He was always tempted by the attic. There he was closer to heaven, closer to Him, above the uncontrollable anthill of the world. One day he lifted the hatch and climbed up. It was hot. He rolled his eyes. He saw the window to the world below and the hole in the ceiling. He climbed a ladder and climbed higher. There was a small, dusty room, and a skylight above. He opened it and climbed further up a thin metal ladder. He climbed up and up until the world became a point. He looked up in prayer and a man held out his hand. He looked into his eyes and recognized himself.
(Translated by Oana Irina Oprea / 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. 
