The bees were buzzing electronically, annoying, and the boulder you were pulling me under was hot and smelled like a predator. Your soul slowly emerged into a Siberian tiger and mine turned into clay. I looked at you like the darkest nightmare, but my eyes refused to blink. You took off your shirt and showed me the place where blood used to flow at the carving of my face. I was no longer smiling, and your wrinkled skin near the heart twisted my face. I hated myself in you.
(Translated by Alexandra Gruia / 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 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 Ficţiuni Reale. 
