I wake up late, it's too quiet. Why isn't Sânziana practicing on her enchanted violin? In the parking lot a car's running, no driver, some cats clinging to the wipers and swinging on the windscreen. I go buy cigarettes. Empty shop. I buy a packet and leave the money to no one. I light up a cigarette. A message on a fence says the end has come. You're the last man. Look at the sky. On the Marlboro packet there's a man riding a goat, choking. I put out the cigarette. I feel quite important. Until I hear the violin.
(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. 
