Footwork

Mihai Dinescu
All the women are naked today. Or they're wearing pants. Everything is upside down, he thought, leafing through the photo album. Something has been lost. The mystery. The emotion of anticipation. The beauty that was only suggested is now replaced by gratuitous exposure. This world is lost, he sighed. Ah, Mirela. He took out the picture and stared at it for a long time, smiling. The foot was beautifully placed on a black pedestal. A yellow-violet bead bracelet matched the colors of the scarred, amputated limb. You sweet thing. I chased you through the forest for two hours.

Sorin Rizeanu
Sayonara, I wanted to gently take his hand and say it. Maybe even kiss him on the cheek. Sayonara seems to me the most beautiful way to say goodbye, in Japanese it means if it must be. Auf Wiedersehen or au revoir suggest a reunion, while the English goodbye, which comes from God be with you, is not what I wish right now. Sayonara is just an acceptance of fate, of inevitability. He looked at me a little absent, like an empty object in the middle. Come on, go to your mom, shut up, and take big steps, he said with a twisted voice.

Cristina Daniela Dumitru-Pascal
She appeared in the neighborhood all of a sudden. She walked past everyone with a neutral expression. From there, it was easy for rumors to spread, saying she was abandoned, or that she was an old maid, or one of those types, you can see how she looks. That was until she was spotted climbing the steep hill outside the city. Almost every day she did it. She wants to keep fit; just look at her legs. Oh, come on, she must be seeing some cute guy. So, they decided to follow her. Once they reached the top, sweaty and exhausted, they stumbled upon a grave. Curiosity tires you out, doesn't it? They heard her behind them.


(Translated by Claudia Garofina Greculeac / 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.