Priority

David Brescan
We all used to enter the grocery shop every morning, to get something for lunch. My menu never changed, one bread, two sausages and a yogurt bottle. Costel never changed his menu either. Two bears and one bread. He used to drink the first one before we got into the bus that took us to the port, to the workplace, and the second one during the lunch break, at 12 o'clock. Food is an arrogance, drink is the foundation^[1], he used to whisper from under his mustache. He used to put the bread in his bag and bring it to his children in the evening, not to go home empty handed.

Anca Chimoiu
You are a threat for humanity, he told me. How did that matter anyway, I had a driving license. I was firmly stepping on the gas, I was using the gear stick full of self-assurance. I was pressing the break when needed, so that it wouldn't wear out. Apart from that, I relied on the wire and on the instinct. If I had quandaries in traffic, I let the door open until they went out. Or until others got in. This is how I came across Gigel at a traffic light. I stepped on his toes and I didn't notice. I didn't stay to argue with him, because I had a car to drive, I passed it to the next one. Now there is a car following me with the flashing lights on. I accelerate, I rely on the wire.

Laura Stanciu
My dear weasel, we're crossing now the threshold between years. You have managed everything you had planned. Where is all the ambition you had when you were young? Is there no trace of it left now at 65? You were like a deer and now you weight a hundred kilos. Do you want diabetes, my sweetheart? Make some resolutions. To change our car, to travel to Timișoara, to lose some weight. Nelu, I told you not to call me a weasel. I am your wife. As I have told you before, every year, it is not right to call them Resolutions instead of Promises or Decisions.


(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.