I admit that lately, I've become addicted to a bad habit. Every time I talk to someone, I take advantage of the mask and grimace a lot. I grimace like a raccoon chewing on a fir branch. I also stick out my tongue from time to time. That's to know what's going on behind the mask, in case we meet. It was a dream of mine to make faces freely during a serious discussion. I don't know what will happen after I give up the mask, but what I wanted to tell you is to do the same, so that there will be more of us that do this.
(Translated by Claudia Alexandra Văcărescu / University of Bucharest, Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures, MTTLC, year I / 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. 
