a watchmaker. I have a lot of work, which leaves me little free time. Everybody knows it's easy at Johnny's, you come to me and the next day at 18:55, your watch is fixed. If you come earlier or later, goodbye watch. If you're not punctual, you don't deserve a watch. My wife died ten years ago at 18:55, and this is how I honour her. She didn't get one minute more, or less. I got sued by some clients, I paid compensations, but I kept all the watches, none of them are ticking, they're all stopped at 18:55.
(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. 
