They say that you shouldn't be sad because it's over, but be happy because it happened. All love stories end with tears. His, hers, theirs. The ripple of a bitter smile spread across his face whenever he remembered. He's had lovers whose names only started with M and A. Crazy, moronic, possessive. The latter was always the most. He looked at himself in the mirror, his grizzled eyebrows and grey hair. He's lived his life. He turned off the light and lay down in his bed. I part with myself, to leave you a memento. The alarm clock kept ringing, using up its battery.
(Translated by Cristina Stan / University of Bucharest, Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures, MTTLC, year II / 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 2022, the group has 7,950 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, and Luchian Abel. (Drawing by Adrian T. Roman)
Versiunea în română a acestui text se poate citi aici, în rubrica Ficțiuni Reale. 
