For this occasion, she has ordered a retro dress, from around 1900s, the time when the Orient Express was quite popular. She put on the
puffy-sleeved long dress and the corset that emphasized her waist, the hat with small colourful feathers, sprayed a delicate perfume on her neck and made her way among the tourists with their jeans, all too busy taking selfies with the inside of the train or the impeccable French plating. She sat down at her table, posted the message on Facebook and crushed the pill between her teeth, spreading around a whiff of bitter almonds.
(Translated by Ioana Stan / 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 February 2021, the group has 4.300 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. 
