December 31
st, the turn between the years. Between two male fingers a cigar is on the promenade. The glass full of rum ignites a man's inner garbage. He perfumes himself, then puts on his velvet jacket, fixes with a silver comb the last rebellious hair. Shiny shoes take him to the last level. He lights his rum with his cigar and sinks into the flames. Outside, the quiet family admires the fireworks of the attic which is burning. Through the smoke, a patch of incinerated velvet flies freely into the sky. A dandy steps into Hell.
(Translated by Denisa Dărăban / 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. 
