Three Days of Fasting

Rozalia Cristea
During our first argument, we avoided each other as much as it is possible in a block apartment. He was in the living room, I was in the kitchen, he was in the bedroom, I was in the bathroom. I ate potato stew, he ate fried potatoes. And we kept it like that for three days. On the fourth day, over morning coffee, he said this couldn't go on anymore, and it ended with unwritten promises. The next few times, he went to his father's and ended up to his mistress. In the end, he left without a fight, of his own free will and not forced by anyone, to keep the promises he had made to someone else. What a man of his word.

Aurelian Țolescu
Yes, three days of forced fasting. During the winter of the year 1984, my brother and I were at a music competition in a relatively big city in Moldova. Besides the brutal cold in the hotel, we also had to endure hunger. There was no food at the hotel, no food at the cafeteria, nothing at the grocery store. Awful. We only ate dry pretzels on strings from the market. After three days of hunger and cold, we left for home, to our mother. We arrived home in the middle of the night and started searching for food. We found something. Bean salad with onions. Pure bad luck.

Dorin Vasile
Since Thursday, I haven't turned on the TV nor the radio. I avoid newspapers, advertisements, loud mouths. I lie sprawled on the couch and stare at the ceiling. It's the kind of perfect white that says something about who I am. Or about who I would like to be. Balance and seriousness. I change seriousness into verticality. I copy something from a file. I also change the name of the candidate. On Sunday, I stand in line in front of a school with peeling walls. I stamp the ballot randomly, cast my vote, and leave. I feel liberated. I turn on the TV and switch channels randomly.  

(Translated by Laura-Monica Doroiman / 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.