It was his dream to be a photographer. So, when the devil asked for his soul in exchange for the best camera in the world, he didn't hesitate.
He started practicing. A couple. Click. She was pregnant, he was about to drown. A kid. Click. About to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. An old linden tree. Click. It was going to get torn out.
Frightened yet thrilled, he carried on. His mother. Click. She was going to have a heart attack. His girlfriend. Click. She was going to leave him for some other man. His brother. Click. He was the other. He takes a selfie. Click. He was going to lose his mind.
(Translated by Ana Stănilă / 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. 
