It was a sunny spring day. Ciac was cooking a chicken stew following the recipe of his friend, Cichi Ciang. Both loved to cook, to iron, to mop and to knit whenever they had spare time. They had been
co-workers for ten years at the garment factory in the city, which was run by Ching Cong, a kind and delicate being.
Today they had guests: three muscular men were sitting at the table with their bibs on. Ciac looked at them kindly. On his apron was written: 'If you don't like it, I'll smash you.'
(Translated by Diana-Maria Croitoru / University of Bucharest, Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures, MTTLC, year I / Corrected by Professor James Brown)
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 January 2021, the group has 3.000 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, and Luchian Abel. (Drawing by Adrian T. Roman)
*Versiunea în română a acestui text se poate citi aici, în rubrica Ficțiuni Reale. 
