She was advancing slowly through the scorching heat, under the shadows of the abandoned buildings. She'd been so close, but the car died right at the end. Everyone had already been evacuated. She stopped on a couch that had landed on the street through a window and drank from the water bottle. She tried the portable radio, catching just a few words: final rocket, final seats, 49 minutes to go. Ah, she accidentally spilled the water on her feet. Not that. She felt a sharp pain down low. The contractions had begun.
(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. 
