When I saw the stairs, I couldn't wait any longer. On the first step I chose the belt. I hit my father over his buttocks until he implored forgiveness. On the second step I saw mother crying. I let her lie in that hospital. On the third step I saw him smiling sadistically, chose the pistol and shot him in the heart then laughed. And then I climbed further and gave my grandmother a cake, food to the cat and the literature teacher flowers. On the last step everybody saw me receiving the Nobel Prize on TV. I descended all the way down and applauded them.
(Translated by Dragoş 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 Ficţiuni Reale. 
