Mr. Costica finished the chicken and began to pick his teeth as his eyes wandered through the night. The lights along the railroad burned brighter than ever. And they were bigger than ever. Very big. Getting bigger and bigger. Mr. Costica looked down at the macadam and got dizzy. 'Madam, I'm going to Baia Mare, and you?' 'To the Big Dipper.' 'Sir, what about you?' 'Also the Big Dipper, sir.' 'And you lad?' 'The Big Dipper.' 'Ahhhh Maricicaaa', Mr. Costica shouted as the train slowly soared among the stars.
(Translated by Andreea-Simona Trufin / 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. 
