If You're Reading This, You Have Been Chosen

Cristina Daniela Dumitru-Pascal
The city was choked with terror. Ever since the murders began. The bodies were found in hotel rooms, naked, with their hands and feet tied to the bedposts, genitals placed on their chests, and coins on their closed eyes. All of them were men. The commissioner had found no traces or fingerprints. He had no suspects. And to make matters worse, there hadn't been a new victim in some time. He was expecting the worst. The call came in the morning. Same pattern in the room. Except this time, written in blood on the wall: COMMISSIONER, FIND ME, OR I'LL FIND YOU. YOU'RE NEXT.

Gabriel Moldovan
Anna runs from a love that's already dead. She throws herself into Vronsky's arms, a new fire that burns too fast and too fiercely. The eyes of the world become shackles, love turns to torment. Salvation seems to lie in the unforgiving rails. Far from the city, Levin gazes at the sky that is embracing his fields and understands: happiness is not something you find, but something you live. If you've made it this far and already know the story, you've been chosen to understand it, to carry it with you like a whisper in the background every time you watch a train track fade into the distance.

Tina Dublea
Yeah right, Sancho. So, bingo, you've won yourself a dingo. But I assure you, if this message finds you, you've been picked. By aliens. Or not. Maybe by \'inward-earthlings'. You never really know. Anything. And if you start asking questions about this, you're the unofficial philosopher of the parallel universe. Everything that's not absolute is relative, Sancho. If you get that, you'll be happy, but also responsible for explaining to anyone who asks why, why, even though we invented trash cans, we still throw litter on the ground.


(Translated by Claudia Garofina Greculeac / University of Bucharest, Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures, MTTLC, year I / Corrected by prof. dr. Nadina Vișan, coordinator of the translations / Edited 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 April 2025, the group has 13,740 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.