Heaven's Gate

Magdalena Daminescu
Granny, you're so old, aren't you afraid of death? When you live as long a life as I have, you get used to the thought of it, and besides, we are all indebted to death. I've lived with purpose, I've had a beautiful life and a large and loving family, I have my grandchildren beside me, I have no regrets. In life you always have to wish for something. I had agreed with your grandfather to meet at heaven's gate and I made him wait for me for quite a while, but he was always patient, I was always late, you know how women are. And death is a woman, too.

Florin Leșan
He kicked the ball into the goal. Who's there? And out comes a bearded old man with a huge key in his hand. I'm Nelu. After the game, will you let me in? The old man coughed and pulled out a small mirror from under his coat. He looked into it. Nelu was with other children playing ball in the alley. A car went by, hitting the child with its fender. Then it was full of people, ambulances and policemen. Hm, hm, let out with a cough the bearded man. He rushed toward the child with his cane. Go on, go to your folks, you little daredevil. Come back in eighty years. Doctor, cried the nurse, his pulse is back.

Cristina Daniela Dumitru-Pascal
He'd removed her robe and she felt his warm hands on her neck, running down her shoulders, breasts, thighs. The calluses on his palms made her body even more vulnerable to his touch. Fingers lightly caressed the mound of Venus. Slow, unhurried, as if they were narrating on her skin a threshold of paradise and the way it could be crossed. She started taking deep breaths. She winced when she heard him speak right into her ear. You're mixing those beans around like a fool, with your head in the clouds. I'm hungry. Give me something to eat, he said, and let out a long belch smelling of stinking plum brandy.


(Translated by Oana-Elena Dragnea / 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.