Ever since she was little, Maria learned that food is almighty. When her parents were getting in a fight, her mom would set the table for him and close the door. When she was falling, she got a candy. When she was ending up on the first place, she would go out with her parents to the cake shop. Later on, when she was passing all her exams, she would celebrate at KFC. When a boyfriend was breaking up with her, she would eat a whole cake. At some point, Maria understood that the most important love is
self-love. Just as the food was the ultima proof of love, she started eating. And she never stopped until the earth swallowed her.
(Translated by Nina Iulia Tufă / 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 May 2021, the group has 6.400 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. 
