as a stray arrow lodged itself in its throat.

(Translated by Alina-Alexandra Șovar / 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.