Priority

Cristina Daniela Dumitru-Pascal
It was almost midnight. Everybody was asleep. She stepped carefully on her tiptoes. She put some cookies on a plate, she filled a glass with milk and she sat by the window. She pulled the armchair closer to the fire and she sat on it, determined to wait for Santa Claus. She fell asleep. In the morning, she found the plate empty. The glass, too. She also got the doll she wished for. That is not wat I wanted, she said to herself while going to the kitchen. She made other cookies. She placed them in a box, next to the milk bottle. She wrote on it in capital first grade letters: FOR MY DAD IN AFGANISTAN. She took it to the mail box.

Daniela G. Pătrașcu
Since I was already used to it from my first birth, when I got into labor, I didn't reach for the phone, as I had no reason to do that. I changed the bedsheet, I started the washing machine and I packed my luggage. Two towels, two nightgowns, toothbrush, toothpaste, house slippers and everything I needed. I took a break to breath until the pain stopped, I looked at the clock and then I turned the vacuum cleaner again. At the Polizu hospital, from the ambulance they put me on a wheelchair and started to run screaming: expuuulsioooon. As if people could never be born in an elevator.

Caterina Tudorache
The female penguin whistled long. Hello, mister camel. Can't you look to your left, to your right? We first make sure nobody comes. The male camel looks at the small, black thing with a large beak. And who are you? I am an agent of order, discipline and good habits. What? A crocodile came next to the two. What's good here? The female penguin looks at him indignantly. So, whoever wants to cross the street must look to the left and to the right. Check that nobody passes by. The crocodile snapped the female penguin and then the zebra and went off chewing on them. The male camel sighed. Now how should I know when to cross the street?


(Translated by Diana Sitaru / 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 February 2025, the group has 13,650 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.