They have no smell and no color. They have the sound of waves and laughter in silence, the beach umbrellas toppled by the wind. They taste bitter in the emptiness and cold. They have the peace of the end and the joy of watching a video made in about a hurry, from which I understood that my family wanted me. They've got confirmation that I was born under a lucky star, because the lifeguard saw me swimming beyond the buoy, to impress you. They've got the divine happiness of hearing you whisper, through hiccups, close to the mouth: "Fool, I love you.".
(Translated by Anca Cristina Ilie / 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. 
