Three Days of Fasting

Cristian Palade
I had three more days till our discharge. I was on duty. It was tough as hell, but the big day was coming up, and that gave me the strength to endure. On the last night, I stayed in the watchtower, occasionally taking a swig from the Săniuța bottle hidden in my breast pocket. It was raining heavily, and gusts of wind blew over me mercilessly. I heard a sound, all of a sudden. A silhouette was lurking around the perimeter fence. Halt. Halt, or I shoot. Nothing. The silhouette started running. I let out a warning shot toward the sky. All in vain. I aimed and took a shot. To hell with it. The silhouette collapsed to the ground. Discharge be damned.

Laura Stanciu
Wednesday, Friday, and Yom Kippur are in a Zoom call. How's it going? asks the Day of Atonement, when a strict fast is observed. Our rating is pretty low. We're lucky to have the older women and pure souls. The updated information from the weekend saddens us, but what can we do? Maybe you can change something. In our case, only one day of fasting is required over the entire year, which is why more are inclined to observe it. Considering the 52 weeks, excluding holidays, you're asking quite a lot from your believers. Tsk, we're removing you. You're speaking sinfully.

Ana Maria Dobre-Nir
Below the old olive tree, the roots seemed to swallow History. Moshe, Eliyahu, and Yeshua met in silence, like shadows overlapping in the mirror of time. Their prayers ascended like invisible strings that bound earth and sky. The leaves of the olive tree shone, reflecting every epoch. Each one of them saw a different side of the tree. Three leaves fell gently, one for each day of fasting, marking transience. They were there, yet they were not. Time leaving behind the echo of an impossible yet unavoidable meeting. Avinu, racheim aleinu.


(Translated by Francisc Csiki / 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.