My mistress waited for me in our secret love nest, with a lie detector. She told me it was important that there was total transparency between us, and tied me to the machine. She gave me a glass of brandy to drink and then the interrogation started. First question: did I love her? I told her she knew the answer, but after a tight slap I realized she was being serious, so I said yes. Second question: had I ever cheated on her? I took a step back and whispered: only with my wife. She had a heart attack.
(Translated by Eleonora Manea / 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 April 2021, the group has 5.600 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, Răzvan Penescu, and Luchian Abel. (Drawing by Adrian T. Roman)
Versiunea în română a acestui text se poate citi aici, în rubrica Ficţiuni Reale. 
