Fireworks, Firecrackers, Poppers

Ana Maria Dobre-Nir
The girl was lying on the bed, with The Remarkable Rocket by Oscar Wilde open on her lap. The story about the presumptuous fireworks intrigued her, especially the rocket, which was confident that it was special, only for it to end up forgotten in mud. Is this vanity? she wondered, looking at the fireworks outside. To sparkle just to be noticed? To burn out thinking you were important? she wrote in her journal. She sighed and curled up. On that night she dreamed that she was shining on the sky, she was splendid and everyone was looking at her, but no one remembered her in the morning. A nightmare.

Fabiola Stoi
This is not what he had wished for his children. In fact, he thought they would each live in a part of the house with their own families. But these children, just like sparrows hard to control, they flew out of the yard, all three across the border and neither one of them has come back to visit since they've left. There was a rumour travelling in the village. Supposedly, the girl was hanging out with the foreigners and the boys had gotten themselves involved with some thugs. But didn't they have everything they needed here? The house smells of Christmas sweet bread and uncle Vasile is adding another fir tree branch to the fire, which is burning with a fragrant scent, crackling into dozens of little stars.

George Dometi
L Hung corpses were dangling on the houses' balconies, swarms of green flies were buzzing and circling the meats rotting away in the marketplace, greasy water was pushing the corpses down the street. The puddles of blood were flooding the cobblestone streets and bloody rags were lying on the side of the road among carbonised remains. Dogs that had escaped from the yards were feasting on creepy ashy and rose-coloured roadkills. You could smell death in the air. It was New Years Eve last night and animals died blown up, maimed or hit by fireworks because of idiots.


(Translated by Adina-Lorena Dulamă / 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.