My dental prosthesis has become a drag. Everyday my dentist discovers another tooth that's not aligned with the rest and ties another wire in the already complicated mess. I started catching radio waves on a Thursday, it was first a stifled buzzing, then, as I twisted my head, it got clearer and clearer until I was able to hear Loredana perfectly. Now I listen to the news during my morning coffee and to music while I work. I open my mouth to turn it up and I put my hand on the radiator to fix the signal.
(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. 
