In vain did all my family tell me: see that the fifth rail on the ladder is broken. I don't usually listen. But today I fell while climbing into the attic and lay on my back, staring at the heavy, plank door. There was some amused squeaking from upstairs and I knew they were all standing with their eyes glued to the cracks and laughing at me, and inwardly hoping this was my last cat life. I narrowed my eyes and promised, whispered, under my moustache: you're mine, you appalling mousey race. That's it. My bridge, my rules.
(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. 
