We stopped, covered in ashes, at a safe distance. We were right on schedule. Now, sitting at the bottom, I admired the deluge we'd left behind. I'd poisoned the well, set fire to the house, how cool it burned, like a campfire. I'd set fire to the deck for the last time. The flaming logs were crashing into the river. What a show. Burn the old, step into the new. My dear, haven't you overdone it a little? My breath was easy. Fire cleanses wounds and closes chapters. No. Last time he came, he stayed a month. Kiss you,
mother-in-law.(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. 
