He grew up there, under the eyes of the angel carved in stone. In the building before the cemetery. He slept on all the benches and whispering to all who left this world. He loved crucified girls from every cross and he made a cross at every beat of the bell. But now is the time to leave. To sell the apartment. All the real estate agents refuse him. They say no one will come to such an area. He puts an announcement: flat for sale with a view to the statue. They fought over it at the auction. Uncle Becali won it. The angel is now coated in gold.
(Translated by Zahra Kazemi / 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 March 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. 
