Elsa thought about the stairs from the first day at the manor. The instructions were clear. You can't enter the landlord's rooms. Don't climb these stairs. Go down to the village before sunset. Tired, you'll fall asleep. Late at night, a beam of light coming from the staircase. She climbed up unhesitatingly. She pushed the door at the end. In the middle of the room, a mirror. In front of it, an old man combed his
linen-white hair. Come, he asked her. I am not allowed in here. He grabbed her arm, smiled gently and pushed her through the mirror. Nobody will find out, the young man with
raven-black hair replied.
(Translated by Dragoș Frangulea / 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 June 2021, the group has 6.650 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 Ficțiuni Reale. 
