D'you know how she takes it? Like a doormat. I hit and she says nothing, shits her pants. The quieter she is, the more I wanna punch her. Diana, a small thin woman, had just sneaked in as Ion was recounting the power he had over her. She hid in the bedroom closet, hearing them guffaw in the living room. Then it got quiet, the drinking buddies had left and Ion had fallen asleep. She watched him until he opened his eyes. I thought I'd stop being a doormat, she smiled and thrust the knife in all the way to the handle.
(Translated by Cătălina-Diana Teliban / University of Bucharest, Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures, MTTLC, year II / 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. 
