It snows lightly, with large snowflakes. The city is sleeping. But not the hill next to the apartment building. It's crying. It's breaking. Sirens are spinning. Small, big, old people who do not know what to hold at their chests faster. The black boots that entered the street before Christmas are kicking them along with the memories of the now illegal houses. They are threatening them. Who is to intervene? They are the intervention. They are the law. Under the hill, the city has trees full of lights, beautifully paved streets, restored buildings. Christmas carols can be heard in the bus stops.
(Translated by Claudia Alexandra Văcărescu / 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. 
